There certainly are now

Mr C’s face brightened. “As it happens, the best one is right here at Staveburn! It was started by a fellow student of yours using some kind of development grant – do you know Ms Ciesev?”

Reader racked his brains, finally shaking his head. Mr C nodded. “No matter, I’m sure you’ll meet soon enough! I think she’s there a lot, and she told me any student who wants to use the room is welcome to all supplies. You have lunch now, right? Come on, I’ll show you!”

Reader’s instincts screamed at him that, if game logic applied, this was too easy and there was a trap, but he couldn’t see it yet. At a loss, he nodded his agreement, hoping it was just newly high luck doing its thing.

Before long Mr. C had led Reader to a door Reader had always assumed was a supply closet but actually led to a small lab room. Reader signed in to the spiral-bound notebook at the door - there was only one other name, whoever this Stacia Ciesev was, it seemed she wasn’t great at advertising her new club. Maybe another misfit like me Reader mused as he wrote his name into the next blank space. As soon as he’d finished, he got a new notification:

New profession: Biohacker.
Learn to manipulate life itself through the power of SCIENCE!
Current Mentor: None
Your rank: 1/12

Reader looked at the notification in bemusement. He wondered what he could do at level 12, if everything he already knew from the textbook was level one – though he guessed it might be a question of manual skills too. Reader donned a pair of latex gloves and cast about for a cool first project…

New Quest: The Basics!
Make your first transgenic organism without using magic!
+250 XP
+1 rank of biohacker
-10% biohacking time
-The Organism

Reader hit accept and looked at what was available – there probably wouldn't be much here to use, he’d have to…

To…

Actually this lab was really well stocked! He went through the various drawers, grabbing a liquid yeast culture and standard salmon sperm transformation mix – He’d decided to do a regular plasmid infusion, so the first step was to heat shock the culture, weakening the cell walls enough so they’d be likely to take up foreign DNA.

Really well organized he thought as he opened the drawer labelled ‘Single Protein Plasmids’ _Helps no one else comes here probably. Thanks _Stacia! He started rifling through the ‘yeast’ box. Green Fluorescent… tryptophan… BLACK WIDOW SILK?! That was the one. Reader could feel it. Every superhero’s journey started with a cool fabric for costumes. It already had an antibiotic resistance, and there were plates of agar with that antibiotic already mixed in. If he’d been able to use magic, he’d have just enhanced the yeast cells that took up the spider plasmids, but as it was, the antibiotic resistance would give them the same edge.

Reader considered further. Of course… spider silk would be a bitch to spin if it was just being produced a few molecules at a time in a liquid culture. But that gave him an idea. He raced down the hall and to the cafeteria, spending his last $2 at the vending machine. “Thank God for gentrification!” He thought as he raced back to the biohacker space with the precious, fizzy drink in his hand. Kombucha leather was already being touted as an alternative to cow leather, if he replaced the yeast in the kombucha with his spider yeast… but…

He was so busy planning he almost missed the window to plate his yeast samples, putting his full attention on them as he pipetted from the little test tube to the antibiotified agar plate. As soon as he finished streaking the first, he got the hoped-for notification, along with a new quest:

New Quest: First Steps!
Make something useful from your transgenic organism! No magic this time either, it’s supposed to be hard!
+350 XP
+1 rank of biohacker
-10% biohacking time

Perfect! He was going to do that anyway. Unfortunately, if he just added his transgenic yeast to a bottle of Kombucha it would get outcompeted by yeast not spending all its energy making spider silk. And if he added the antibiotic, it would kill the bacteria. So he had to upgrade them too, before class began if he didn't want to start over. Thank you Sci-hub Reader thought as he speed-read about the bacteria in Kombucha – Acetobacter – and what was needed to make them immune to the same antibiotic – different heat shock protocol, different plasmids, but the same principles applied. He used the same kombucha he’d just bought, making several samples just to hedge his bets, mixing with the transformation buffer, heating, mixing with the plasmids – Stacia hadn’t stocked spider plasmids for acetobacteria unfortunately, but there was one that made a vanilla aroma and conferred resistance to the same antibiotic, so in it went. Incubation time seemed to fly by, when suddenly…

“Watcha doin?” asked a feminine voice by his elbow.

