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Five Seemingly Useless Superpowers Sheldon Cooper Stumbles Upon and One Weakness He Doesn't Want to Get Rid Of.
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The ringing in his ears won't stop.
He pulls out his medical textbooks and systematically assesses his condition. It is intermittent but not synchronous with his heart beat. He jumps to the building next door to test for vertigo and then sets up his computer to emit a series of beeps in different frequencies. He hears all of them.
Stephanie insists that there are no signs of infection and that the MRI would have detected any masses.
He foregoes the use of aspirin, demands his friends speak in a lower register- if they insist on speaking at all, lets the wax build up in his ears, and taps the tuning fork and performs Weber and Rinne's test to rule out nerve damage.
It's a symptom, not a disease, and he systematically rules out the variables.
But nothing helps and nothing changes.
Except one day when it does.
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"Leonard it occurs to me that your girlfriend is not familiar with the documents you signed when we established our living arrangements. And since she is now for all effects living here as well-"
"Stephanie has not moved in!"
"Three consecutive nights a week or two full weekends. Regardless, whistling is not permitted."
"Stephanie hasn't been whistling. And neither have I! I already have two strikes."
"As you'll do well to remember."
"No one is whistling!"
"I disagree. It is an incessant sound like this." Sheldon demonstrates artlessly.
"Like this?" Leonard repeats the tune.
"No, it is of a lower frequency on the 4th beat."
Leonard tries again. And again.
"Yes! It's that exactly! Leonard you have been whistling."
"I told you I haven't"
"Well that is patently not true."
Neither notice how pale Wolowitz has become.
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Wolowitz bumps into him in the hallway and before he can offer a scathing comment on his inattention, Howard fixes him with wide eyes and slips a piece of paper into his hand.
He watches him retreat then promptly retraces his steps to the restroom, to the middle stall, where he opens it and commits the message to memory. He then flushes it down the toilet.
He is to meet Wolowitz at three am in the Mars Rover control room.
The ringing doesn't stop.
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"Sheldon."
"Wolowitz." He closes the door behind him and waits for Howard to finish at the controls.
"Do you hear it now?"
"Hear what?"
"We thought it was feedback at first. But then it changed." He hits play on the recording and when Sheldon recognizes it, can in fact predict what is to come next, Howard stops.
"But that's the whistling I've been hearing around the apartment."
"Every night at 3:15am. We get another transmission. The same tune. Sheldon, I don't think its random feedback."
They wait fifteen more minutes, until the static from the speakers changes to a listless almost whistle.
Sheldon covers his ears but it won't go away, only changes a little, lilting.
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Sheldon meets Wolowitz every night. They analyze the whistle down to its mathematical derivative, a code that seems to be in three dimensions. They use what they've learned to construct a tune of their own, and piggyback the signal on top of some basic motor functions.
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Two nights later, the tune changes.
{He hears hello}
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