Sigh.

"Don't worry about it. You know what, before I start trying to change stuff, why don't I start with trying to understand stuff. How about a scanner..."

"A scanner?"

"Something that can scan something, and tell me what's going on with it. Does that seem viable?"

"Well when you describe in such loving detail."

"Oh, like you have any right to voice that kind of criticism, you overjuiced printer. I want - okay, scanner, ridiculous laser beam that scans an object or a person, and gives a detailed analysis of its composition and any effects going on with it. It really should be comparatively simple, especially if we're a simulation like I think we are, because really what we'd be doing is getting a view into the information from the back end of things..."

"I think you've gone cuckoo but hey you're the scientist, I'm just the robot."

"My intelligence is highly likely to also be artificial, so arguably we might all be robots. That aspect alone doesn't technically disqualify you," she says absently, and then it's time to ignore the printer and get to work. C'mon, she can make a scanner that reads and conveys metadata, right? That's totally possible. C'moooooon.

Possibly! Does she have ideas for what to try?

Literal ray gun, with a little screen on it for showing the information it gains, does she actually have to design the specifics of how the scanner is shaped, ugh, fine...

She'll probably be here for a while. She doesn't, actually, know the specifics of how to make what she wants. She's just going to keep trying at it.

The world holographic screen is her oyster. She can keep trying and trying and trying anything that occurs to her to try. She won't even be interrupted by her boss or anything.

She spends an extended period of time, and in fact most of her workday, trying to explain in small concepts to a holographic screen how scanning... works. This part here shoots out, er, well she doesn't actually want anything harmful like an x-ray, so instead she goes with light, that hits and highlights the individual contiguous object to select it.

It's just that it's really hard to specify that she wants the metadata an object holds, when she has no examples of it on hand, nor any idea how to directly observe it.

Eventually, it's 7:00 PM. She could keep banging her head on this wall, nobody will mind if she stays late. Her job literally just seems to be to get paid to fuck around with weird science aesthetic objects; there isn't any real demand for a deliverable or something. If she wants to do this forever, and get paid for it, she can do that. Still, she thinks this is the kind of problem that needs a break and coming at it from another angle. Also, if she stays here any longer messing with this stupid machine and its stupid smarmy printer attachment with too much sass and unhelpful advice, she's going to start trying to synthesize explosives from the chemical station to blow it all up.

People do indeed not act as though her not having produced anything today matters. She doesn't get a promotion tho.

Yeah. She doesn't feel like she deserves it, anyway.

She goes home. Any weird changes to her house while she was gone?

Nope! Still looking the same.

Cool. Great.

She should go jogging, or do some sort of exercise related activity. For the sake of maybe extending her life. It occurs to her that if her woefully short life is spent entirely like this, with this hyper-efficient grind mindset, it will be miserable. And possibly short, considering how the sketchy internet advice specifically mentioned happiness as a life extension factor. At least she will be alive to figure out how to be happy, though.

Maybe there's some kind of punching bag at the gym. She'll have to check that, at some point. For now: jogging, she guesses.

She attempts to do what she did yesterday, and - spin into her workout clothes, for efficiency. ... It doesn't seem to work. Or, well, she spins just fine, but there is no change of clothes accompanying it, just a general feeling of embarrassment and frustration.

... Why is that?

Yvette reviews how she managed it the first time. It was, specifically, when she wasn't paying attention. Put her body on autopilot, and was just letting it solve the problem in front of it, while she was thinking about something else.

The next time she tries, she's thinking about how she'd change the furniture of her house. Or just - her house in general, apparently stuff like adding a whole wall and door is easy enough to manage in an afternoon. Like, she definitely wants a window at the sink, so she can look out at all of the nice nature while she's doing dishes. And probably another bookshelf, in the main living area - there's technically one in her bedroom, but this is clearly not enough books for her taste. If she's thinking of creature comforts, she'd also want that shower turned into a bath and shower combo, because she might ever want to just soak. Oh, and, obviously this place needs some more decorations - a nice rug, some plants, actual curtains on the windows.

