Nick wasn't doing the labor any more, but he wasn't lying around useless either. He had to teach Petra better English. It turned out that she had milked the buggy speech-to-text transcripts of phone messages to connect sounds to letters, teased the words out of the animations, and from the look of some of her attempts, even read the comments in the code of the apps. For all of that, something simple like, “throw me the ball,” was still way beyond her.
Working out from the maps app, Nick coaxed Petra to look into where they were in the universe. Petra built something to go up on the surface, and Nick was treated to live video of the night sky, complete with calculations. Apparently she could not yet locate them on any of the star maps in her memory.
The Heal machine turned out to be a cylinder with a few rods strapped to it, or so it looked to Nick. It doesn't look much like a doctor. Maybe it's for sealing cracks in the wall, healing Petra's dungeon.
The melee monster was a little war bot, maybe a foot high, with several sharp blades. It skittered on ten legs. Nick set it to patrolling outside. The range monster didn't look like much, resembling a traffic cone except for color and the ability to float.
The kitchen interested Nick greatly, of course. Unfortunately, Petra asked him lots of questions about chemistry that he had no idea how to answer. After a long while, Petra drew a diagram of blood flowing through his body, and animated him getting a cut and bleeding. She wanted a blood sample from him.
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I'm not raw materials! Nick was very wary of giving Petra his blood. However, the hope of better food drove him to comply, and a few drops were enough to satisfy Petra. Afterwards, element 53 became a priority for searching, just after element 33. Beyond that, Petra apparently needed time to analyze his blood.
One area where Nick and Petra could collaborate smoothly was the shower. Petra made designing a bathroom a breeze. Nick described what he wanted, and Petra made her own modifications making good use of her abilities to manipulate materials.
They did argue about the toilet, and particularly about the water jet for cleaning. Nick thought that was called a 'bidet' but had never tried one. He let Petra build it her way first. It took some getting used to, but ended up working well for him.
The next challenge was soap. Petra did not get the idea. Once Nick managed to convey that he wanted to be clean, Petra built something that apparently used sound to shake the dirt off of him. It wasn't very pleasant, so Nick usually used it briefly and then showered with water, scrubbing himself as best he could.
He even thought about making a hot tub, but it wasn't a high priority for him. A swimming pool, now—that would be something he would enjoy. He would look into that once more important things like food were taken care of.
This tutorial mode was great. He wondered how Petra was choosing recommendations. She had to have some sort of built-in goals. Nick wished he could ask Petra where she came from, why she was made, and things like that. Who was Petra intended for, anyway? Did alien school kids get field trips where they got dumped on a world like I did and were expected to survive?
Petra kept coming up with more things to produce, but always asked Nick for permission first. For whatever reason, Petra considered Nick to be in charge. At some point, he was going to have to ask Petra why that was. But first he had to climb a little higher up on that M guy's pyramid of stuff you need.