The next day Dawn awoke and eagerly prepared for her first independent trip to the city that day. As she was preparing herself after finally finding a satisfactory outfit for the day, Wanda showed up at her door to go over the results with her from Stephan's DNA tests that she had ran after Dawn had gotten back from his house the previous night. They went over several interesting results she had discovered in the tests that had showed up. A short while after the brief meeting, Dawn used her abilities to secretly and quickly loft herself over the electric fence and fly over the hill to Stephan's house. When she arrived she was unexpectedly surprised when Stephan had them all get into a plain, ordinary, everyday car because after taking his quantum powered motorcycle home yesterday she had been expecting some type of scientifically advanced car like the motorcycle that floated or flew or something futuristic. Then, having asked him about the car not being as advanced as the motorcycle, Dawn tried to listen and pay attention during the short ride to the city as Stephan gushingly explained the quantum engine and the rocket he was working on building as he drove them to his offices.
As they arrived and got out of the car, Stephan then lead Dawn and Jessica over to the security office and had both of them submit to an eye and fingerprint scanner to register them for future access to the offices and eagerly gave them each a security card with their name and picture on it. A couple minutes later, when the security procedure was completed, they boarded the elevator and took it to the level of offices and labs Stephan had assigned to the space engine project. As they exited the elevator Stephan quickly guided them to the area set aside to work on the engine's design and showed them the proposed blueprints and designs for the spacecraft and the engine.
When looking at them and trying to picture how everything would go together and look, Dawn asked him how he was going to fit the necessary life support, navigation, and any other equipment into the ship alongside the engine. Before Stephan could answer, Jessica offered the explanation of, "He's always been what I call a thinker. He can look at things in his head and figure out what parts do what and how they fit together. So, knowing him, he's probably got everything packed in next to each other and having them share resources. Like how he one time royally pissed mom off because he made the heat exchange part of the refrigerator double as the heating element part of the water heater and we ended up with boiling hot water every time we took a shower for the next week."
Embarrassed, Stephan explained, "I was only like 9 years old. And when I get an idea of what something looks like or how it's supposed to work in my mind, I just build it in my head and usually end up seeing things that haven't been noticed or have been ignored. It's not like I have one of those talents to use like you two have."
Jessica disagreed, saying, "He doesn't admit it but he's actually been able to see things that they needed scanners and magnifying glasses to see."
"I've gotten lucky and had the picture in my head of what I thought it would look like turn out to be how it actually looked a couple of times." Stephan countered.
"Either way," Dawn interrupted, "Don't they usually need more space to fit equipment in? Because this blueprint is making it looked pretty cramped with nothing but the engine in this back part. And besides that, how big of a rocket are you going to need to put this thing in space so you can even test it? Cause it's looking kinda huge all on it's own."
Stephan grinned and replied, "We're not building it here. We're actually building it up in space. We have robots that we control from down here that are putting it together up there. So the only thing we need the usual rockets for is to send the robots the material they need to make the parts and then, when we get done, to take the crew to the engine to test it out."
Skeptical, Dawn raised an eyebrow and silently accepted his answer given how she was still learning the engineering side of things and had to trust his reply. Seeing how different parts of the engine and other devices connected to it were sharing resources or having one device use the waste from another device to function got her to thinking more about the areas that were more familiar to her though and prompted her to ask Stephan about his ability to see so accurately what things are made of and how they worked.
Stephan again insisted it was due to luck but, intrigued, Dawn asked him if he would undergo a test of his talents like she had recently subjected Jessica to. After a pause to consider, he then hesitantly agreed but continued to steadily object to having any talents as he lead them to his office and locked the door to insure privacy during the test.
As they each found seats at his conference table, Dawn countered his denial of having a talent by telling him, "Sorry, sir, but science disagrees and has already proved you wrong. Me and my colleague Wanda have done DNA testing on all of those we have found with talents and we have found a couple of chromosomes that we all share. Furthermore, those DNA tests I ran on you last night came back this morning showing that you share a couple of them with your sister, for one, and a couple with me too. Additionally, we are starting to get enough results from those with different talents that we are starting to be able to match at least similar talents to certain genes. Thus, based on what we know so far, you should at least have a minor listener type talent." As she finished she could tell that she had finally begun to break through his continued, adamant denials and talk him into conducting the tests willingly.
She started with a couple of the easier tests like hearing to get him used to the testing and to signify the most likely traits that other's have possessed. She then started with the harder tests by testing his "mover" ability, then his jumper ability, and the rest of the harder tests.
Finally, after considering how to distinguish his "thinker" ability from being a talent or just an awkward way of thinking, Dawn asked him to permit her to access his memory and then proceeded to review how he discovered and then designed the engine he was using for the spacecraft. Unfamiliar with the science behind it, she then asked him for explanation of the memory.
"I'm labeling it as a quantum generator to make my assistants happy," He explained, "But I think it is more closer to using that mysterious dark energy. I was thinking about some strange results I had seen while conducting some energy tests on what started out as a photo voltaic energy generator. As I thought deeper about the results while the generator was still running I noticed that there was some energy being produced that didn't originate from the expected source. So then I thought about it deeper and was thinking about where the energy was coming from or how it was being produced. So then I adjusted the machine so I could look more closely at the area I felt it was coming from to see what the readings said and it turned out to be almost exactly what I had thought it was. But when I asked my assistants to check just in case I had missed something, they said it was probably quantum energy because they were not seeing the source as clearly as I had.
After that I thought about how we could get more of that energy from a generator so that we could maybe all see the source more clearly. Next, after thinking about the results and using my imagination to explore which modifications produced more energy, we would make the design improvement that worked better in my head and, after several modifications, we went from starting out with the engine in the bike I let you use to the space engine we are soon going to be testing."
Surprised, Dawn considered the provided information before asking, "Is it still possible to test this generator for improvements or have you already prepared it for it's trip to space?"
"Well, the rocket engine is up there but the prototype model that the robotic design instructions are based on is still here." Stephan supplied, "but I honestly don't know how much further we could improve it though."
Dawn then answered, "You don't have to make any improvements if none are available. With me being unfamiliar with this possible talent and how it would work, I just need to monitor your thought processes as you go through your routine of monitoring the results and thinking of the results of possible modifications. That way I can better detect if you are actually using a talent or if it is just a more detailed thought process than your sister is familiar with."
>You calling me stupid!?< Dawn instantly received from Jessica. But then, before they could discuss it further they were interrupted by an insistent knocking on the office door. He apologized to Dawn for the surprised interruption of the testing and quickly rose to answer the knocking. When he opened the door his two assistants were both standing there looking worried.