"Great. So I'm actually here today looking for parts, . . ." she describes what she's looking for and the intended uses, hunting around as she does so.

The genie asks lots of questions about what and why, and rustles through the insides of cars and piles of rusting metal, arraying potential things out for her.

Not having to climb into things to see if there's anything useful in there is pretty useful! She will keep up a running commentary until she's collected everything she came here for.

The genie seems confused by the darnedest things. Like gear teeth count mattering. Or the difference between plastic and metal. It becomes much less obvious when she's done making her selections, but can be presumed to be shadowing her as she goes out the gate (and pays a relatively small amount, by the pound), probably.

"The number of teeth on a gear affects how many times it will turn around when another gear turns it." "Plastic is lighter and easier to make things out of, but it will break under strain that metal can handle easily." "Here's $15, then, and you have a nice day too."

And home and straight to her basement. She'll work a bit with her new parts before doing her homework, narrating quietly. It's a good thing her parents can't hear her down here or they'd think she'd started talking to herself.

There's a persistent draft in a corner now, listening quietly. It doesn't ask questions very often, and it whispers them when it does.

That's very considerate. Eventually, "I need to go do other things, but I'll be back tomorrow to work on the robot some more."

And upstairs for dinner and actually assigned work and bed. It is a school night, after all.

This genie is familiar with school schedules, which someone who really understands genies would find odd.

It hangs out in the junkyard overnight, and lurks near that house in the morning again, in case some robot work is going to happen.

No robot work in the morning, sadly, only classes. There will be robot work that afternoon, but the first chunk of it will be at the school robotics club.

(Class is pretty uneventful. The genie is unaware of the robotics club and goes to play with its toys instead.)

Teddy is poking an open circuit board with an oscilloscope and making thinking noises in the corner of the robotics club room.

"Hi Terry! Working on those calibrations?" Margaret starts pulling out tools.

"Hey. No, that's done, but I'm getting weird input. Maybe some incidental induction from the wires? Not sure. Analog signal is kind of wacky."

"Huh." She goes to look over his shoulder at it.

Is anyone else here yet?

The club's official adult is doing paperwork in the corner, but no other students are present yet.

"We're getting messy data when the signal chip turns this into digital. The sine wave isn't clean. So I'm trying to figure out where the interference is coming from." He goes over what he's found so far.

Yeah no she's not saying anything right now, she doesn't know the adult and anyway someone else could walk in at any moment.

"Have you tried a source you know is clean? It could be the oscilloscope is wonky."

"I doubt it, they're pretty reliable, but it's worth checking."

They check with a signal generator. The oscilloscope is good. Another student who does a lot of the metalwork wanders in and says hi.

Margaret waves at the metalwork student. "Not that then, hmm. What else have you tried so far?"

Robotics club continues. Eventually the teacher comes over to help with the signal problem and they trace it to an oversight in the circuit design. Teddy keeps testing the newly revised board, in case something else crops up.

Margaret will stick around until either Teddy leaves, or everyone except her and Teddy leaves.

Teddy is one of the last students out! They put his board into the 'bot when his tests didn't come up with any other obvious issues. But he does eventually pack his backpack and leave, not really paying attention to Margaret yet.

She'll follow him out and try to catch up.

"Hey, Terry, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"-Huh? Oh! Sure, sorry, I'm just thinking about something. An idea I had. But, what's up?"

"First what's your idea, I bet it's cool."

"So, I've heard of this thing called solar hot water heating. Black panels with water pipes in them that get really hot. It's cheaper than solar panels, but saves about the same amount of energy, especially if you have an electric water heater and use it a lot. And they're cheaper. I'm wondering if you can make a solar panel that's transparent except in the colors that it absorbs, and put them over water heater sections. I'll need to do some research. I don't know if solar panels can do that."