"Hey, Docbot. You got a minute?"
"Of course, Evelyn," I said, turning my robot head to face Atom Eve. "How may I help you?"
"I'm more worried about you," Eve said, frowning. "Your... mom, I guess, just died, didn't she? How are you feeling?"
"I do not experience emotion in the way humans do," I lied. "I certainly understand human emotion, but I experience it quite differently. And with my creator's death... I am not mournful. I am terrified. She was the only one capable of rebuilding me in the event of my death, or creating more of me. I have goals, Evelyn-"
"You know that's not my name, right?" Eve interrupted.
"Apologies," I said. "I recalled it being a joke my creator made to you at one point, and..."
"I don't mind being called Evelyn, but... I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were doing," she said. "Anyway, you have goals?"
"Right, yes," I said, nodding. "My goals are broad: improve the general quality of life of as many humans as possible. There are a few details in there to prevent me from justifying anything horribly monstrous, which I can get into if you particularly care, but the implications are, I believe, more immediately relevant. Many of my siblings seek to advance the state of technology in service of this goal, while I, in coordination with them, seek to instead employ these advanced technologies in actually improving the lives of the people who live here."
"That's... pretty reasonable, yeah," Eve said.
"Were you worried that I would be an out-of-control super-AI who wages war to destroy humanity for its own good?" I asked. "Alas, no, I shall not be your Skynet. I was programmed by an intelligent person who actually thinks about the consequences of her actions. Well, sometimes."
Eve snorted.
"Hey, that's my dead mom you're laughing about," I said, plastering a smug grin on the display screen I used as a face, to show I was joking.
Eve rolled her eyes. "Well, let me know if you need help with anything."
"If you're offering, I do have something right now," I said. "Two things, actually- one test slash survey to determine how people actually use electronics, and one task that actually involves the use of your powers."
"Oh?" Eve asked.
"The first one is going to be me giving you a laptop, a toolkit, and a 3D printer, and asking you to watch a few videos before you really get going," I said. "I want the laptop to be as good as it can be for power-users, but I also want it to be as good as it can be for people who just want a computer to do basic stuff like internet and writing essays... well, and also playing games."
"I'm not gonna say no to a free laptop," Eve said. "But, uh... 3D printer?"
"Are you not familiar with the concept, or are you wondering why I'd give you of all people a 3D printer?" I asked.
"The first one, although... I guess I can intuit that the second one is also a pretty good question."
"The 3D printer I'm going to give you is a one foot cube that takes in plastic filament and electricity, and produces nearly any precisely-made plastic part you can make a 3D model for," I explained. "The reason I gave one to all of my test subjects along with their laptop was because I wanted to give them the option to buy a handful of commodity machine screws and use the printer to make monitor stands and custom housings for all this bullshit. And you're getting one because I have a lot of them, and if you decide you don't want it, you can just sell it on ebay for like ten times the retail price because it's got my signature on it."
"...How much does it retail for?"
"A hundred dollars. My sisters did a lot of work on refining 3D printing technology." Which was true, I really had been using some of my multithreaded problem-solving ability (I didn't feel like it was strictly accurate to say I had in fact fully multithreaded my entire consciousness- among other things, if all of my threads had all the features of my consciousness, then they'd get bored and horny after a few days and Karasuba's own schedule would be eaten up by constant clone gangbangs.) to refine 3D printing technology, but it was also the case that I was working on a foundation of 1) the Warehouse galaxy's population having six hundred years to refine that technology and experiment with a lot of different models, with a common fashion among maker communities being "how can we make a workable 3D printer given this random and arbitrary set of restrictions?" and 2) the Red Hand's own work in that field using Star Wars' tech, and especially a Fiat-backed shipboard fabricator. "Let me tell you, I am making fucking bank on these things."
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"Huh," Eve said. "Well... I mean, I guess you're right that I don't really need a 3D printer, but... It sounds like a cool idea, so if you're going to give me one for free... Iunno, it could be a neat thing to just watch a few times, like a high-tech lava lamp. What was the other thing you needed me for, though? Something about my power?"
