Bears.

  Milo dreamed about bears when he slept, at least, the parts of him that were resting were dreaming of bears. He was never quite fully asleep these days, one part of him always awake, pondering things, and another part on guard. On guard against what, he didn't know. But Wally was worried, and until he figured out why, he would never completely relax. His body rested, and to anyone looking, he appeared to be deep asleep. Anyone, that is, but the Alphabet, Belinda, and Mama. Bork never relaxed completely either, but he did get more rest now that he was learning Jeremy's techniques for operating two or more complete thinking processes at once. The rest of the Alphabet had a high level of paranoia, but not like Milo and Bork.

  For Belinda, it was different. The memories of betrayal by her stepfather, great-uncle, and personal physicians had hit her hard. The truth about her father had been worse. Trust was not going to come easy to her ever again. She could relax and be herself with the people of Downtown and with Eric Kresthammer. For now, those people were her world, and she had no desire to live anywhere else. Trips up top and out of the habitat would, at least for now, always be with Eric and a set of bodyguards. Luckily, there was a lot she could do in Downtown, managing her slowly expanding financial empire. Or, like this week, learn a lot about bears.

  All of them were thinking and talking about bears. They had spent two days researching everything there was to know about bears. Bear movement, bear habits, bear physiology, bear psychology. They had only limited ideas of how much a sentient bear in Genesis would correspond to real-world bears, but this was the logical starting point. They broke down each movement into its component parts, looking at how the muscles moved, the flexibility of their joints, and then created computer simulations that they could use to make the plans for a mechanical bear and begin the process of constructing a prototype. Milo wanted to approach the project in two steps. Step one was how they would build the bear in the real world. Step two was adapting their plans to Genesis and taking advantage of technologies and magic that were lacking here.

  The idea of building a mecha-bear using game technology had immediately excited his siblings. They demanded details on everything: the tensile strength of deep iron wire, the mana storage capacities of the magic-tech crystals, the endless details of where real engineering and physics corresponded with their Genesis counterparts, and where they were different. Nina and Onyx focused on the basic design of a metal framework that would mimic the movements of a real bear. Zander and Algernon were working on the internal powerplant and magi-tech components, pushing Milo's memory and skill to their limit with their endless curiosity. Bork applied himself to defenses, designing a shell of overlapping armored plates that would move freely and minimize weak points.

  All of them were running on the new energy drinks and a buffet of foods cooked by Mama. Butch and Brad were running the snack counter and making sure they ate right. Kenji and Yumi took the second shift, and Min handled the third shift with her younger siblings, Jeff and Thaddeus. They also had vitamin drinks, flavored water, and a checklist from Mama of things to ask each person before handing them plates of food and bottles of liquids. The Alphabet was burning calories over twenty hours a day, and Mama wanted to keep them healthy. It was a big job. Just Milo had been a challenge. Six Milo's was a time-consuming and daunting project, but she was rising to the challenge.

  Belinda rotated in and out of groups, looking at everything, and acting as the overall Project manager. She didn't think as fast as the others, but she also wasn't prone to their tunnel vision. While they were working on the bear, she was looking at applications for the new things they were coming up with. The Alphabet might discover a dozen ways to accomplish a task before choosing the best for the job. Belinda was harvesting the other ideas for commercial applications, especially in the companies they owned. She didn't want to sell the best ideas to other corporations. Those they would keep for themselves, or give away if they benefited a large number of people. The rest she would test, patent, and license out to one corporation or another.

  Onyx had been testing experimental alloys and micro-wiring. One alloy was perfect for the pseudo-muscles that would drive the movement. Another alloy didn't work as well, but would increase the efficiency of wound coils by 207%. They kept the first, and she sent the second idea out for further testing in one of their labs, making a note of where they could use the new coils in Clogeaters and Duct Cleaners.

  The control systems, musculature, and movement systems were isolated as a separate project, which she gave to Rusty. He needed some specialized props for his Dirty Pair project. Within an hour, he was showing everyone the designs for the mecha, armored suits, and demonic villains he wanted for the production. Belinda suggested he create another thousand designs of natural animals, monsters, dinosaurs, Kaiju, and aliens. Once he debuted his Broadway production, she was going to create a new company that would create their advanced mecha-tronic creations for the entertainment industry.

