She takes careful notes in the same format Nenio is using! Can she change weight by adding or removing spacetime distortion? By adding or removing mass? By just focusing on the desired result and not trying to force the implementation details? By using the "make something dirty" function and focusing on the "dirtiness" being heavy metals? Lead pollution is a form of pollution so lead ought to count as dirt. 

Her first attempts don't do any better than Nenio's, but when she just focused on getting the outcome she wants the spell is happy to oblige her. The side she focuses on stops weighing down the scales, and the opposite side falls to the table due to the unbalanced load.

"Ooh, you did it! And without using the telekinesis to lift it as an imitation. What was the trick?"

"The trick was not having a trick, weirdly enough! I was just thinking 'I want that block to weigh less and I don't care how that happens'! So my guess is that either it's something I haven't thought of yet, or I was messing myself up trying to think about too many things at once."

"Hmm..."

Nenio frowns, staring intently at the other end of the scales. It still doesn't move, so she switches over to detect magic. 

"It's doing something for you that I can't get it to manage. Which means... I now have a research project!"

"Awesome! I'd love to help with it if you want. Also that reminds me, I came here to ask you to help me with a research project. I have a teleport ability and I want to find the maximum range with the minimum amount of blowing myself up. Is there a better way to do it than 'try doubling the distance repeatedly and see what happens'?"

"A fascinating question. How to isolate the range on a teleport with the fewest number of attempts... one avenue would be trying to see if it's Teleport, Greater Teleport, or neither. You can do that with just Detect Magic, either by watching it during the attempt or by checking how long the lingering aura sticks around for, since Greater Teleport is almost always a 7th circle spellform and Teleport is just 5th, though it might fail to differentiate an ability that's not analogous to either, and it still doesn't get you a precise distance. Hmm. Teleport has a range of about 200 miles per circle, and Greater Teleport is famously difficult to check because it's enough to get anywhere on Golarion and not enough to reach the moon. So you could start by trying to Teleport 1450 miles, and then you know if it's greater teleport or Teleport from the aura. Then go to 1725 or 1175, then 1038, 1313, 1587, or 1862, and then you've got it down to just over half a circle in three tests. Or maybe you could get hit by a maximized enervation first, since that would cut your distance down by 400 miles and then... no, that's not precise enough, it would be better to just use a Wight."

"Thanks! The other problem is that it's only once a day and I don't want to get stuck somewhere else for a day when I'm so busy all of a sudden, so I don't want to try it right this minute--oh, but you could still tell if it was Teleport or Greater Teleport or neither from the spellform if I just went across the street, right? And then if it's some third thing I can work on getting a scroll to teleport back with."

“Probably, but if it’s just teleport it would take more tests to find the distance that way.”

"If it's Teleport isn't it definitely 200 miles because I'm first circle? Or do weird abilities that don't use a spell slot not scale the same way?"

"Most spell like abilities either have a set strength or advance with their caster's overall strength rather than their spellcasting, but you're right, that does still mean it could be teleport but weaker than wizards usually get it. I wouldn't expect that to go down to 200, but expectations are no reason not to test a hypothesis!

Overall strength? Oh, right, D&D universe, if she was a fighter or a rogue or something but still had this ability it would be based on her character level. This feels vaguely like knowing something she isn't supposed to know and possibly the GM is telling her player and Nenio's player to stop dicking around, but Brenda and Nenio themselves can do whatever they want.

"Yeah, that makes sense and it's definitely worth testing! But I don't want to teleport out of Kenabres today because it's my first day on the job and people might need to find me for stuff, so probably today we should just check what spellform it is and then do other stuff until I have a night it's not a problem for me to disappear. And I should check tonight whether it refreshes at midnight or when I sleep."

Nenio will open up her notes to a new page to record the results and cast detect magic, then!

Pop! She goes across the street and also ten feet up in the air, just to see if she can. Another day she should try teleporting onto a fast-moving wagon or something to see if she can match speeds with something other than the relevant bit of planetary surface.

“That looked like a strong aura, so it’s probably greater teleport. If we want to be certain we should check how long the aura lingers, but I’m pretty sure it’ll last more than 6 minutes.”

Brenda puts up her own Detect Magic and starts watching too, counting seconds in her head. "Is it straightforwardly a minute per circle? Also, has anyone checked what happens if you teleport onto or off of a fast-moving wagon or a ship or something?"

"Nothing so regular, but spells of the first three circles typically remain detectable for less than a minute, fourth through sixth circle for between one and six minutes, and stronger spells can linger for up to an hour, so it's a good way to check your work if you don't get a good read on the aura during casting. You can also see what school the spell is from if there's no interference, but even a minor active spell like dancing lights makes picking out that kind of thing pretty prohibitive. As for teleporting onto boats... I've heard it's easy to end up on the wrong one or even in the ocean if you mess up your visualization, but if you get the right place you'll end up there matching the ship's velocity. If you didn't it would be pretty tricky to teleport more than a few miles due to how quickly Golarion spins."

"So it goes by the surface you land on and not the bit of planet, that's good. Has anyone tried going to the moon in multiple jumps by carrying some kind of airtight capsule? I bet wizards do that all the time. I bet the moon is just covered in wizards doing experiments and ignoring each other."

“It’s a little tougher than that because it’s hard to target a particular point in space with teleport, but powerful wizards can go to the moon. I think it’s less popular of an option than making your own demiplane but I haven’t been able to do a survey yet.”

"It's inconvenient that it doesn't natively take distance and direction. Demiplanes are very cool as a concept but not as cool of a place to hang out as other planets in my opinion. Oh, hey, I was going to ask, do you want to try to work out the fundamental principles of chemistry with me?"

What kind of a question is that?

"Yes!"

A few hours isn't enough to completely re-derive the whole field of chemistry for Golarion's laws of physics, but for two enthusiastic scientists with matter generation powers and time enough for love they can make a pretty good start. The results are mostly similar to those from earth, but while all of the chemical elements seem to be the same magic fundamentally alters how they interact. In theory this might allow for a number of otherwise impossible material properties in alloys other than just those clustered around Mithral and Adamantine, but the question of how to determine which besides brute force is a harder one.

Some indeterminate eventually later, however, even Nenio starts to have to forget she's hungry frequently enough to distract her.

It's probably good that time can't stretch an infinite amount, even if that means she eventually has to stop having fun with Nenio and do her job. She buys Nenio lunch and then goes off to write to the Lastwall war college and take more meetings and mess with time again by reading four different books all named variants of On War and liveblogging them to Alpina.

And eventually tomorrow arrives as well, the stretch of time enough for love doing valiant battle with how quickly time flies when someone is sucked into a book.

Once he finishes preparing his spells (two of them plane shifts and one empty slot at 5th just to be sure), Rathimus sends word to Brenda that he's available at her convenience.

Brenda arrives shortly thereafter. She's excited to go to Axis! It is technically not her first interdimensional travel but it's her first time doing it with a plan, and also she's not planning to stop being excited about interdimensional travel for at least the first twenty places.