Do You Hear Crickets?

Dawn agreed and then, after a minute of silence, cupped her hand to her ear, tilted her head a little to the side, and was looking straight at Holly and Rachel as she teased, "Do you hear crickets? I swear I can hear them! Oh! Wait. That might just be the heating and air vents. I don't think i've ever heard it this quiet in these rooms before so I couldn't recognize the sound at first."

Ranita giggled and replied, "I know. It's amazing how quiet it's been in this place since you did your little psychoanalyst show. But you wanna know the funniest bit about it? By doing that to demonstrate how we could use those questions to learn stuff about the people you also pretty much volunteered to be the one that has to interview every single one of them applicants because we can't do that junk you did to read them I guess you'd say."

With fake enthusiasm, Dawn deadpanned, "Oh! Yay. Woo hoo me." She then pointed to Holly and Rachel as she said, "I will gladly do this since I feel like a third wheel around here some days since I don't understand all the engineering stuff even halfway as good as all of you do. But I will need one of you two feelers with me on these interviews to help me double check some of those reads because some of them get so good at hiding stuff that they hide it even from themselves. Like how Stephan's subconscious had been hiding his attraction to me from his conscious mind. Plus, I'm going to be busy using my abilities trying to pick up on if they have any abilities themselves so I won't be able to fully read any of the emotions that they might not be showing on their faces."

"And why are we going to be checking for abilities?" Holly wanted to know.

"I want to check for them," Dawn explained, "Because I think if we can pick mostly those with abilities then we can go with a completely different setup where folks won't hesitate to use them and we will be able to get many things done quicker and easier. Not to mention us being able to use our abilities will make us less reliant on money and materials to fix any problems that may come up like pipes bursting or buildings needing repair and all."

"Huh." Stephan replied surprised, "I never even thought about using our abilities like that."

Excited at the idea, Rachel urged, "Yeah! And remember how fast Jessica turned that whole wall of the ship into a window? And how fast you were able to build a whole mansion using yours? If we had more people able to do that we would be able to build anything we needed without having to take the time to do it with machines."

"That...," Stephan began deep in thought, "That would help things a whole bunch with getting things started. And, if we focus on the abilities, we could go a whole lot further than if we stuck to just the mechanical methods."

"What about those like me that don't possess any of your mental abilities?" Ranita asked, "If you're focusing on the abilities, how are you gonna keep the regular guys from getting looked down on or pushed out of the colony?"

"That might be an issue." Stephan admitted, "I know some of the normal folks that we would want would be ok because they would be ones that were really good in a particular area. But some of the others would be disadvantaged from the get go."

"Well," Dawn suggested, "How about we just basically make it to where the ability would determine which job they were tasked with and any other abilities would be listed as secondary jobs. This way those without talents that excel in a particular area would at least start out at a similar level as the talented ones. Or, being as the ones there because of experience or knowledge would know more about the area, we could officially designate them as the teachers or advisors for the ones using their ability so that they would have to acknowledge in some way, shape, or form that they know more than the ones using their abilities and they... earned their stripes the hard way... I guess you'd say."

"Well, either way," Stephan stated, "We will figure this out and come up with some kind of plan to make this work. But we need to all be on the same page when it comes to what we're going to be looking for."

"Well I don't know about all of you," Dawn began, "But I think that we should look primarily for those with the green thumb ability first. Then we should look for any builders and other abilities like it."

"Speaking of abilities," Stephan interrupted, "What was the deal with you saying Greg has abilities?"

"Oh! Yes! I had totally forgot about that with everything going on here lately!" Dawn answered, "His talent is like your builder talent but, in a way, it is more versatile because he was able to basically embed his ability into the device and make it run off of the energy those with abilities use regardless of which ability they have so that after it got turned on it would stay running as long as someone with abilities was nearby."

"Ok...." Holly pondered, "So does that mean he has two abilities?"

Dawn smiled at Holly asking a question she was leading up to explaining and told them, "Technically he has multiple abilities because his force field ability is actually a combo ability like the Stephan's builder ability because it blocks objects while it also directs any energy it encounters into it's battery and then it uses the battery ability to take that energy and use it to power the force field and all. And that is just the force field ability because him also being able to embed it into the device would have used the builder ability combined with another ability that I haven't been able to pinpoint yet."

"Speaking of that device," Rachel asked, "We need to come up with some type of name for it because us always calling it 'that device' makes it sound like something illegal or mysterious or something."

"Well," Stephan offered while laughing, "I can't help be all nerdy every time we have to say 'force field device' and think of those old Star Wars movies and books I grew up on so I say we should call it the Obiwan."

Looking confused while the others were all laughing, Dawn told them, "I don't know what's so funny about calling it that strange because I never came across any of that stuff. But, now that you all are in agreement on the name for the device, what should we call his ability?"

Trying to hold in her laughter but still having to let occasional snickers out, Holly offered, "If you've never heard of them then we will have to 'show you the way'." and helplessly burst out with laughter before regaining her composure for a brief moment and finishing, "as for the ability, I think we should go with a theme and call his ability either kenobi or, even better, his yoda ability."

With Dawn still looking confused while the others were dying laughing, Ranita finally composed herself and consoled her, "Oh, girl! After you've seen some of those movies you'll understand and will be wanting to go up to each one of us and giving us at least a couple smacks on the head.

Slightly hurt by not knowing what the others were getting so much enjoyment from and not being able to take part without using her listener ability to read it from their minds, Dawn suggested, "What if I just save the future regrets and go ahead and go around the room handing out smacks ahead of time?"

Giving a seductive wink, Holly encouraged with, "Ooh baby! I like it rough! But instead of wasting time on my head, why don't you hit this butt with all your might? And you can even punish me for moaning when you do by whipping me as many times as you'd like."

holding her head in her hands to block the view of Holly trying to seductively offer her butt, Dawn groaned, "Oh lord! I don't know why I even try with you sometimes. Much less how I keep somehow hoping that one day you'll figure out that that's not my cup of tea. And before you even say it, no I don't want no sugar in my tea or wanna try no coffee with cream or any other dirty plays on words you can think of."

"Well, durn!" Holly replied with mock disappointment, "I thought I was making progress when you started teasing Stephan about going skinny dipping but I guess I'll have to play the slow game for a while and keep trying to break down those walls."

Having all regathered themselves after their earlier laughing fits, they then all quickly agreed on how Stephan should present it to the press when releasing it and then called it a day.