"That would be great. Thanks. And then we can do some more fun non-depressing experiments." She tried to make that last part come out flippant and mostly pulls it off.

His eyes, which have been dormant for a bit while he wasn't doing magic, light up again. He doesn't know what he's fixing but he does know approximately what end state he wants.

"There, how's that?"

It feels wonderful. Melinda takes a deep breath, stretches her arms to the extent the car will allow, and slowly breaks into a huge grin. She wants to leap out of the car, run, dance, turn cartwheels for the sheer joy of being able to. "Oh, this is excellent, I have literally never felt better."

Also her hair has grown back to the length it was before it fell out and is now sticking out from under her wig in a completely undignified manner. When she notices this she snorts and shoves the wig into her shoulder bag where it's out of the way.

...when he sees how happy she is, he grins and bounces a little.

He deserves to be happy; he has magic and it's great. "So, let's get down to business. What are your goals here? Do you want to understand the fundamental workings of the universe? Do you want to change the world in some specific way? Do you just want to get a better sense of what your options are?"

"I think mostly the last one. Like, not that I'd turn down understanding the fundamental workings of the universe, but I sure wouldn't have thought of it by myself."

"In that case, let's try finding out where it gets its information. Like, you weren't thinking about every atom of that butterfly, right, so it must be able to get information from somewhere. So we should check the German poetry thing and whether it can read my mind and whether it can predict the future and whether it can do calculations neither of us can. And then any of those will have amazing practical applications."

"Sure, okay, try some German poetry on me and we'll see if I understand it."

"O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen,
Und freudenvollere."

Her pronunciation is pretty good, but she's quoting something she's only heard sung so her intonation is probably very weird. 

He tries wanting to know what it means, but his eyes don't even light.

"Nope, I got nothin."

"Hmm. Maybe I'll try looking up the meaning myself and saying it again and seeing if you can get it out of my mind. Oh, and while I'm doing that I should tell my mom I'm going to be out late so she doesn't freak out when I don't get home on time."

"Sure," he says agreeably.

Typeitty typeitty staying with a friend don't wait up for me see you tomorrow. And then a different chunk of poetry, which Melinda at least knows means:

Whoever has succeeded in the great attempt,
To be a friend's friend,
Whoever has won a lovely woman,
Add his to the jubilation!
Yes, and also whoever has just one soul
To call his own in this world!
And he who never managed it should slink
Weeping from this union!

This time he gets the eyeglow. "Huh, okay," he says. "—I guess we can't tell from that whether the magic was reading it out of your head or off of your phone—?"

"Ooh, good point! Uh, what number am I thinking of and what's the first sentence of the Wikipedia page for Trenton, New Jersey?" She concentrates on "73801" and pulls up the Wikipedia page for Trenton, New Jersey on her phone but doesn't look at it.

Eyeglow and "73801" right away, and then another eyeglow and he reads off the first sentence of the Wikipedia page slightly more hesitantly.

"Excellent. What does that feel like, by the way, are you hearing the words in your head or seeing them in your mind's eye or just knowing what they are with no sensory interface or what?"

"The number I just kinda knew it, the words I - sorta had to read?"

"Neat." She fiddles with her phone some more. "Okay, I'm about to generate a random number between one and 1000. Can you guess what it's going to be? If it feels like you have no idea just guess randomly; I heard that sometimes people can't access their sight or hearing right and it feels like just being really good at guessing."

"I got nothin. Uhhhh, seven hundred and five?"

She hits the button. "Nope, 861. So you can't instantly get rich off tomorrow's stock prices but also we don't have to fret about free will or whatever. Want to experiment with making stuff next?"

"Sure! What should I make?"

"A chocolate chip cookie the way my grandmother makes them, a card with the first hundred prime numbers on it . . . we already know you can do living things and while it would be good to know if you can resurrect dead people we should definitely not test that right now . . . oh, how about a sealed container full of vacuum and a lit match?"

Eyeglow, chocolate chip cookie. He makes a napkin in his other hand and transfers the cookie into it and hands them to her. Eyeglow, card with numbers; he hands that to her as well. Eyeglow, hollow glass ball, which he hangs onto for the moment since he's rather running down her supply of hands. Eyeglow, lit match, which he looks at for a second and then blows out.

She balances the cookie on one leg and looks up the prime numbers. "The magic can do math without you doing it consciously, cool. You should eat the cookie because if I digest it too much before getting out of the car and it vanishes that could additionally suck on top of how much getting out of the car is going to suck already. And I have no idea how to tell if there's air in there other than I guess putting a burning thing inside it and seeing if it goes out immediately."