"If you want you could try it out with each other. That would probably be good evidence for the hypothesis that all of us have it."

"I want to try it!" says Jade.

"I don't want your sticky little fingers up in my tender brainbits." says Dave.

John makes a face, "Ewww, that's gross, Dave."

"I am intrigued." Rose says, "We can try it."

They stare into each others' eyes for a moment.

"Well. That is intriguing."

"That's freaky as hell." says Dave, "I mean, what the fuck."

"You didn't even try it!" says Jade.

"I stand by my commentary. What the fuck." says Dave.

"That's cool. I'm glad it isn't just Anna and Riley."

"Do you have any ideas on a scientific explanation?"

"No, I've taken high-resolution brain scans of myself using the clinic and there's no sign of any modifications that would account for this. It's possible that whatever is causing it is just too subtle, or I don't have enough knowledge to recognize it but there's no quick and easy explanation."

"We could just call it magic, but I think that's pretty much the same as saying 'I have no clue'."

"To me magic means something that doesn't have clear physical antecedents. Things that shouldn't be possible but are anyway. I don't think that's quite the same as saying there is a physical explanation but we don't know it yet."

"There are a lot of things people have claimed to be magic of that sort over the years that were later explained. I'm not sure what use calling something magic has besides as a placeholder."

"Alright, I understand that perspective. I don't think we should stop looking for other explanations either."

"Hard to imagine what else we could try if there was nothing on the brain scans, but I agree. Maybe we'll think of something later."

"Yeah, it might be a fun side project but there's more urgent things to focus on. So, there's three broad categories of things to do. The first is trying to figure out how to get home, the second is trying to learn the advanced science and such this place can teach us, and the third is to set things up so we're comfortable in case we're stuck here for a while."

"I think Claire was making an inventory of the books in the library, we should divvy those up based on areas of interest."

"As for practical matters, we need privacy dividers for the bathroom. And the clinic I suppose, but I think that's less urgent. We also only have nine working phones currently, so somebody will have to share one until we get around to getting another. It's a bit of a trip though. Anything else?"

"I don't think it's urgent on any reasonable timescale but, I'd be interested to figure out if this place has the facilities to make more things if we ever run out of stuff in the mall."

Dave speaks up, "There's apparently some manufacturing buildings somewhere out there, and also warehouses. I don't know how easy it will be to get high tech manufactures running or how much metal and stuff is there to use though."

Jade says, "We should mount an expedition!"

"Maybe not in the scale of days though." says Rose.

"Yeah, I think we should try to explore outside a little tomorrow, but I don't think it's urgent to go very far."

"I don't expect to run out of things in the mall anytime soon. It's enormous."

"27000 stores." Emily sing songs in agreement.

"If we're here long enough to run out of anything that's a bad sign."

"Yeah. And I agree we should explore a little outside tomorrow, see what's nearby. We know what's nearby in the mall, more or less."

"Well kinda, we only went in one direction."

"The end of the mall in our spiral is only five kilometers away."

"We should also explore the other direction as well, then."

"Probably. I don't really know if the grocery store on the end is special in any way but it doesn't hurt to check."

"Agreed. Moving back to the privacy barriers thing. I don't think we're going to solve that tonight so that seems to leave three options, we don't take showers until we have the barriers set up, we just put up with being a bit more exposed than we'd prefer temporarily, or we schedule time slots to shower either alone or in groups of people comfortable with each other with nobody else allowed in the bathroom while they're doing that."