With the week almost complete, I made my way first to check on my "rapid" prototyping for the blade box, walking through the city as a light snow dusted down. For lack of a better victim, I played the part of test dummy for the device, slicing my own elbow with it. That was harder than I expected, but I didn't feel like it was fair to be asking the carpenter to cut me.

It turns out that I'm not suffering from mental illness of some sort, nor a masochist, so, inflicting intentional pain is an act of will. Tolerating pain is simpler, I didn't have to choose to stab myself, I just had to endure it. I can do it, but shockingly, I generally try to avoid it. Unlike exercise or heavy psionics draws, direct pain is somehow much different from knowing I'm going to be sore in the morning.

After testing personally, and then wrapping the elbow in with a small bandage, I found that the prototype turned out better than I expected, and needed only a minor tweak or two for the clamping of the blade in the boxy device with a bit more force, which the carpenter could fix on the spot. That done, I had promised delivery of the additional 10 by the next Eightday, which left very little time to spare. Anyway, once I had the prototype, I put my coat back on and headed back to my office. I had healed up the cut by the time I made it out the door, so that seemed like it would be a reasonable test for beginners to perform as a start point.

I had forgotten about the lead time for materials, so I hadn't sufficiently planned through all the details of the preparations to start the research when I scheduled the start date for the testers. In this case, I had been quite lucky, in that getting a fairly simple box with a clamp designed and crafted apparently wouldn't set my timetable back. I had high hopes for getting the research project data collection completed before the summer break. If all the data could be collected by late spring, then the analysis could continue into the summer as needed, since it would be doable solo or with a small team of analysts, and there would be no need for more victimteers or even victim tears at that point. Also, the testers were only needed for the initial data collection, so those that didn't double as analysts as I had would be free to find other summer positions. All that said, I didn't have much wiggle room left, only a tenday or so if I wanted to get all the data collected during the winter session of the Omni, which would be underway starting next Oneday. That's the session of the Omni, not the research, obviously.

I didn't manage to resist stopping by the gearworks to ogle the various machines being sold, but I did manage not to spend any more money. Ok, much more money. I got a small flywheel-driven miniature cart. It wouldn't be practical to scale up since the flywheel took too much space where you'd normally have cargo, but it did have some interesting gearworks and some kind of sealed automatic clutching mechanism that allowed it to be "turned on" after you got the flywheel spinning. It was likely adapted from whatever was used to engage power to locomotive wheels when you start up the train, but I was never a mechanic so I'm not going to even think about opening the box. I'm much more interested in the flywheel as a practice device for telekinesis. I can spin it up and then slow it down. I may never engage the clutch to send the cart moving across the room, but I probably will. I grabbed a hand-pie from a vendor on the street as I made my way back to the Omni by way of the local general store. I had a few things to finish up in terms of cleaning and preparations and I wanted to acquire a supply of long lasting snacks such as crackers and cookies. I also needed some tea and sugar. Cream was not in the offering, but I could use powdered milk as a cream-approximate substance. I just had to keep it in a sealed container to keep it dry. Since it came in a tin with a friction-fit lid, that shouldn't be a problem. I paid for my purchases and headed back to my office to store them and clean up the last of the smaller test rooms.

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The enddays flew by as I finished the cleaning, worked on my skills (ok, so that was really playing with my toys, but shush you!), and generally keeping busy to keep from brooding about all the ways things could go wrong. For once, things didn't go wrong.

Oneday came, and I got to meet with Lunette.

"How has the practice gone, Ms. Vedlimdt?"

"Not poorly, but not as quickly as I'd hoped. I've been a bit preoccupied with finishing and filing the finalized research, and only had the enddays to work on it. I feel like something is working with the meditation aspects, but I haven't managed to completely focus on it."

Here is where it would be much simpler if I had a cheat mode for other people like I had for myself. Barring actual healing which required actual damage, it was hard to know.

"Well… I have the prototype. If you want to try it we could run a simple test now? I used it already so I need to put in a blade. I disposed of the used one. I've already healed from that test this morning, using this technique." I took off my coat, and rolled up my sleeve to show her the small, slightly pinker mark on my elbow. "That damage will fade over the next day or so, and you won't be able to see it, but as you can tell from the bandage, it was sufficiently deep to bleed for a bit as I walked out.

Lunette paused in thought for a while, then nodded. "I don't like pain all that much, but it seems appropriate that I know what the volunteers will face."

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I inserted a new blade into the box and clamped it into place.

