"Interface begin physical for the citizen on exam table one."

An arm extends from the side of the table and overs over top of her it makes a first pass from head to toe then it does a second pass of her head and torso moving slower.

A smooth female voice begins to speak. "Citizen 9 is physically within expected norms, she is currently under the influence of hormonal contraceptives. Her heart rate is currently seventy beats per minute her blood pressure-"

"Interface discontinue verbal readout. The full details will be recorded in your medical file. You and I will both have access."

"Well that's interesting. The verbal readout is kind of awkward."

"I think I can tell it not to read out anything verbally. I think I can use the diagnostic screens over the long-term care beds. I'll try it when we do me. Speaking of which I need to be lying where you are."

She wiggles off the bed and incidentally makes eye contact while doing so.

She feels a certain degree of excitement and also catches some thoughts about whether removing a toe to see if the clinic can actually regrow it makes sense. Then those thoughts come grinding to a halt. "Telepathy."

Mild fascination which quickly turns into startlement tinged with interest.  "...wow. That's..."

"I thought this place ran on physics though, unless the telepathy is somehow implemented with a godlike skill with biology or maybe implants.... I wonder if those would show up in the scans if they existed."

"How would you even get implants in without surgery...maybe the drinks or food...but..."

Riley sends her memory of watching a piece of paper appearing thumbtack and all on a message board. And later not through a camera pulling the thumbtack out and putting it back in. "Teleporters"

"Ah. That could work. The precision required would be phenomenal."  distracted wonder.

Riley looks away slightly and the link breaks. "It could be something else. That's why I want to look at the scans. I didn't see anything about brain implants in the database either. I feel like neural engineering to, I have no idea how you would do eye contact telepathy without implants. You can handwave all you want about the eyes being a direct conduit to the brain but that doesn't buy you a transmission method." She sighs. "The alternative though, is calling it magic outright."

She shakes her head.

"I think 'magic' is just another way of saying 'we have no freaking clue' frankly. We should tell everyone else. They'd probably appreciate a heads-up. Though I'm not sure what to say."

"Well let me run my physical first just so we have two scans for comparison. Then we can go tell Claire Emily and Linda, I don't think the other five will be back yet." She lies down. "Interface begin physical exam, cancel verbal readout." The scanner runs up and down her body then there is a short beep and the scanner retracts. 

"Well cancelling the verbal readout works."

"It does, this place seems to have very good speech recognition and natural language comprehension."

"I imagine Emily will have a field day figuring out how they did it."

"Quite possibly, I don't know how to decompile their software though, maybe the trick is hidden in one of the surface buildings or a mall store."

"That's for her to figure out, I guess."

"She does seem to be becoming the expert on what's available in the mall. Anyway, back to the Library to tell the others and scrutinize brain scans?"

"Sure."

And so they walk back into the library. "Apparently we have eye-contact based telepathy now. Or at least Anna and I do."

"That sounds strange. You're not joking are you?"

"It wouldn't be a funny joke if you were. This place is too weird already."

"It is not a joke. I promise."

"Woah. That's definitely weird. But kind of cool. Do you wanna...?"

"Okay, sure."

Linda comes over. They make eye contact for a moment before Anna breaks it.

"Wow. That's really something. How does that even work?"