Gripping the rock, Eric said "I wish our lab here was fully set up to measure this android's physical and computational capacities." There was the familiar flash, and the lab was suddenly much more advanced - and larger - than it had been before.
"Awesome!" Eric exclaimed. "Look at all this equipment - we can really get some stuff going now!"
"Yeah," Keith agreed, sounding a little nervous, "But, uh, what about the rock and Jon?"
"The heck with Jon!" Eric said. "We could piddle around with him all day and not learn a tenth what we can from this. Besides, he won't remember the rock, so he won't know or care what we're doing."
"Hmmm - well, OK."
"All right then. Let's see just what our K.A.R.Y.N. here is capable of. K.A.R.Y.N., we're going to put you through some paces to see what you're capable of now. Before we start, though, go ahead and get out of those human clothes."
"Executing," K.A.R.Y.N. responded. She began to undo the blouse she wore.
"Dude," Keith said in surprise, "You're going to make her do this naked?"
"The clothes would only hamper its efficiency and mess up the test results. Besides," he added, "It's an android - it doesn't care if it's wearing anything or not."
It? Keith thought. "But she'll be kind of upset when we change her back, won't she?"
Eric looked at him oddly. "Don't worry about that, Keith. I've got it all figured out."
It took only a minute or so for K.A.R.Y.N. to strip out of the clothes. When she was complete, Eric and Keith saw that she was covered in the same matte gray "skin" from head to toe. However, she now had no defined "human" characteristics - nipples, navel, or anything else to break up the smooth flow of the synthetic skin, save for the slightly visible segmentation at the joints. In fact, without the clothes, she less resembled a human being than a mannequin.
"Amazing." Eric said, "Its skin is supple but tough, like many hundreds of layers of bonded polymers."
"Exactly. And check out her hair - it looks a bit different."
"Hmm - tell me, K.A.R.Y.N., what's the nature of your hair?"
"The hair is currently produced by self-extruding, fully-retractable artificial follicles. It can be made to be any length or color."
Eric thought for a moment. "K.A.R.Y.N., please fully retract your hair."
"Executing." Moments later, K.A.R.Y.N. was completely bald. Eric examined the top of K.A.R.Y.N.'s head. "I can't even see where its follicle extrusion points are."
"Maybe we should put her through her paces now."
"Agreed, let's test it out" Eric said. "Okay, K.A.R.Y.N., let's start with the stress testing."
It took Eric, Keith and Brooke (who wasn't in the room when Eric made his wishes and so fully remembered working for Project K.A.R.Y.N.) most of the day to run the full battery of tests. The results were remarkable. K.A.R.Y.N. was fully capable of lifting close to a full ton, could maintain a constant running speed of 64 MPH for an indeterminate amount of time with no visible effort, and could leap over 250 meters straight up.
Even more amazing than K.A.R.Y.N.'s physical attributes, though, were the android's processing capabilities. Eric and Keith fed K.A.R.Y.N. mathematical and scientific problems of increasing complexity. K.A.R.Y.N. solved them all with ease, even ones that would have normally kept their overclocked, super upgraded lab computers busy crunching numbers for hours.
"This is unbelievable," Eric said at the day's end. "The rock gave K.A.R.Y.N. the world's most advanced CPU - it's like nothing I've ever seen."
"I know," Keith agreed. "It's almost a shame we have to turn her back."
Eric gave him the same odd look. "I was actually thinking about that - who says we have to?"
