He has to stay still during it, he understands, right? Dental surgery isn't trivial. Would he prefer to be conscious for it (with local anesthetic that might not eliminate all the pain), or be sedated completely?

Autodoc takes the other person's splint off. It seems to be all better - only very slightly sore. Autodoc announces that it would have taken three to five days to get better without the reconstruction medicine.

She's not sure she buys that it would have taken only three to five days, really, but then maybe the autodoc is used to people who stop working when they're hurt.

He doesn't like either of those choices. He asks what the autodoc recommends.

L1N appears and says that yes, mostly the ancients stopped working for a while, or at least favored one hand, when they got hurt.

And she recommends local anesthetic if he thinks he can stay mostly still through some pain, almost certainly not as much as the rake gave him.

Well, she would have tried to but things come up, children need to be picked up, things need to be held still with one hand and cut with another...

He agrees to try it with local anesthetic. He spends the entire time silently praying.

A lot of things were different for the ancients.

It hurts some. And it feels weird. It takes about fifteen minutes.

Congratulations, he has new front teeth! He should probably get the rest of his teeth looked at and cleaned, but the current operation is complete. Don't eat anything less soft than mashed potatoes for a few hours.

They both seem tentatively pleased with everything. They both thank Lin. The woman asks if Lin likes hugs.

"Thanks! I hope I can help everyone like this. I don't mind hugs, but it's kind of hard to hug in this body!"

Then she won't get hugged.

Meanwhile Lin gets invited to a meeting to discuss high-tech mining. Most of the local miners are arriving one at a time, clean with hair that's still dripping wet, by the time Lin gets there.

She has all these videos on mining and demolitions and tunneling and magnetic interferometry and stuff! And working examples of a small (that is, merely three or four times the size of a person) wall-scraper machine, and an iron vein scanner.

They discuss it and decide to test all her technology one invention at a time in order from least likely to accidentally kill them to most. Most of them say they're pleased to meet her. Someone asks if she's planning to become a miner.

"Scanner's least likely to kill you, then the oxygen system, then the conveyor belt, then the wall scraper, then the drill-and-dynamite rig. I'm going to be doing a lot of mining. But lots of other things too!"

"The way we do things here is everyone who does a share of the work owns a share of the mine," Seyi says. "It seems to me like you joining us would be a good idea..." He glances around at everyone else. A couple nod, a few more look surprised, the rest look at Lin thoughtfully.

"I dunno. Like, everyone owns the same amount of the mine? Or an amount based on how much work they do? I could totally have robots do the most dangerous work, I don't want people to get hurt, but it seems complicated and I might just rather sell you the robots?"

"I'm not sure I understand the difference between you helping and your robots helping," someone says.

"Robots are arms and hands that I can grab hold of and use. But they can be told to do things by people, too. If I'm not always telling them what to do, where to go, if you guys are doing that, then the robots are helping instead of me helping."

"So it'd be like buying extra limbs."

Someone glances at Seyi's missing leg and laughs. "Be good if she could sell real limbs."

Seyi snorts. "Well," he says, "how much do you want for your robots?"

"I can make prosthetics. You should visit the autodoc, Seyi. And I don't want cards, I want a promise of delivery of a certain amount of iron within the next year."

She names some amounts. They're high, but perhaps worth it if her claims of miracle mining are true.

"I mean, I could go for partial ownership of the mine instead? If we do that I'm really invested in making sure it's safe and productive, that's the thinking, right? I'm not sure what's the best deal for you guys, is all."

"I think it's possible your robots won't work as well as you hope," says Seyi. "And I think we shouldn't rush testing them, which we'd have to if we had a deadline. If you're taking a share of our profits you will make that much eventually, you won't make that much in a year unless you're worth that much that fast, and if you were undervaluing yourself to make the deal sound better you'd make more. And you could keep earning more, instead of getting as much as you get and then running out. I think we'll all be better off if you join us than if we try to buy your robots at that price."

"Okay! Makes sense! How much of the mine do I end up owning, then?"

They haggle. They reach a deal.

Eventually the meeting adjourns. Vaayo lets one of Lin's bodies know where he'll be overnight. People return borrowed tablets. If she stays to watch and listen to the town in the evening she'll see babies brought to or fetched from the creche and hear most people sing for a while before bed.

In the morning after the man with new teeth has a chance to eat breakfast and gossip, a few people with old injuries that never completely healed come to see the autodoc.

She starts charging the tablets from the nice, full batteries in her trucks, juiced up from an afternoon's worth of solar panels.

The autodoc can fix people! It can't totally heal old injuries in one session, but it can give reconstruction medicine injections and at least help with the pain for all of them. And prescribe vitamin supplements to almost everyone it sees.

It'll start running low on some medication precursors soon, but most of the organic molecules don't need exotic metals or anything, so L1N is mixing up a batch of refills.

She also starts asking people if it can try to use samples of their body (a few drops of blood, maybe a tiny chunk of skin) to grow a certain kind of medicine. Stem cells are useful and will help with the 'reducing aging' thing. It's perfectly safe for the donor, but some people don't like the idea, so she's asking. Adverse reactions in recipients from stem cell therapy are both rare and treatable.

Some people aren't willing to try that yet but a couple are willing to give her samples if she's very, very careful and only takes a very, very tiny amount and cleans the wound afterward. They're less sure on actually taking the medicine that results but maybe by the time she's made it she'll have more of a track record.

It occurs to someone to ask if she can synthesize water like she does other things.

Vaayo goes looking for the nearest Lin.

Of course, very tiny amounts, just enough to fill this vial tinier than your fingertip, and definitely cleaning it before and after.

She can't synthesize water (well, she CAN but it's more trouble than it's worth), but she might be able to help with water management and water recycling, though those sorts of projects tend to take a while. She could turn salty ocean water into fresh but there's no ocean here.

The nearest L1N is available! "Hi, Vaayo! How's your day been so far?"

Someone suggests she could go visit a river and fetch water back. That would normally be more trouble than it's worth outside of the worst drought, since people sweat carrying things and can't be around to do other work while they're on the road, but Lin moves faster and doesn't eat and drink...

"I'm doing fine! I'm heading back to Clear Spring today, want anything before I go?"

...She'll talk to the council about plumbing. Big pumps at the river and a water tower to have a stock of easy-to-access water. And sewers maybe? She left a tablet with one of the Councillors, do they still have it?

"I want you to bring a special tablet I made with you. It has a solar panel on the back so you can recharge it by setting it down face-down. It's so I can still talk to you and teach you things and maybe talk to people in Clear Spring."