He sits down at a table and tries to accomplish this task and eventually manages to spill all the water out by having the base spin around the wheel instead of vice versa.

"...can I get a refill?"

"Yes," Dr. Duncan says with a slight smile. He fills up a cup at the water fountain and pours it on the waterwheel, where it begins cycling through the portal again.

Fiddle fiddle fiddle.

"...oh."

The waterwheel is now slowed down but he is getting up and going over to the weights.

Dr. Duncan perks up. "Epiphany?"

"I don't have to attach things to me!"

He grabs three of the weights he lifted before and arranges them in a triangle around the one-ton weight. And up it goes with no strain and no fuss.

Dr. Duncan claps excitedly. "Fantastic! Based on how simple that seemed I'll put you down as a tentative TK-5A - unless you want to try the 5-ton or 20-ton with that trick?"

"Got something better suited for, uh, foot plates? Don't want to crack your floor. Or I could mangle some more of the weights, whichever."

"I will be extraordinarily surprised if you manage to crack this floor. You may note that it is currently supporting 210 tons' worth of dumbbells with no strain."

He will rearrange larger objects using smaller ones as — bases? anchors? feet? — until he has another triangle setup around the 20-ton, well, can you really call it a dumbbell properly.

Up it goes — and stops eight inches above the ground.

"Out of energy."

"Alright! That's TK-7A. This is probably the last test we'll run on your telekinesis, but I'd like to see if there's a cap on your energy reserves."

"Okay."

Dr. Duncan ducks into his office again and emerges with an electric motor, which he turns on. "You should be able to use this like the waterwheel," he suggests. "It seems more efficient than setting up a game of tug-of-war whenever you need to recharge."

“Oh! That should work.”

He pokes the electric motor on the case and the end of the shaft. Then it slows down.

“That works really well.”

It slows down a bit more. Then stops abruptly.

"Oops?"

"Oh, of course - acting against resistance - uh, it overheated and tripped the thermal overload cutout. We can get it back in a minute when it cools down, just... don't take quite that much from it that fast."

"I have the feeling I'm going to be taking an engineering course or two."

He tries again. The motor doesn't stop this time.

After a few minutes he lifts the 20-ton weight further, to a couple feet from the floor. Puts it back down.

“I have more but it doesn't feel any different.”

"Hm. You can take the motor and do some science on your own, if you like; I'll just pick up another at the Workshops. For reasons of time, though, I'm going to want to move on to the Exemplar testing soon."

"Okay."

He directs Jonathan to the desktop computer, where a test is administered. There are sections on memorization (increasing strings of numbers, skimming and immediately reciting paragraphs or pages of text), spatial reasoning in up to eight dimensions, and an absolutely brutal strategy game like a cross between Go, 3D chess, and the Game of Mao. There are also straight math and English and science sections, the last of which shades into the bizarre towards the end. (There are entirely too many quantities approaching infinity.)

Jonathan takes these tests like a high school student who has recently had weird things done to him.

Then comes the physical! There are tests of speed, deadlift capability, endurance, et cetera. Breaks are at regular intervals, including protein bars and water as necessary.

One of the later tests appears to be another test of speed. He is placed on a treadmill and set to go at a certain rate.

Abruptly, out of the console pops a boxing glove on a spring, moving much faster than aerodynamics should allow it to.

He just barely knocks it out of the way with a flailing arm, trips, and falls.

He falls over stiffly and thumps into the padded floor like an unusually non-brittle statue.

"…ow."

Dr. Duncan helps him up. "Sorry about that. Test of reflexes and automatic defense mechanisms, standard procedure. Speaking of which, did you do something with your power there? You fell oddly."

“Uh, yeah, I. Made myself stiff instead of squishy. Ow. I think I bruised some things.”

"That seems the opposite of helpful," Dr. Duncan notes. "Fortunately, that was the last of the physical tests. I'd place you at Ex-3, which means you're above human limits both physically and mentally. You're not bulletproof, but you're pretty well enhanced. Also, due to your natural regeneration as an Exemplar, those bruises will go away within a couple of hours."

"No, I mean like I hurt my muscles and everything doing that. Saved my outside at the expense of my inside. Ow."