trans_9 | McCoy and His Stupid Paperclip [Open]

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McCoy and His Stupid Paperclip [Open]

Julian was in one of the sensoriums, which is where he had been spending a lot of time the last few days. Learning to fly a Federation starship wasn't easy, which was a shock to Julian since at first it seemed like the ship was smart enough to fly itself. But learning how to pilot one ended up being a crash course in astrophysics, stellar cartography, astrogation, warp physics, subspace sailing, and piloting all rolled into one. You practically had to have a Ph. D. in gravitational physics just to park the ship into a stable orbit.

Things that took Starfleet cadets months, if not years to learn, he had to cram in only a few days. It was time consuming (which meant far less Kara time than he would have liked) and he felt like his brain was going to melt out of his ears.

Which is why, for now anyway, he was taking a break. He had again recreated the SoCal beach where he grew up by, where the surf hit the sand, and the jagged rocks that were only a few feet down the shoreline. But rather than play basketball like he did last time, he was working with his telekinesis. Now that the collar was off, he was free to use his powers as he saw fit.

--And speaking of that collar, he was still holding on to it, oddly enough. Though rather than wear it around his neck, it hung from the side of his hip by a piece of his plantsuit; like he was displaying it as some kind of badge of honor--

But right now, he felt a little bit of practice time would do him good. Judging by the occasional loud explosion that came from in the sensoriums, followed by the rather emphatic cursing of one pissed off teenager, he could use the practice.

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Picard recognized that voice. The instant he entered the Sensorium, his plantsuit turned into a perfect replica of his Starfleet uniform. He already had the pips for it (he wore them on the collar of his plantsuit), but the rest of the suit was quite holographic, save for the phaser at his hip. Stepping onto a beach wasn't the most unusual experience for the captain; he'd had a holodeck aboard the Enterprise, after all. Still, what he saw was surprising.

"Mister Keller," he said with a smile, making sure to keep a safe distance away from the explosions and energy blasts or whatever Julian was doing, "I'm glad to see that the collar was removed. I trust everything is well?"

Julian was shaking some sand out of his hair; the sensoriums definitely got that part of the beach right. He stopped, though, when he realized that he wasn't alone at the moment.

"Captain." Really, that sand can get everywhere. "Yeah, I got my powers back and everything. I just need to work out a few kinks in them, is all."

"Excellent," Picard said with a smile. "What are your powers, exactly?"

"Telekinesis, the single most awesome power ever. I can do damn near anything with it I think about it hard enough." Which, in and of itself may explain part of Julian's forceful personality. He was used to reshaping and affecting his environment through sheer force of will.

"Your enthusiasm is certainly refreshing, Mister Keller. So your telekinesis isn't limited to manipulating matter?"

"Nope," he stated proudly, "though I haven't quite mastered that yet. I mean, I can bend a magnetic field easily enough, but bending light is a bit out of my range. For now." He had to add that caveat. There wasn't anything he couldn't do, just things he couldn't do yet.

"Though most of that involves manipulating matter on a molecular level, and I can barely handle anything smaller than a brick. Thaaaaaat," he stated, in that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this tone of voice, "is what those explosions were about."

"I was wondering what that was about," the captain replied with a wry grin. "Do try to avoid blowing us all up, Mister Keller. I'm not the greatest fan of being in deep space without an environmental suit." Still, he didn't move from his spot, crossing his arms while he glanced around, taking in the beach carnage of the previous blasts.

"Will you be willing to show me how you did that? And perhaps explain it? How do you generate the explosions?"

"Well, I can show you... though I'm not sure how good I'll be at explaining it." He had to think for a moment. He still wasn't entirely sure about the physics of it, but he had picked up quite a bit of knowledge from the Starfleet training. So what would be a good Starfleety way of explaining this?

"Let's just say I'mmmmmmm... a warp core! A the rest of the beach is a starship. Just work with me for a minute here...

"Now, a warp core can put out a crapload of power, but because its powering an entire ship, the energy is distributed so no one thing gets more power than it can handle.So if you need to do one big task, like.... going to warp 8, it's no problem." To demonstrate his point, he focused on a large boulder that was a little ways down the beach. He was straining some, but he managed to lift it with his powers, move it so that it was next to himself, and set it down gently. "Or, if you wanted to do a million and small things at the same time, that would be no problem either." This time, he manipulated the said itself, lifting millions of individual grains into the air. He caused them to rotate around some invisible axis at an incredibly high speed, then directed them at the boulder where they bored a hole clean though. When the sand came out the other side, Julian had it come back around and coil around himself, then drop harmlessly back down to the beach.

Yes, he needed to show off a little.

"But... let's just say you only had to do one small task. Like... checking out something with your tricorder? Only you decided to dedicate all of the energy in the warp core to powering your tricorder." Julian picked up a piece of gravel with his hand, then tossed it down the beach. He used his powers to stop it in mid air, something which, initially, didn't look like a problem. "What happens is, you get too much energy in too small a space, it can't handle it and--"

BOOM!

The piece of graven went off in a much larger bright green explosion than one would think possible for an object that size. When the smoke cleared, Julian was unhurt, having been far enough away, but he was again cleaning sand off of his face.

"...and that happens."

"Quite fascinating, Mister Keller." Captain Picard, to his credit, hadn't flinched at the explosion, only closing his eyes against the oncoming sand. Brushing the sand from his face, he mulled over what Julian had said. Comparing his powers to the mechanics of a starship had been just the analogy the man needed, and even now he was thinking of ways to reply to it. Something kept bothering him. Something about pouring extra power through the shield mains, and power regulation. Regulation ... flow ... inhibition.

"That's it," he murmured, likely just loud enough for Julian to hear him.

"Also kind of messy." And for the love of god, how did sand get inside his plantsuit? That was... very uncomfortable.

"What's it?" And it was moving with the pulsing too!

"Warp cores don't just spread power throughout the ship like a heating lamp, they travel through conduits and a power grid, like the blood vessels and heart of a starship," Picard began. "If we assume your power is like a warp drive, and you're releasing massive amounts of energy at a time, can't you control the amount of power you use at a time? Regulate it somehow, like the breakers in an old Earth fuse box."

"Um... that would be a yes and no." Again, this would be a bit complicated.

"Whatever it is that I draw energy from, and however it is that I do it," not that Julian knew the exact mechanics of how telekinesis worked, only how to manipulate it, "there was a safety there. Some kind of mental block or something that would only let me access as much power as my body could handle. When it was intact, my control was damn near perfect. But there was an emergency, and the only way I could save a... friend of mine was to have the safeties removed."

And that had been a rush. He would have enjoyed the feeling had X-23 not been dying in his arms at the time. He also ended up passing out and sleeping for about 41 hours moments after he managed to get to his full potential, but those moments were still just enough for him to cross the country in a matter of seconds and get Laura to Josh so he could fix her.

"Eventually the safeties reset themselves, but differently than how they were before. It's like the flood gates got open, but weren't closed all the way again. So ever since then I've been drawing on more power than what I'm used to, and I haven't been able to rein it in." Which was fine when he needed that much power. But when it was less power and more finesse, he ended up with explosions.

"That presents an interesting challenge. Your power has the potential to be of immense help to this crew, but it could be even more so with finesse," Picard said. "It's almost as if you draw energy from subspace, with telekinesis like that."

Julian shrugged, "No one has really been able to figure out where this energy comes from. And I've never given it too much thought, to be honest with you." It was something that was... there. It's like asking where lungs come from.

"Ah. I see," he replied.

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McCoy and His Stupid Paperclip [Open]

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