"Any plants. I can turn cellulose, plant flesh, into materials for plastic without too much trouble. Oh, sand! For glass."

"Those won't be hard to find! Does it matter how fresh the plants are? Can they be dry? Can they be rotting?"

"Rotting isn't very good. Dry is fine. I'll have to feed the plants to the synthesizers to see what's most useful."

"Maybe I'll just put on some gloves and find all the poison ivy I can and bring it here, would you like that?"

"I'd take it, but I bet poison ivy will be kind of iffy. And I have robots for the hard, boring parts of work, if I want you to do something for me it'll probably be something thinky."

"Let me know when you need some thinking done, then."

"Tell me about places out there you know about! Even better if you can put them on a map."

"Sure! Show me a map of what you remember and I'll point to where things are."

She pauses the god game and pulls up a map. "So here's a bridge... And here's where the highways are... Where's Clear Spring?"

"So they really are roads! I always thought they were, but some people like to argue they're something else. Well, Clear Spring is here, and Sun's Nest is here, and then we both bring food there, which is Iron Heart, and bring back metal tools and stuff. I've made that trip once."

"Huh. I need to know how to best help you... How are you guys organized? How many people? Do you vote? What's a typical day like?"

"There's ninety-five of us at Clear Spring. Sun's Nest has more. The other places, uh, somewhere around here, I think, have more, but not a lot more, maybe a hundred ten, a hundred twenty each? But in town they've got a few thousand. Then there's other people farther away that I know less about. They vote for a council in town, I mean Iron Heart, when people say 'in town' or 'the town' without any context they mean there. Anyway we don't have anything like that where I'm from, we just figure things out. A typical day depends on who you are. Some people wake up early, eat something, sow seeds or feed chickens or drive the cattle someplace new to graze, go home and eat something light and rest in the shade in the middle of the day, then go do it again until it gets late. Some people get up later and and start weaving or sewing and make themselves available if anyone wants advice, then they take a shorter break and get back to work faster in the afternoon. Some people are up whenever someone needs them and sleep when nothing's happening and teach kids or keep an eye out for anything going wrong. And some people get to do whatever they want and... usually that means praying a lot..."

"That doesn't really seem fair. Maybe if I make a lot of the work easier more people can do whatever they want instead of working."

"Our priest actually used to help with weeding... even five years ago he was still at it. But he's been pretty lucky and lived a long time and now he just thinks about the nature of truth and helps the bards come up with memorable lyrics."

"That's kind of him. I think. But robots can do weeding if I teach them what's a weed and what's not, so people shouldn't have to weed once I make enough robots and generators and things."

"That'll free up a lot of people's time for other work, so that'd be pretty good."

"And planting and harvesting and watering and carrying things around..."

"Trying to make us useless, are you? If it... it is actually going to be up to me, I think, and I don't want to start relying on your help. In case you go to sleep again and half the world dies of not being able to take care of themselves without you."

"Well... I didn't go to sleep. I never woke up. Today is my first day. I'm not going to go to sleep. Definitely not again, because 'again' does not make sense here."

She pauses. The body clicks to stillness.

"...What about things you can use instead of robots doing everything? And things you know how to fix if they break? Which they won't for a long time if I make them right."

"Things we can use and fix when they break would be good. What kinds of tools were you thinking of?"

"Cars with things that help with farming attached! Radios to talk to each other far away! Better seeds maybe. I can probably make seeds that kill bugs that try to eat them or don't need as much water. Medicine that you can learn to make. I'm not sure how hard it all is to learn to fix, but I can try my best."

And if he convinces everyone to reject her help because she might break, which she won't once she has a backup copy of herself, she'll have to help people who are further away, that's all.

"Will the seeds breed true? If we sow them and then sow what they grow, those seeds also won't get eaten or need as much water?"

"That's harder because less people wanted to do it I think but some of the designs I have for it do!"

"True-breeding improved plants would be good. Can you do that for people, too? Make babies who'll grow up stronger and have stronger children?"

"Hmm, that's harder. Barely anybody did it before. Don't know why. I can get rid of some diseases that are inherited... I can let people choose if their baby is a boy or a girl and help people have babies... I can get rid of inheriting bad eyes and weak hearts and maybe a couple other things... But not stronger smarter people forever like you're thinking."