"So you're telling me," Jenna said slowly, "that you've invented a room-temperature superconductor and a capacitor that could make lithium-ion batteries look like steam engines… and your first thought was not to tell anyone?"
Elian adjusted his lab coat like it might help with the heat rising in his face. "It's not that I didn't want to. I just… you know, had to triple-check it wasn't a hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and caffeine poisoning."
They were seated in their tiny office-turned-war-room, the table buried under notebooks, prototype fragments, and an increasingly hostile stack of post-it reminders.
Jenna pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay. Fine. We're here now. But you realize what this means, right?"
"Global energy disruption? New materials revolution? Electric vehicles that don't need charging for days? A Nobel prize, maybe?"
She gave him a flat look. "Paperwork, Elian. It means paperwork."
He groaned, leaning back in his chair with a dramatic sigh. "Of course it does."
"Two patents," she said, tapping the desk. "Maybe more, depending on how we structure the claims. We'll need international coverage, IP lawyers, probably a holding entity, and—God help us—filing fees."
"Can't we just… like, science our way out of bureaucracy?"
"Only if your next invention is a time machine to skip the patent office line."
The Application Gauntlet
They spent the next week navigating the hellscape of technical documentation.
Jenna handled the legal logistics like a seasoned war general, firing emails, scheduling calls, and cross-referencing filing systems between the USPTO, WIPO, and the EUIPO. Elian focused on assembling the technical diagrams and writing up the theoretical background—complete with system-optimized schematics, which he disguised as "proprietary modeling algorithms."
"Your capacitor diagram looks like alien runes," she muttered at one point.
"Then I'm doing it right," Elian replied.
They argued over phrasing, diagram formats, and whether it was pretentious or accurate to call a certain lattice configuration "quantum-sculpted."
Jenna won that one. It was now "phase-aligned electron lattice."
Sleep Is for the Weak
By the fourth night, Elian had stopped sleeping and started muttering formulas in his dreams. Jenna kept a thermos of espresso on standby and had officially declared war on two government portals that crashed every time they tried to upload supporting documents.
They submitted the patent applications just before dawn on a Thursday.
Elian stared at the "Submission Complete" confirmation screen like it was the face of God.
"I feel like I just wrote a thesis," he mumbled.
"You did," Jenna said, standing and stretching. "Two of them. For a hostile audience that doesn't speak physics."
They high-fived weakly, the kind of tired slap that sounded like wet paper hitting a desk.
Aftermath
"So… what now?" Elian asked, blinking blearily at the sunrise outside the lab windows.
"Now we wait," Jenna said, already digging through her inbox. "And while we wait, we prep the academic papers. You know the drill: citations, peer review, graphs that make our colleagues jealous."
Elian groaned again and buried his head in his arms.
"Welcome to science," Jenna added, patting his shoulder.
He peeked up. "You're enjoying this way too much."
"I am," she said with zero shame. "Watching you suffer through paperwork is the highlight of my academic career."
System Notification (Private)
[Patent Submitted. Innovation Verified.]
[+6 System Points Earned.]
[Unlock Available: Tech Tree Branch – Energy Infrastructure.]
[Suggestion: Commercial Pathways Recommended. Explore Funding Options.]
Elian smiled faintly as the words flickered behind his eyes.
He'd handled the science. Survived the bureaucracy. And now… the world was about to change.
One form at a time.