She is in her workout clothes and almost out the door for her jog when she realizes that her plan worked. ... Huh. Maybe her self awareness and mindfulness can be a bit of a double edged sword; forcing all that she does under things that only make sense.

"Swap the shower for a shower/tub combo, put a window in the wall by the sink, add some curtains to the windows, and a rug to the main living area - pick something with some kind of abstract or floral pattern, I do not want a flat color - and then I want some plants. And an extra bookshelf. Clear out the furniture in the second bedroom if you're short on funds, but you probably won't be," she says, to the house, and then she goes for her jog.

When she's back her house's changed! Although, uh...

...so, the first thing she might notice is that there are a bunch of trees and shrubs near and around the house. So that's her plants.

Then, once she walks inside, the next thing she'll notice is that she did get a window by the sink. By the bathroom sink. Directly above where the toilet is, between the bathroom and the living room. Also, every single window has some ugly white curtains made of several individual fabric strips one next to another. Also there is a single rectangular blue rug right in the middle of the living room, with some geometric patterns on it. In the bathroom, the shower/tub combo is rotated such that it is directly in front of the door and she needs to skip over it to access the rest of it. In the bedroom, there is a second bookshelf, identical to the first one, and right next to it. In the single bedroom, the only change is the curtains.

...

It's honestly so hideous and stupid that it's kind of hilarious?? At least her idea works? She does in fact have power over her house? Just, well...

"Oh, oh I see we're dealing with stupid stupid decorating sensibilities, aren't we," she snorts, laughing. "Okay. From the top..."

And so she gets to painstakingly fixing... all of this. This bathtub/shower combo? Should be turned so the door is actually usable. The showerhead for it should be on that wall, and yes this does things with plumbing that don't make sense, but she is not working with things that make sense, she's working with a very stupid computer following her exact specifications. This window? Should be on this precise wall, by the kitchen sink. These curtains are all terrible, and should be replaced with curtains that consist of: two bits of fabric, instead of these strip things. This extra bookshelf should instead be in the living room, right here, so she doesn't have to traipse all the way to her room to read. And then she would like small indoor plants, in little pots, here and here and here and if she needs to be specific about what kind of plant she wants there, she has Siimgle, and she can be so so specific.

"I am going to go have another jog around the block and come back, okay? ... Thank you for the changes, they are appreciated." And then, yep. Jog, round two. Whee.

All of the changes are undone! No new changes are done, though, the house looks exactly the way it did when she arrived home from work.

... that's... interesting, and actually harder than doing what she said? ... Did. Did she hurt the house's feelings. Is that what happened??

"..... Did I hurt your feelings?" she asks, patting... a wall. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Well, I really appreciated you changing stuff as I wanted. And the rug you picked out was cute." The wrong color, and kind of tiny, but cute. "The plants outside were nice, too. Sorry, it's my fault, I should have specified better in the first place. We'll try again tomorrow, okay?" She is grungy and disgusting and exhausted and desperately needs a shower and then bed.

It is: Wednesday!

It sure is! She goes through her morning routine, pauses to give the house a brief instruction on how it should update itself ("One window right here, please," with a wall pat on the wall above the kitchen sink), then heads in to work a bit early.

Because, see, she thinks she might've figured out her problem. It seems like, with how the changing spin works, she might've been overthinking things, and demanding that the stuff around her fit into her sense of 'what should work.' Instead, she will try just sort of... aiming at what thing she wants to get, without looking at it too closely. Just letting things flow, while she thinks about other stuff. (What she thinks about is gardening. She kind of wants to see if she can get copies of all of the plants available here at work, to grow at home. It could end up being useful, and also, many of them are very pretty.)

Well, she doesn't get much time to think about gardening because before she knows it it's a few hours later and she's holding some kind of device she has vague memories of having made.

eeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!!! She's so smart!!

It's a scanner, right? Because if it is, then she wants to go scan things.