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  Bork's armor schematics were ingenious, inspired, and totally impractical. Very protective, as long as the bear never moved. They utilized thin, overlapping layers of compacted steel and iridium wafers, an idea he'd taken from the heavy armor Milo had built to get to Jeremy. But he took things much further. There were thirty-seven separate layers of interlocking metal in his designs. The armor would neutralize and deflect the energy of a blast, distributing it over the entire frame. Their real-world model would shrug off heavy artillery with ease, but weighed three times as much as a tank. Working with him, they compromised at nine layers, which would be 90% as efficient as thirty-seven, and bring the weight down to an acceptable level.

  When Bork asked about the materials they would use in Genesis, Milo was thinking hard about other things and gave him a confusing answer revolving around a large snail and weaponized plasma. As most of his minds were trying to solve the problem of mana storage, the Alphabet crept closer, and Bork carefully prodded him until they got the entire story out of him, starting with finding the Myconian city, the battle with the snails, and then the confrontation with the Ur-Khemysts. Milo finally found a workable solution to his problem and then refocused on who was hovering around him, finding Belinda, Butch, Brad, Min, and the Alphabet sitting quietly and taking notes.

  Belinda began tapping her foot and crossed her arms. "Secret Underground Pirate Engineering Stronghold?"

  Milo would have retreated, but was surrounded. "I'm sure I mentioned this, didn't I?"

  Algernon shook his head. "Nope, we knew about the engineering place you wrecked. It sounded cool, but it didn't have pirates, submarines, or connections to other places in the underground."

  Zander shook his head sadly. "We're sure you meant to tell us. Probably a simple oversight caused by working so hard on things. We were distracted too, with the breakdown of food processors in Uganda, the outbreak of Scarlet Typhus in Arkansas, and the idiots who thought selling raptor eggs to animal collectors in Los Angeles was a good idea. I didn't think we'd ever lure all of them out of the sewers. So very busy. But we have time to rectify that, don't we?"

  "It would be a shame if we didn't see the end product of this project.

  "And I've always wanted to be a real pirate. Corporations rarely keep chests of gold coins anymore.

  Milo knew a losing battle when he saw one. "Maybe you could visit and help with a few projects?"

  Min hugged him. "Ah, thanks for inviting us all, big bro. Sounds fun."

  Onyx started collecting locations from everyone. "It's about time I head back to Shadowport with my airship. Captain Squint sent me out four months ago for a cask of applesauce, but he neglected to say just when I had to be back. I should be able to pick up a few people along the way."

  With that small detail out of the way, they got back to work on bear technology. By the end of the week, they were done, and Milo had dozens of designs for Project Better Bear, with versions converted as best they could to the game world. They'd also created another half dozen companies and filed restricted patents on one hundred and seventeen processes or inventions. The US Patent Office was used to dealing with new ideas from the Rhebus Corporation, but receiving so many at once was a new record. Nineteen of the Patents had no restrictions on viewing. Calls were made to two dozen corporations from overworked staff in the office who would benefit from large bonuses sent to their bank accounts. Belinda had warned Sydney about what was going to happen, so she was ready when enquiries and offers started coming in. She scoffed at some, laughed outright at others, then set up negotiations for each item, pitting the corporations against each other.

  Mama declared a holiday that started with six hours of sleep for everyone, a full dinner, video game night, and more sleep. Milo was excused to sleep in his pod. He had Engineers to talk to and projects to post on the jobs board.

  Sledgemonkey was staring at the list of projects as they came in. "I'll be damned. How the hell does he come up with all of this? He's got seventeen different projects on the boards, with schematics of what he wants done, but not how exactly how he wants the teams to go about getting them done."

  Two-Screws liked that. "Best way to do it. You show what you want done and then turn the lads loose to figure it out. It worked on the drill project. We ended up with a mighty fine mechanical drill with all the best ideas of our loons and crackpots incorporated into it. Project Better Bear is going to benefit the same way. And there are a hell of a lot of ways we can use this new technology. A mechanical bear with cannons? That's just the beginning. Are you thinking of what I'm thinking?

  Sledgemonkey had bee staring off into space, a smile on his face. But he came up with an answer to the question. "I think so, Two-Screws, but do we really need a six-story mechanical rabbit to ride into battle? I mean, sure, it will be fun, but can you trust a rabbit's brain to stay focused on combat? One person dangling a carrot in front of it, and the thing will be on a rampage."

  For once, Two-Screws didn't have anything to say in reply. After a moment, he nodded his head and walked off to check on the junior brothers. He may have mumbled something that sounded like Twitterpated as he walked away.