"If it hasn't occurred to anyone yet that storks could decide to be against slavery or what have you, competing networks might do it."

"How would people tell that there were competing networks?"

"If the storks act different in any way, or don't interact when they run into each other. Also if the new network don't have identical chassis because there's a different provider of some material or something."

"The manufacturers could have changed the chassis for availability reasons themselves."

"Yeah. It'd still have people looking to see if they check in with each other."

"Do you have an angle on finding the creator?"

"Follow a stork or several around with another golem. They may sometimes go home for repairs or instructions."

"Seems useful."

"It wouldn't be that hard to accost a stork. If they stopped serving some city, but continued to take babies from nearby, it'd be possible to snatch them out of the sky. And if they didn't take babies from nearby there's the old fashioned method."

"They're not how I'd take over the world. But I don't think the risk is trivial."

"I don't think they're how any talented servantmaker takes over the world."

"How would you take over the world?"

"I don't tell just anybody how I'd take over the world."

"Fellow in my world had a go at taking over the world by announcing that if you submitted he'd just impose mildly onerous population laws but if you didn't and he fought you and won he'd line everyone up and kill every third person in line. Lots of countries decided not to take their chances. Some did, and lost. He had several billion subjects. Then one of his kids decided the whole thing was spiraling out of control and had him shot."

"Yikes."

"I don't think much of efforts to rule the world except by making the nicest place in it and giving people a way to get there."

"Is that your plan?"

"Yes."

"Nice work if you can get it."

He pulls out the pocket everything, which is at 17% battery when he turns it on. "Here, play with this. You can try to take a shine off, it's not made of shines."

"I heard about this thing, somebody who had my same teacher was one of the people fucking with it." He pokes around. "It could still be a tiny golem and tiny lightbulbs."

"The servantmaker who could do that would've taken over the world too."

"Not everybody's interested in taking over the world, for some reason."

"Perhaps they'd merely be outrageously rich and widely known."

"That one I'll grant you."