Ax doesn't say "yes, Princess Bella", but he does slow down a little, eats Ethan's French toast with an orgasmic expression on his face, accepts Bella's wordless tutoring about the use of the kitchen sink, and goes into the garage to do what she said.

Trouble silently replaces Ethan's French toast.

Robin comes down the stairs and steals Ethan's plate.

<The human sensation of taste is very intense,> Ax reports solemnly from the garage.

<Are all foods as amazing as French toast?>

"Some of them are better."

<That is impossible,> says Ax faintly.

"You know what," says Trouble, "when we've all got our generic human morphs, I am gonna take you on a food tour of Phoenix and show you just how wrong you are."

"You and what money? I guess you could use your generic human morph to get a job and a place to crash if we gave you some startup funding..."

"Also, if Ax eats like that in public he will get attention," Andi points out.

Trouble shrugs. "I'll figure something out. And a lot of places do takeout, we can do the eating in private."

"The 'generic human morphs' aren't going to have much in the way of legal identity."

"Yeah, Dad, you might have to work outside your comfort zone if you want to assume a Frolis-maneuvered persona and do work and have an apartment," Bella says, "I don't see a good way around that unless somebody here is secretly a hacker."

<Human computer systems must be embarrassingly primitive, if they are on a level with the rest of your planet's technology,> scoffs Ax. <Identities are tracked on such things? And people believe them?>

"...Do go on."

<I'm not a computer specialist. But given a human computer interface I would not expect to take long to determine how it works and how to accomplish various tasks on it.>

"...Okay. Charlie is a Luddite, so he doesn't have a computer here, but that is very good to know."

Trouble snorts.

"Identity fraud. My favourite," says Ethan.

"Or possibly just outright robbery, although I'd want a while to sort through possible targets."

"Ax, do you have qualms about stealing?"

<...I would be more comfortable taking from Yeerks than from innocent bystanders.>

"Embezzling large amounts of money from the Sharing would be kind of obvious, but maybe we can find a heavily Controller-infiltrated bank or corporation or something."