"That's a really clever idea! Ordinary rubber bands would wear out too fast, but I can go to a store and get the heavy-duty kind and they'll still be cheaper than springs. Faster, too."

"All things without magic decay. Decay is a concern when designing a robot?"

"Well, when something in a robot decays, it doesn't work as well, and eventually you need to replace it. And letting one part get too worn out can cause damage to other parts."

Fascinating.

The genie is very single-minded and will discuss this stuff as long as she'll tolerate it.

Margaret is not quite genie levels of single-minded but she will still discuss this stuff until she absolutely has to sleep.

The genie thinks this is going well so far, not that it thinks to say this out loud.

In class the next day, Teddy passes her a note.

They did a big study on genies in the 70s and one on Spirit Bearers in the 50s. I have a bunch of PDFs and stuff to share later.

She passes back: 

Excellent. I will probably nitpick the life out of their methodology but that sounds super informative.

Yeah the spirit bearers one was kind of obviously super sexist but might be useful anyway.

At least they made their biases obvious. Meet in the library after school?

Sure.

And she will be in the library after school.

This is one of those school libraries with a slightly separate studying area that's not as strict on quiet.

"Hi Margaret, come and get the data!"

"Hi Teddy! Give me that tasty, tasty data." She sits down next to him and pulls out her laptop.

He hands over a thumb drive. "The thing that stuck out to me the most is that most Spirit Bearers who last five years, last at least sixty more after that. After the first five years is when 'unstable prospects' tend to have all, uh, fallen out, is what the paper concluded."

She puts it in her laptop and starts transferring files. "Good to know. What does the right tail of the distribution look like?"

"A lot of deaths in accidents and fights, fewer from what passes for 'natural causes' among Spirit Bearers. It's hard to be sure of the far right tail because early records are mostly gone and people lie sometimes, but there are a bunch of 'bearers who claim to have met Napoleon or George Washington and such."

"That's pretty amazing even if only some of them are for real. I take it the fight deaths are mostly against monsters? Or do spirit-bearers sometimes kill each other?"

"Uh, let me look... According to this, which again is kind of old data, first the Named Beasts, second other monsters, distant third nature spirits and genies, close fourth other humans - doesn't specify spirit bearers or just regular humans."

"I expect a non-spirit-bearer would have a way harder time killing a spirit-bearer than another spirit-bearer would, but there's a lot more of the former. You mentioned the data was sexist, though, what was sexist about it?"

"They exclude tons of women spirit bearers, or maybe those declined to participate a lot, it's not clear. Also non-white ones might be under-represented here, or might have been statistically less common at the time, I'm not sure yet I have to find census data and other sources to look at."

"Women spirit-bearers are like significantly more than half of them, right, what a stupid thing to exclude. Or, yeah, maybe they didn't show up. I wonder if non-white people just have fewer opportunities to do things in general and thus fewer opportunities to meet spirits."

"It's about fifty fifty in this study which means a lot of excluded women, and of course they refused to acknowledge trans people at all - hopefully I'll be able to figure out that other part."

"What would the alternative even be, "spirits are all racist"? Okay, that's not true, I can think of a couple alternatives, but still."

Her computer dings. "Ooh, copy's done. Is there a taxonomy of monsters in here?" She starts rifling through the PDFs.

"Well, there's this tactical overview thing I found, some PSAs, and a lot of more detailed studies. I'm not sure about a taxonomy per se."

The tactical overview divides monsters into four classes: Named Beasts, Unusuals, Major, and Minor - in decreasing order of threat.

The Named Beasts are the truly terrifying, giant monsters that little can truly hurt. The Monster King and its mind-controlled army of monsters, genies, and a few Spirit Bearers. The Evertree, which suppresses the magical abilities of everything else near it. The Kraken, which is simply insanely strong and tough and fast and toothy.

Unusuals are monsters which have unique characteristics. They're never quite the same and while some conclusions can be drawn from observation and common sense, extreme caution is advised when dealing with them. Some examples are a large burrowing worm that ate dozens of cows and destroyed a couple of farmhouses before being hunted down, a walking boulder that smashed up some highway and derailed a train, a mass of sentient seaweed that savaged a fish market, some kind of mega-troll that just wouldn't die for a long long while. They're large and dangerous, but nowhere near as dangerous as a Named Beast. Monsters that are unique and not large and unusually dangerous don't seem to happen.

Major monsters pose a significant threat and probably can't be safely dealt with by normal humans unless they've got serious military hardware. It's advised to have a team of Spirit Bearers to fight major monsters, though the exact level of threat varies. Trolls, Ogres, Night Stalkers, and Stranglers are included in this category, among others.

Minor monsters can sometimes be dealt with by an ordinary human with a gun or just a spear, but can still be very dangerous if you are ambushed by one, or if there's a lot of them. Even minor monsters cause significant corruption over a day or two. Lurkers, Goblins, Biters, and Jellies are examples of minor monsters. Goblins especially are the stereotypical minor and almost harmless monster.

"These one-offs are so confusing, biologically. Not that that I want there to more of the Monster King, but where do they come from? I hope there's not some parallel dimension full of monsters leaking into our dimension, or something."