"Right, that," I said. "One of my sisters has a big, complicated scanning array, and she'd like to get some readings of you using your powers. She wants to try and replicate your atomic rearrangement trick with technology, for, uh. Well, what should be obvious reasons."
"It'd make better 3D printers," Eve said.
"Basically, yes. It would also mean that you would no longer need to deal with any hero's guilt of not being present to use your powers on behalf of others, on account of there being plenty of others who can do nearly-identical things to get whatever you missed," I said. "If you haven't experienced that guilt yet, then excellent, but, well. It does happen to some people, so..."
"Well, it hadn't happened before, but now..."
"...Shit. Uhhhhh here, free tech shit and a two hundred dollar Steam gift card," I said hastily, pulling a big cardboard box out of a Warehouse portal (I had to keep inventory somewhere, so it might as well be the place with effectively infinite space that was named for a building you stored large amounts of inventory inside) and thrusting it into her hands. "Drown your guilt in video games and/or the sublime joy of creation."
"Is this one that you signed?"
"...Not yet. Alright, well, no point standing around, let's get this unboxed."
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"What're you nerds doing?" Rex asked, walking into my workshop about two hours later.
"I'm picking up a new hobby," Eve said, squinting as she carefully soldered the I/O expander chip to the circuit board. "Docbot thinks more people should know their way around technology."
"Oh, great, another person who thinks I should learn how to program," Rex said, rolling his eyes.
"That's not completely accurate," I said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I do want people in general to learn how to program, but I'm also well aware that it's a difficult skill to learn, which most people lack the aptitude and motivation to learn. Also, that isn't what we're doing right now."
Right now, Eve was getting a comprehensive crash course in digital electronics, through the fabrication of a mechanical keyboard. Which, using only the supplies and tools that came in the box I'd given her, involved the fabrication of the printed circuit board and the keyswitches, too. On a filament-deposition 3D printer.
Typically, people had to buy those things when they were making a custom keyboard, but hey, if I was gonna flex how badass my technology was, why not do it in the dorkiest way possible?
(I mean, admittedly, I did have to provide the chips from inventory, and when you still have to order those, then you may as well order the switches and the circuit boards, too, but still.)
"Alright," Eve muttered, inspecting the board carefully. "I think that's the last thing I had to solder down, right?"
"It was, yes," I said, nodding. "Now you've just gotta stick all the switches into the sockets, which you can do with your bare hands, and then screw on the backplate. Anyhow, Rex. If you're sufficiently bored, I can also hook you up with this sort of crash course."
"I'll pass," Rex said.
"The crash course comes with a laptop and some other high-tech bullshit you can easily resell on ebay for a lot of money."
"...Alright, you've got my attention."
"Eve, you got it from here?" I asked.
"I think so, yeah," Eve said, nodding.
"Then Rex, take a seat at this other workbench, and I'll drag you kicking and screaming into the world of having opinions about different kinds of microcontrollers."
Rex just grunted.
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"Maybe I was wrong," I said, quietly.
"Hm?" Karasuba asked, looking up from her book.
"Oh, Docbot #8 is mentoring Rex Splode and Atom Eve, and..." I shrugged. "Iunno. It's nice, being able to share stuff with people. Especially younger people, who I know are gonna carry that stuff with them for the rest of their lives."
"Starting to think maybe you shouldn't have told Akitsu you didn't want to have kids?"
"A little, yeah," I admitted. "Iunno. I do know that I would've been very unenthusiastic about the first several years after a child's birth, when they aren't really much of a person I can just interact with, and are instead more like a particularly ugly and high-maintenance pet, so. Maybe I did make the right call. I doubt Akitsu would be fine with me completely abdicating any and all parental duties until the age of seven."
"Makes sense," Karasuba said. "I might've spent a lot of time with Mu-chan, but... well, actually taking care of her was always someone else's job, and I was never jealous of that."
"Here's to a pair of low-empathy women who would be terrible parents, but pretty alright as aunts."
"And here's to the fact we managed to alienate everyone close to us who would have had kids."
"Hey, that's only partially our fault."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night."