“GAAHH!” Reader shouted, upsetting the test tube where he’d been mixing the two transgenic cultures together. He stared at the visitor, resisting the urge to use observe while trying to complete the quest. She was a strange-looking Slavic woman with big eyes, Stacia Ciesev no doubt. Reader’s libido pointed out just how darling she looked in her schoolgirl outfit, but at the moment he was still in the grip of SCIENCE as well, making for a very confusing set of signals.

The moment stretched awkwardly, then Reader ventured, “I’m trying to make kombucha where the yeast produces spider silk proteins. Not sure how it’s gonna turn out.”

The girl nodded as if that was the most natural thing in the world. “You should put them right back in the incubator once they’re mixed then. They don’t like cooling down too fast at this stage”.

He tried it with his next batch, and suddenly saw the beautiful sight of

Quest Complete!
You’re playing with the power of the gods in order to make a slightly cooler bondage costume. The divine approves your use of this awesome power!
+350 XP
+1 rank biohacker
-10% biohacking time
New Biohacking Mentor: Talia Navalny

"This is a great barrier. Did you make it?" Asked the strange girl as he was clearing the notifications.

"Um..." Reader had no desire to show off how little he knew. If this person knew how little he knew, she’d have an advantage. Reader thought it best to play not-dumb as long as possible, but he had no idea how to answer her questions. Though checking his notifications, he found a new skill called "create Barrier", which was… a pretty good clue.

"...I guess I did." He said. He'd just been really focused on his work, but it looked like he'd made a "barrier" in the process.

"The time dilation will be really handy for incubations!" She exclaimed. "So you make barriers and practice mundane transgenics? That's an interesting combination, how long have you been studying those?"

"First day" , said Reader honestly, relieved by her burst of laughter. "Um, are you..?" He began to ask, unsure about the conflicting information from the sign-in sheet and the notification.

"Stacia Ciesev, independent magitech healer, at your service" She responded, extending a hand.

Reader used Observe to find out a bit more about her, doing a double take when he saw how much more info his skill was now giving him

Talia Navalny; Lvl5 Healer/Lvl4 magitexpert; <Navalny Opekuny>; HP: 150/150; MP: 380/385; Status effects: eyes of the ancients (closed); Relationship: 22 - you're clearly smart and weird.

Well, if she wanted to use a pseudonym, more power to her. He'd have to let her know he knew her secret identity sometime, but now was not that time.

"Great to meet you Stacia!" Reader said, giving her hand a friendly squeeze. "Reader Numen, aspiring biomancer. Thanks for setting this place up! I'm afraid I may have disorganized your equipment, I really am new to all this..."

"Oh, don't worry about it! I have a drone who cleans up," she said, brushing off his thanks. "I should be thanking you for the barrier, this is a really strong time dilation! But tell me more about your spider leather experiment!"

Reader described the process he’d followed as she helped him with pipetting the two colonies together, deciding to use heal just in case it helped. As soon as he did, he got another notification…

New Achievement: Pimp Hand
Heal something you almost killed. Or genocided in this case. But they’re single celled, so it’s probably okay, right? Anyway, here’s some Stockholm Syndrome powers.
+10% effectiveness on mind-affecting abilities.

“Did you just cast a healing spell?” Stacia asked as he did so.

“Yeah!” Reader answered, enthused at how well it had worked, “I figured, these colonies have a low chance at surviving the antidotes, so why not improve the odds?”

“Fateweaver, biomancer, and natural healer?” Stacia exclaimed, “You must be super powerful! Can I get a DNA sample?”

Reader paused – not because he was unsure about the answer, but because he couldn’t quite believe how quickly his life had gone from barely bearable to absurdly awesome! He gave a quick prayer of thanks to the deity who had gifted him in this way before saying, “You sure can!” with as much confidence as he could muster.

Stacia clapped her hands happily before producing a Q-tip. “Say ‘Ahhh’,” she prompted, to Reader’s immense disappointment.