"...Impressive." 

Maria is waiting for Echo to answer first; no cheating!  "Annnnd Echo just told me the answer was...4773969; let's see if that's right..."

Yeah she'll do some math.

213 * 7471 * 3

639 * 7471

213 * 22413

426 0000

+ 42 6000

+   8 5200

+      2130

+        639

4773969

"Well, Echo can do math.  Or simulate me doing math.  And is probably sapient.  This sure is a thing."

Orchard grimaces at 'probably sapient' but doesn't actually comment.

Over on the far side of the room, the door he pointed to earlier opens, and another scientist on the other side calls out, "Isolation chamber 3's cleared out!"

"Alright, we can head in there. It might take a bit longer to find the spare equipment but we'll be out of people's way at least." Orchard leads the two of them into the room, receives a metal trinket from the other scientist as they vacate the room, then closes the door once Maria and Redweld are inside. "Anyway, any other questions?"

"I'd like to know from what direction you objected to the 'probably sapient' claim, but that can wait a bit."

“It’s not anything really scientific, it’s just…” Orchard has an awkward look. “Echoics are pretty much the only ones who say that about their wind, and they tend to get kind of…weird about it? I’m not really sure how to put it more politely than that. There aren’t any, uh…”

He searches for a word. “No ’outside’ reasons to believe the echoic wind is any more of a person than the other winds, and in my opinion some fairly strong reasons to think why its appearance to its Recognizants could be misleading.”

"If it's literally echoing me, it's as sapient as I am, I should think.  Brains are pretty complicated, and there's probably a way in which my go-to analogy wouldn't actually pan out here - for the record, if you have the concept of the halting problem, and you might actually - actually let me just explain it real quick to make sure we all understand eachother regardless - There's a class of mathematical constructions with which you can definitively encode a programmable 'machine' that you cannot definitively prove will ever stop iterating for all possible programs; this is a Turing machine where I'm from, after the man who fornalized them.

"Such a machine is Turing-complete.

"And it is another fact of Turing-complete systems that they are isomorphic to one another - that you can transform any one into any other with enough math.

"And thus the analogy: If Echo is emulating my brain, which I believe it is - and furthermore possibly must to communicate as it does - then it is sapient, because a copy of me is also sapient, by the transitive property, and an emulation of a copy of me is thereby sapient as well.  This is simply Turing machine isomorphism in action."

Orchard sighs. “I am really not the person to talk with this about. I’m sorry. Maybe one of the others can. I think Dr. Bald was the one who explained the theory to me, but honestly, it’s not important. As long as you’re willing to do science you could be one of those wind-worshippers like at the data center downtown for all I care.”

"Anyway, yes, this is not the experiment we're running, so...Let's do the thing, shall we?"

“Still waiting on the—“ Orchard is interrupted by a knock on the door.

He opens it and receives another metal plate from the person on the other side, before turning back to the two of them. “ Could you wait outside, sir? I don’t think it’s likely you’re a secret Recognizant but it’s better to be sure.”

Redweld looks to Maria. “Are you all right with that? Given your circumstances, I understand if you might feel vulnerable.”

"..."  She huffs a breath, because Redweld's right about that.  "Well, I'm already here.  So let's just get it over with?"

"Alright. I'll be just outside the door. Make some racket if something goes wrong." Redweld then leaves, Orchard closing the door behind him and the placing the trinket he got when they first entered the room into a slot on the door.

As soon as he does, a red light above the door turns on and all of the sound from the other room, and from the rest of facility in general, goes almost dead silent. Orchard fiddles with the metal plates, the paper-like surface disappearing from one, then he taps them against each other and holds one out towards Maria while looking intently at the other. "Alright, ready to go. Uh, you shouldn't actually feel anything during this, this in particular is a totally passive scan, but, if you feel something anyway let me know."

Then he starts waving the plate he's holding out up and down while he walks around her, a bit like someone using metal detector wands at the airport security check.

"...wow, I bet I could hear my heartbeat in here."

"Probably!" Orchard adds without looking away from the one plate. A minute later, he's walked a full circle and starts fiddling with the settings again. "Alright, that's sweep one-- wait. You mentioned the echoic, what am I doing." He fiddles some more, and suddenly very rapidly fiddles a little bit more. "Wow! Okay, definitely Recognizant, or something like it, maker and waker." The last bit has the sound of a swear, though a slight one.

"Or something like it?  I have my own thoughts, but I hardly want to influence yours..."

"I definitely don't! I honestly don't know what would make your readings that high two or three hours after your Recognition, unless you've got an absolute monster of an invocation right off the bat somehow. Anyway, that's all we're doing for now, whatever's going on, you're definitely something special."

Orchard heads back to the door and removes the trinket from it, the red light turning off and the sound returning as suddenly as it vanished, and Redweld is indeed still standing outside. Orchard leads the two away from the isolation chamber, shouting "Isolation chamber 3's clear!" as he does so. No one comes to use it, so he goes to a little station close to the door that Maria and Redweld originally entered the scanner bay from and puts the door-trinket and the scanner-plate away into slots for each.

At the same station, he picks up a plate from a different slot, holds it phone-style. "Office of Director Goodbarthson." A short pause. "Orchard sir. She's definitely something echoic. Honestly the readings were too intense to really parse, even now, so I struggle to think of anything it could be other than Recognition, and even that shouldn't be this strong." Another pause. "Right away director."

After hanging up, he turns to Maria and Redweld. "Alright, the director will see you in his office. I've got to get to my own meeting in a minute, so you can head to the front desk and ask for directions if you need them."

Orchard promptly heads away himself, out of the scanner bay and off to parts unknown except for presumably being elsewhere in the facility. "I actually know the way myself. Come on. And, how was it? Didn't take very long." He asks as he begins to lead Maria to the facility director's office.

"Was fine, just standing there while he went all waving a scanny plate at me."

"That's good. Do you think you're going to mention the whole 'transplant' situation to Finstead--? That's the director, I mean. I can understand keeping it under wraps but it sounds like they might have some inkling that something's different about you anyway."

"Oh, probably, eventually.  If nothing else, I believe it to be evidence in favor of 'the Echo is sapient'.  It picked me out of an entire multiverse to...echo, I suppose?  And holds opinions on me, that I do not hold myself.  On the other hand, I want to let them come to their own conclusions."

Redweld simply nods to that.

It's a bit of a trip to the director's office, going from the sub-basement all the way up to the top floor, but even eventually they make it. An inconspicuous door at the end of the hallway with a little plaque labeled 'Facility Director Finstead Goodbarthson'.

Redweld knocks on the door, and it's promptly answered by a tall and broad-shouldered man, nearly bald and with a salt-and-pepper beard. "Ah! The other Foundry brother, and our Recognizant. It's good to make your acquaintance."

He opens the door wide, revealing his office. It's pretty cushy, with soft carpeting, gentler lighting than the relative sterility of the hallways and scanner bay. There's a big desk, a set of filing cabinets and shelves full of office supplies along one wall and bookcases along the opposite, with the wall across from the the door dominate by a large set of windows, currently mostly blocked by curtains, with a reclining chair and small table by the window. Standing next to the desk is the familiar form of Welkonn, who gives Redweld and Maria a friendly wave and smile.

"Please come inside, I know the Foundry boys prefer to stand but feel free to sit if you like, miss. Can I order anything for you now that you're here? I don't know if you've had anything to eat or drink recently. Maybe a coffee?"

"I've never found coffee to be particularly my thing, but I probably wouldn't say no to snacks."  And she sits!