super speed and other exceptional abilities

[self_composed]

Wisconsin fast plants (so called because they are from Wisconsin, fast-growing, and plants) are the subject of Bella and Bridget's chosen bio experiment. It involves taking at least some measurements after sunset - Bella managed to find an exact specific experiment design that hasn't been done before, when she heard they were allowed to choose their own, and even though all it will determine is whether indoor plants without windows can "tell if it's night" even if you leave the light on all the time, she is slightly excited about this.

She meets Bridget there. They measure their plants in the lit room and the dark room, take pictures, and write down subjective evaluations of leaf droopiness. They leave.

They're about a third of the way to Bella's building when a man's voice behind them says, "Hello, girls."

Comments

[regularsized]

"As promised. But I don't creep easily."

[self_composed]

"Which is why you're getting to hear the vicious ideas instead of me keeping them to myself. Hmm. I suppose if you were tossed into a large piece of machinery, it would break, and you would give whoever threw you there a withering look, but could you actually get out? I mean, are you only particularly tough when stuff is trying to break you, or can you exert the same defensive force outward and break stuff at the location you prefer? Be all 'no, comically enormous clockwork, you cannot move my arm there before this gear twists into uselessness, do it here instead'."

[regularsized]

"...I'm having trouble picturing exactly what you mean, but the images I'm generating are hilarious," says Bridget.

[self_composed]

"Okay, lemme pick an easier to imagine example than comically enormous clockwork. Suppose you stick your arm through the bars of a cage which contains a tiger. It bites you. It can't break the skin, but you aren't made of rock, so it can get hold of you and pull anyway. Can you just stand there - can you basically lean on the fact that your shoulder will not come out of its socket and the teeth will not go through your skin, to also keep your feet planted - or is the tiger going to get you up against the bars of the cage and hold you there until it gets bored?"

[regularsized]

"Good question," she says. "Although I refer you to the chainsaw example—if your tiger bites hard enough, it'll break teeth."

[self_composed]

"It is a relatively friendly tiger," Bella suggests.

[regularsized]

"Well, I'm not keen to wrestle any tigers to find out, but it's possible I might break its teeth in the process of trying to get my arm back."

[self_composed]

"Interesting. But can you just break stuff when your bodily integrity isn't so obviously on the line? If you push on a wall really hard, that probably won't hurt you even if you fail, but if you did it hard enough it might make a regular person's hand slightly uncomfortable - would the wall break rather than 'pushing back' enough to make you slightly uncomfortable?"

[regularsized]

"If you can suggest a test, I'm all for finding out."

[self_composed]

"Find a wall you don't care about that I can't knock over with a good solid push, and push on it."

[regularsized]

"Well, do you know any good walls?"

[self_composed]

"Not off the top of my head. I will let you know if I find one."

[regularsized]

"You do that."

[self_composed]

"Hmm, what else..." Bella taps her chin. "I may actually be running out of other questions. For the time being."

[regularsized]

"I am genuinely astonished," says Bridget.

[self_composed]

"It had to happen eventually. Oh! I was wrong. I suppose the whole thing applies to all of you. What happens if you bite your own tongue?"

[regularsized]

Bridget tries it.

"Sore jaw muscles," she concludes. "Now that's interesting."

[self_composed]

"It is!" Bella agrees. "Hmmm. Ooh - if you hold a hot thing, it doesn't hurt you - I imagine you can tell it's warm, but perhaps you are nonetheless thereby more insulating than regular people. Either that, or the heat does go into you and simply fails to do damage - a lot of things simply fail to happen to you, it seems. I'm not sure of a good way to test this that doesn't involve a human who is not you holding an equivalent hot object so we can measure the temperatures of yours versus the control, though." Alice would so do it, but Bella doesn't want to explain to Bridget why she'd be willing to inflict burns on her boyfriend for science.

[regularsized]

"Hmm," says Bridget. "Yeah, that's a tough one."

[self_composed]

"I guess you could hold a hot thing and we could take its temperature anyway, and compare against some naive model," Bella says. "How far will a needle or a knife go before it won't anymore? A relatively dull one should compress before it pierces, normally."

[regularsized]

"I think the best way to put it is that it acts like it's not sharp," she says after a moment.

[self_composed]

"Hm. But even a not-sharp narrow object would eventually compress enough to do damage - I'm just curious how far in that turns out to be on you."

[regularsized]

"Got any sharp objects handy?" she asks dryly.

[self_composed]

"Not on me, but this is your place - haven't you got kitchen knives? Scissors?"

[regularsized]

"I do," she admits. "All right. For science, or a reasonable approximation."

As she turns toward the kitchen, she asks over her shoulder, "Is this your first experience with what I will loosely call the supernatural?"