"OK, bend your elbow, then I'll run the box across it, making a small incision." I matched my words to action, eliciting a hiss of pain from Lunette that made me feel oddly queasy. "That was the hard part. I'm going to hold a bandage to the wound, and I want you to focus on your meditation, ignore the pain, picture your uninjured arm in your mind. Focus on that image. See the skin, whole and clean. There is no pain. There is no wound. All is well." I followed the script that I had previously established for the experiment, then sat there quietly. As I shouted encouragement inside my headI counted time in my head as we sat there in actual companionable silence. Her breathing became deeper and more pronounced, which was a good sign that she'd likely made it into a meditation mode, but could just mean she was relaxing as the pain dulled from immediate injury to a less urgent announcement. Her face grew a bit paler, which could also go either way. I resolved not to check the wound, since moving the bandage would remove the pressure and potentially restart some minor bleeding if it pulled on the wound just right.

5 minutes passed.

Then 10.

She opened her eyes. "OK, I'm done. Either it worked, or it just doesn't hurt any more."

I gently removed the bandage.

It wasn't healed.

At least not completely, but where there should have been a cut with a small amount of scabbing, there was a reddened line.

"It worked! It actually worked." She stood up, then quickly collapsed back into her chair. "Woah. Room got a bit topsy-turvy there."

"Yes, Ms. Vedlimdt, well done. Can I get you some tea? Or something to eat? It will be faster and easier the next time, I expect. Also less draining."

"Tea would be lovely, thank you."

"Honey? Sugar?"

"Sugar, please."

I cheated a bit and heated the tea with an extended burst of psionic power to help the sugar dissolve quickly and improve the tea from luke-warm to reasonably steamy.

"Here you go. If you feel hungry later, do eat. I found that I was hungrier after healing for the first few times I used it."

"This is… amazing. This will make you a household name."

"I certainly hope not. I agree that it's amazing, but I want the results to be as boring and stultifying as possible."

"Boring? Why?"

"I want the research published and spread before someone decides to try to stop the process by removing me from the project."

"That just sounds crazy. This could help so many people!"

"Yes, and that's why I want it to spread before I get noticed. If it's common knowledge, then it's not something that can be covered up. But remember, most of the other nations have abandoned all magic research. Even the Omni is barely bothering with it. This could change the dynamics on a level I am not ready to deal with. I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to deal with it, but I agree that it can help, so I can't just hide it at this point. I don't think I'm the first to discover this, it was too instinctual. So why is it not common knowledge? That's the reasoning behind publishing it as an academic exercise in obfuscation."

We sat in silence again, interrupted by the occasional sip of tea. I was thrilled that she appeared to be thinking about what I said, and not just arguing with me without thought.

"Well, Mr. Coddlestahl, that does make some level of odd sense. But it doesn't strike me as your argument."

"It isn't originally mine. The sponsor of my position was the one who pointed out the wider implications of the technique. Since I don't know enough to know, I had to trust that she knew what was going on better than I did. It was clearly more in her milieu."

"Then I guess I'll follow your lead on this. Although the volunteers may talk."

"They might talk about success, but any who don't succeed will potentially also talk about the crazy Omni people who cut them for some odd experiment and then asked them to think the pain away. Those should balance out, but we'll have the technique published within a season of that starting. And the successes will be minor at best. We are trying to teach two skills at the same time really, and your success was faster because you already had learned the meditative aspects during a previous test, right?"

"That seems fair. I look forward to starting this project in a tenday!" I thought I saw a sparkle in her eye that wasn't there before.

"I do too, Ms. Vedlimdt. I do, too."

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Since the gathering of the data is relatively monotonous, let me just mention that the flyers and the bonus offer turned out to be successful in gathering sufficient victimteers. I had a few quit after the first round, but most decided that double pay for completion was worth the minor pain. Now the numbers were in, the tests finished, and analysis could begin. Not much had changed between Lunette and I, although I was finding the formality harder and harder to maintain as we spent more time together. She was a fantastic help in the project management and the workload fortunately kept us busy enough to keep from getting distracted by our growing whatever it was. Friendship for now was good enough. We'd pushed the bounds of propriety a bit, but since we had the testers call us Mr. C and Ms. V, we started to call each other that as well. It just was faster. That's what I kept telling myself.

And so, between data gathering, all the collation and compilation, a couple of tendays in the Spring where the Omni shut down for planting time, and a bout with some kind of head cold, a season and a half flew by.