Testing

Mentioning the testing sparked an idea of how she could test Stephan's final ability if she had the assistance of Holly and Rachel. After asking for their help and explaining what type of assistance she would need from them, they agreed because they wanted to satisfy their curiosity about how some of these abilities other than theirs worked. She then sent Jessica along with them to the test equipment that was set up for the engine to act as her telepathic relay while she had Stephan preparing for the testing. When they were all ready to start she had Jessica tell the girls to start the engine and the equipment that would be monitoring the engine. When they then indicated the engine was running and the equipment was set up and running also, she then told Stephan to use his mind like he had before to evaluate how the engine was performing and for him to do it while thinking of any improvements that could be made.

After a minute or so filled with several grunts and growls and sighs, Stephan supplied, "It's running at the highest level it can without becoming unstable."

Curious, Dawn asked, "Are there any improvements that would make it more stable?"

After another moment of concentration filled with grunts, Stephan moaned and answered, "You can tell them to shut the engine down now. All this has wore me out and I've done about as much as I can do today. If you could, please tell HR that I did come up with a way to improve the stability so we can run it more powerfully. But I'll have to set up one of the robots to construct the device after I take a nap though cause this testing stuff has me at least mentally fatigued and feeling physically tired." He then wearily stood up and went to lay down in his plush office chair.

Dawn was then summoned telepathically by Jessica to come see something. After seeing how Stephan had practically passed out almost immediately after reclining in his chair, she went to the testing area where Jessica and the others were so that she could see what they had summoned her for and so that she could pass on what he had shared about a new device for the engine.

When she arrived, Rachel and Holly started to tell her the changes that had been noticed in the highly technical terms they were familiar with. Unable to decipher what the technical terminology and measurements fully meant, Dawn interupted their explanations and asked them to instead just show her on the monitors what had happened so that they could translate their unfamiliar explanations into something she could more easily understand.

After setting the monitors to play back the results, Rachel then explained as she pointed out the readings showing up on the monitor, "OK. This is how the engine was designed to run and has run up until today." Then when the results started fluctuating she continued, "Now you can see how it kept changing so wildly after you told Step to use his ability."

"Wow." Dawn responded, seeing the readings bouncing from low to high to back where they had started and continuing to fluctuate between all three regions for a bit.

"I know. Amazing." Holly agreed. "But the most unusual effect is this." she said as she pointed to the monitor showing the internal part of the engine. "Not only did the results start to fluctuate but the direction of the flow of energy through the engine even started to change as well. And we usually have to hook up a different set of equipment to the engine to get it to do that when we're testing our safety settings and all."

Rachel then added, "The weirdest part though is at the end of it, after we shut the engine down. We were checking it out like we do every time we've used it to make sure it didn't get damaged and is still in good condition and we noticed that the engine had been modified to have another part hooked up to the side of the reaction chamber. And, when we went in there to physically look at it, we noticed that one of the robots had already started up on its own and was building what we assume is the part that is gonna go in that spot."

Curious, Dawn asked, "Has it done this before?"

Holly quickly replied, "it has a couple of times. But the odd thing is it has only done it when Steph has been working on making an improvement and the part it makes has always exactly fit the engine afterwards. So we've always thought Steph had designed the part and had set up the robot before we got here or were out on break or something."

Her curiosity peeked, Dawn then asked, "And those times when the robots have mysteriously started without your participation; had the engine also already been modified to house the new part?"

"Yeah!" Holly and Rachel emphatically agreed.

Her curiosity satisfied, Dawn then asked, "Since you two are familiar with his work patterns, how long of a nap is he going to need before I can safely wake him up without having to worry about him swinging or yelling and such so I can inform him of his test results?"

"Depends." Holly answered, "Most of the time he only needs about an hour or so. But sometimes, like when he has already set up the robots for a new part, he'll be so tired that his nap goes for like half the day before he is refreshed enough to rejoin us."

Dawn acknowledged the input, thought for a moment, then said, "Well, since he is probably going to be out for a while then, why don't you two show me this engine and fill me in on what you guys do here? Because if this space engine test goes well he has already claimed he plans to expand on space based projects. So with me having to be involved with any uses of our drug, I'm thinking I might end up here for a while and I don't want to accidentally press the wrong button or break something and all that."

A couple of hours later Stephan finally woke up from his sleep and rejoined the group. They then all gathered back in the conference room so that Dawn could inform him of his test results.

As they all settled into their seats Dawn began, "Stephan, you are similar to me in that you are able to use several talents. Granted, most of them were barely present, but over time, and with practice at becoming more familiar with the talent, you can get strong enough with them to where they would be more useful."

"See!" Stephan interjected, "I tried to tell you I wasn't some wizard type guy like Jessica tried to say I was!"

Dawn smiled and corrected him, "Not so fast there Flash. I did say that MOST of your talents were barely there. But I did not say that ALL of them were."

Baffled, Stephan gave her a confused look and exclaimed, "Wait! What now?" as his mouth kept moving like he was trying to find words to say. Stephan then wondered aloud about how strong these talents were.

Dawn answered, "You have a decent Telepathy or Listener talent. A pretty good Telekinesis or Pusher talent. You also have what you could say is a medium level of the Seer talent." Then, before Stephan could interrupt again, she held up her hand grinning as she added, "You also have a unique talent that is not only very strong, but is so unique that we did not even know of it until today."

The others gave her surprised looks and Jessica then asked, "So what talent did he end up having? And how does this talent work?"

Dawn smiled briefly at Jessica before returning her focus back to Stephan and explaining, "This ability is actually a combination of two talents. To use your terminology Jessica, he combines his Seer talent of seeing the insides of stuff, and even the energy around and inside of it, with his Pusher talent of not only moving the object but, even moving the atoms inside of the object to form new shapes and even new chemicals. So, altogether, instead of being just a pusher he is more like an Architect or like a Builder. And he has been unknowingly using this ability for so long that his telepathy talent has learned how to talk to the robots in their computer language and have them to start building the new part that his Builder talent had been able to temporarily make inside of the machine he was using his talent on."

Stephan looked dumbstruck and Jessica responded with a simple but emphatic, "Wow!"

Dawn grinned and agreed then added, "And, as we saw today, this talent is so powerful and it uses so much of his energy that it makes him so tired he has to sleep and rest before he can do anything else."