AA Batteries? Anyone?

[Conrad Manne]

He hadn't been working at the research division of Hammel for long, so it didn't really bother Conrad at first when he couldn't find spare batteries for is digital recorder. He couldn't take notes the conventional way, so he used a recorder to make notes of his measurements. And when he'd spent the entire day in the training rooms, measuring the expulsion of power from nearly a dozen students, he had taken a lot of notes.

Which he now needed to transcribe into his netbook, and write up an analysis. Already, in the back of his mind, he had a good basis for what he could say: the power levels weren't entirely related to the amount of training the student had. In fact, the student with the best control--a senior girl with terrakinesis--didn't output as much energy over the course of the session, but she had the steadiest control. She'd opened a window looking out over a dormant flowerbed, then brought in about twenty pounds (21.8 lbs) of soil. She'd played with it a lot, forming different shapes, before compacting it into a solid chunk that had been deposited back outside. Throughout, she hadn't broken a sweat, hadn't faltered, and hadn't accidentally had a spike in output. It was an interesting conclusion, if not wholly unexpected.

But where the hell were the batteries? His analysis would mean nothing without numbers.

Conrad dug through the drawers of his desk. The person who had last been using it had moved to the Czech Republic after being awarded a grant to research there, but had left a lot of stuff behind. Unfortunately, AA batteries weren't included.

Finally, after ten minutes of searching, he gave up and sighed. Conrad had managed to not ask Dimitri for help with anything yet. He'd just done his work and kept quiet. Hoping that he hadn't somehow missed a big cabinet labeled "batteries", he headed over to Dimitri's office and knocked on the doorframe before sticking his head in. "Hey, do we have any spare batteries? My recorder died, so I can't transcribe my notes."

[Dimitri Spade]

Dimitri had spent the last fifty-two hours in his office, and boy, did he look like it. His eyes were red and puffy, but had a strange crazed look in them as he stood before his wall-made-into-a-corkboard, staring at all the sheets of paper push-pinned into the soft material. His hair was disheveled, the curls pushed the same direction on his head. He was slightly unshaven, the few hairs on his chin trying to squirm into his mind and bother him. He had taken off his tie, and it was thrown somewhere into the mess that was his office, and he dared not even try to find it now. The same went for his coat. His suit in general was wrinkled and his sleeves of his blue shirt had been pushed up and the top buttons undone. It was a rare occurrence to see clean-cut Dr. Spade in such a frenzied state, but it was driving him insane.

What was driving him insane? The fact that he had been working on his new circuit diagram to attach the new testing room to the rest of the lab. Usually this wouldn't be his job, but after a mishap a few weeks ago he decided that he needed a testing room specifically designed for those who had electrokinesis. Especially for kids who didn't know their own strength. And he was missing a page of notes, and for the life of him he couldn't remember where he put it, or what he had written on it. Funny how he could remember everything but what he needed to remember.

-|v1|+
2v^6
240V input
e*pi
-
-- I-95
--- 8mm

500v~yellow

Dimitri re-read that. "Yellow? what the hell was I thinking? What did I mean to write? That..." Dimitri stopped, resting hie head against the board, his hands at his sides in exhaustion. He had spent the last two days working on something that wasn't even logical. He pounded his head twice against the board, a page tearing off and sticking to his forehead before it floated gently to the ground. Dimitri swore under his breath.

A knock at the door made him startle, like a horse seeing loose litter in the wind. He turned suddenly, seeing the new researcher he had hired a few weeks ago. Good kid. It was nice to have another scientist in the lab again. He smiled best he could considering what he was going through at the moment.

"Uhm, yeah, I'm sure I have some around here," he muttered, shuffling through the chaos that was his office. He tossed some old papers and books aside, and found a thermos. He shook it, hearing some clanging inside, and opened it. A handful of batteries fell into his hands and he moved toward Conrad.

"Here you go, kid." He put them in the boy's hands. "Sorry about that. It's been awhile since I've had people here with me on a regular basis. I'll order some stock that can go in the supplies room."

He sighed, pushing his hand through his hair, which did not help the mess that was on top of his head. "So, what're you working on?"

[Conrad Manne]

In all honesty, Conrad really didn't "get" his boss. He supposed it had something to do with the older man's ability, or if it was just that the guy looked so much the part of a scatter-brained genius that he could have been plucked straight from casting in a movie. 'Hmm, we need a head researcher at a school for metas, let's see what we have? There's this guy...nah, too mad-scientist. No. Him! The really thin one. He's got just enough zoned-out professor about him.'

