"Could you test further on what you can get from the sample plants and… how do you feel about animal testing, and in particular…"

She pauses, carefully selecting her words.

"Even if it works cooperatively, this may… mean altering the animal, and possibly… increasing its intelligence."

"It's good that you take the idea of doing right by an intelligent animal seriously. I've increased the intelligence of an animal before: my jackal companion Cassie."

Griffie pauses and frowns.

"Cassie probably misses me now, but at least some of my friends would spend time with her, and she's in a social club of other animals with augmented intelligence, who I'm sure would be supportive. She should be alright?"

"Anyway. I'm not willing to break my bond with Cassie to do the same procedures on another animal, but I am willing to do lesser procedures to improve the intelligence of other animals. Any such animal that you want to stay in quarantine with me is going to need to be a naturally sedentary animal, though."

"I… see. In the future I would encourage you to be… subtle, about your attitude towards such things. It is… highly controversial among humans."

"Explain the controversy?"

Cornelia opens and closes her mouth a few times.

"I think explaining that may be beyond me."

"Can you translate an explanation from a book or something, then?"

"I… this is well beyond my job description. Just… perhaps talk to the captain later? For now, uh, back to the positive energy. So would you be willing to test the effects of more exposure to positive energy on plants and animals?"

"I would be. Assuming we can figure out animal-care procedures I like, which … we at least seem to share the moral concerns upstream of animal care procedure design, so it shouldn't be too hard?"

"All right. Anything else from your home you would like me to start analyzing now? You mentioned you were familiar with things like standardspace and subspace…"

"You were going to look at a water sample under a lightning microscope, is that still on your agenda? I've been working on developing a spell that would let my possessions or the contents of your container persist outside my bubble for hours instead of seconds or minutes, so tests with any non-conjured objects ought to wait on that. I'd be willing to show you the contents of my scrolls without the scrolls leaving the bubble, but that may be relevant to offensive capabilities so the Captain and Arithnu might prefer I wait on that? My boots can levitate me once a day, and I basically don't use the ability so I'm fine with using it now. I can transform into animals and plant creatures and elementals. Including celestial animals, which can use quintessence to very loudly express values with a touch, in a way which is hurtful to evil creatures and pleasant to good ones. I could use spells to create an Earth sample or an Air sample for you, though that maybe would be more productive after I work out an hourslong elemental stabilization spell for objects. I have a spell, 'Light', that makes an object a light source for 80 minutes. If I prepare that spell, I can try it on as many different objects as you'd like, though only one can be active at a time. I could prepare a spell 'Mending' that repairs slightly damaged objects as long as all the original pieces are present, again usable on as many different objects as you'd like."

Griffie flips through their journal and thinks.

"We probably want to wait on any tests linked to positive energy and any tests that involve me touching someone. I'll be honest, if we're excluding spells which involve me casting spells on other people, or the use of positive energy, or the assumption that the environment has elements in there … a lot of what remains doesn't seem like it'd be that straightforward or interesting to analyze. I have some lightning spells but they're not ones I'd be thrilled to cast in an enclosed space I'm not familiar with the construction of? I have a spell for standing on air, it's different from the levitation, and who knows whether it works with your air or not. I can produce a quiet hum that helps people who are scared or sick or tired or whatnot pull themselves together."

Griffie flips through their journal more.

"Oh, here's an interesting spell. 'Planetarium'. Creates an accurate illusion-model of the unobscured and sunless sky on the inside of a 15-foot sphere. Works indoors or underground. You can see the illusion some from the outside of the sphere but it's not as good. I don't know if it works with your stars, I don't know if your construct-sensors can see illusions or not, and I don't know if I, from inside this box, have line of effect to the outside of this box such that you could walk into the sphere without being in quarantine with me."

"Anyway. I'm not going to list every single spell I know right now. I think we should look at 'Light', 'Mending', 'Planetarium', the levitation boots, or Wild Shape, uh, that's the turning-into-other-creatures thing."

"At the time we asked about the lightning dot microscope we thought your water might still be like our water, so we wanted to check. Now we're pretty sure it isn't like our water, so it seems less urgent, though in some ways more interesting. We'll let you know when… there's a lot of things to test here. Give me a moment to think."

"I'm happy to wait on the object-based tests until you finish the bubble spell for them. I agree that it would likely make them easier. Scrolls we can also worry about later."

"Levitation. That I would like to see once I set up some sensors. We have various mechanisms I would like to compare it to."

"Transforming… I think I'm less prepared to figure out stuff from. Expressing values with a touch I have no idea how to respond to."

"Light, mending, walking on air, I'd be interested in testing all of those."

"Lightning would be something to wait on a prepared environment for, yes. Walking on air… I suppose I'd want to wait on that as well? And the hum… concerns me."

"A planetarium … that would be very, very interesting to test."

"Let me know which of light, mending, the planetarium, and levitation you can get ready first?"

"I have levitation ready already. Light, mending, and the planetarium are all things I have to prepare for, but it's most efficient if I do the preparation for all of them at the same time."

"How about you start preparing things while I go get more sensors and samples?"

Griffie prepares Light, Mending, and Planetarium. They normally wouldn't prepare sphere-0 spells in sphere-1 slots, but this isn't a normal day.

Cornelia returns with sensors and boxes and lots of levitation clips, which appear to have a more subtle and continuous version of the rippling light pattern the drones in space displayed when accelerating.

"I'm ready for testing when you are."

Griffie smiles. "Alright, everything's ready now. I should be able to do any of the effects we discussed except 'Planetarium' as many times as you like."

"Go ahead and begin with whatever effect you like."

In the absence of objects to mend or non-elemental objects to cast Light on, Griffie uses their boots to levitate a few feet off the ground.

"Huh. That looks in a lot of ways like our methods. No visible effect, but similar emissions. Alright, next effect."

Griffie pulls what looks like a rubber band ball out of a pouch and casts Light on it.

Cornelia glances at her tablet. "Well, this looks like a visible-only slice of our best guess at what Elemental Fire light emission would look like. I guess that makes sense?"

"It is intended to mimic torchlight for visual purposes. There's a version that does custom colors, but I don't know it, and frankly I don't think it's worth my time to re-develop it."

"We have similar developments, though all of them are in objects, not just … making arbitrary things glow. Does that work on our matter?"

"That's the main thing I thought you wanted to test in the first place! Pass me a sample?"

Cornelia sends a sample into the quarantine box.