Okay, so sometimes Conrad's mind wanders. It happens to everyone.

The young researcher watched curiously as Dimitri searched through the various debris on his desk, finally discovering a cache of batteries in a thermos. (Not that there was anything wrong with that.) Conrad accepted them and pulled out the small recorder, carefully replacing the dead ones. He was going to discard them in the garbage basket next to the desk, but it looked like it was being used to store letters B, L and N of an encyclopedia, so he just tucked them into the pocket of his lab coat. He could toss them out later. "Thank you, sir. If you want, I can write the order up and submit it for you. I'd just need to get your signature on it." That way, they could be sure that it actually was submitted, and not lost in the shuffle.

"Oh, well.." Conrad hadn't been anticipating on reporting his research until after he'd done his critical analysis. After all, that's how they'd done it in school. But this was real life, and so he put the recorder back in his pocket and tried to give as much as he could from memory, "I'm working on measuring the output of energy compared to length of training. Uh, I remembered that my trainer, when I was here, had said that they needed more trainers. So far my findings are showing some correlation between training and steadiness of energy outputs in people with kinetic abilities. Once I do a bit more research and finalize my analysis, I hope it can be used to justify hiring someone more trainers, because it's directly beneficial to the students' health to get more training."

Suddenly, he realized he'd been rambling, and hadn't actually said what he'd recorded. "Oh, um, my findings are pretty much that kinetics, in the long run, suffer less energy spikes and overexertion when they have more training and practice with their powers."

[Dimitri Spade]

Dimitri pushed up his glasses on one side, nodding at his co-worker's statement. "Yes, that has been the basis of Hammel. The theory, I mean, that people who can control their powers and learn their limitations. Very good, this should definitely help with the funding, if you put out the paperwork well and send it to the right places, you know."

He smiled. "I would love it if you could help me out with the ordering. It would help a lot. I have a bunch of numbers to crunch still, and plus some extra tests that I didn't figure on doing, and then there's this," he made a motion to the newly-discovered wrong diagram he had on the wall. "I've made too many mistakes on it, and I don't know what I had meant to write in the first place. It's frustrating to have my mind move this fast all the time."

He chewed on his lip, studying the way that his new employee was looking around the room. Yes, Dimitri did have that insanity driven my his own genius, and his office was evidence of that. Maybe it was the fact that he had taken all the encyclopedias off of the bottom shelf, lost them in the shuffle, and replaced the with a pillow that he used to sleep when he couldn't figure anything out. Then there were the various ties that he took off when he was frustrated and always forgot to take home. Yes, it did seem like he was a crazy person, but he was brilliant, though he had to remind himself of this every now and again.

The kid looked a lot more on the sane side than the redheaded mad scientist. More down-to-earth. He rambled a bit, but that didn't bother Dimitri too much. At that moment, he decided that he liked the kid.

"Okay, Conrad. I know a lot about you, but please tell me about yourself. I live here, and you probably have an intimate relationship with the labs, so I think that we should get to know one another." He found a comfortable place on his big overstuffed arm-char he had instead of a normal office chair, and gestured excitedly at the chair he had for guests to sit at.

[Conrad Manne]

"Good, um, thank you." It certainly sounded like that was praise for his research, even though he didn't have a report, or even enough data to support a position paper, yet. He would though. "And really, anything you want me to do with ordering supplies, I can take care of. You're obviously busy enough." There was no question, the department needed more researchers, or maybe even just some research assistants. They just needed someone to keep track of supplies and proofread reports. Maybe a few students would be good a that; he'd need to bring it up.

Conrad wasn't sure what to say to that. He just didn't quite understand how the older man could have been living with his ability for years and not be used to thinking that way. It had only been seven years since his own abilities had manifested, but now he was just used to the instant calculations his brain made. Sure, he forgot information the same way most people did, but it surprised him that Dimitri didn't have Perfect Recall as well. From the records he'd been going through, it seemed to often manifest with abilities that granted superhuman intelligence.

"Oh, um, sure." Did this count as a break? Conrad sat down at the chair his boss gestured to and shrugged. Did Dimitri really know what much about him? Other than the interview, he couldn't saying anything not work-related to him. "There's not really much to say. Um...I have two brothers who are students here?" There wasn't much information about himself that he wanted to volunteer at work. Yeah, he'd completed college in three years, but now he was living in a tiny, crappy apartment with his (slacker) best friend. He didn't have a girlfriend or much of a social life outside of hanging with Alex, and he worked a lot, same as his boss.