As you probably imagihe breadth of knowledge a-year-old has about history isn’t great. Despite that, and the fact that Yulia liked to go on random tas, Alexander did actually learn some things.

  He learned about a war that took pce. Yulia only knew of this war because her father had served aboard a ship but the war had ended before she was born. He was curious as to the timeline of this war. Maybe it would expin how he ended up out here. Alexander would have liked to ask the girl some more pointed questions about her father, but he thought it wouldn’t be very appropriate sidering she was an orphan. However, the girl didn’t get upset whealked about her father... Perhaps some other time.

  The girl knew quite a bit about the station, especially when it was first founded. He chuckled internally as she uhusiastically recited a limerick, probably meant to help youudents remember the date better.

  “In Gliese six-six-seven, so fine,

  Stands a station that truly does shine.

  Built iy-two eighty-nine,

  In the os, it firmly aligns,

  A bea of space, so divine!

  The limerick was awful, but it did give him two pieces of information he didn’t have before. The system he was in and the year it was structed. Was it worth it? The jury was still out on that as he tinued listening to the girl's a on a game of tag that seemed to have no end and no beginning that she could recall. The game even had its ow of rules apart from ames of tag. The tagged person couldn’t retag the person who tagged them, and they also couldn’t tag anyone on that day. The tag had to be a surprise. Which made the person that was it, have a much harder time.

  Despite that, Yulia said all the children loved it. He decided not to point out the fact that the game seemed purposefully desigo teach kids critical thinking skills and troubleshooting. What better way to teach that than to have the kids do it themselves and not realize it? If he ever found the person who thought up that idea, he would have to shake their hand and gratute them.

  Eventually, the girl started to go quiet and fidget. “Is something the matter?” He asked in genuine .

  She paused and then shook her head slowly. “Just hungry.”

  “Oh. Well, if you o go a, don’t let me stop you.”

  She shook her head agaiomach rumbling slightly. “It’s not time for the evening meal.”

  Alexander checked on the clock he kept in his mental space. It was after one, and the girl had been here for a few hours already. “Did you miss your lunch?” he asked, hoping he hadn’t kept the girl here only for her to have missed food. She was small enough that he doubted she could really afford to do that often.

  “What’s lunch?” she asked in fusion.

  “…Uh… It’s the meal between breakfast and dinner.”

  She giggled at that. “Those are silly names. We get m meals and evening meals. You must be super rich if you eat three times a day. Are you super rich?” she asked, her eyes going wide like she had seen a uni.

  He made his holographic face, ar eyebrow as he waved one of his arms around the room. “As you see, I’m fabulously wealthy.”

  She giggled again at that, only for her stomable once more.

  Yulia did a good job of ign the rumbling but it was too much for Alexander. “Wait here a moment, I’ll be back.” Before he stepped out, he turo the girl who was already standing oool and eying up what he had been w on. “And don’t touything.”

  The girl, looking like she had gotten caught with her hand in a cookie jar, smiled but sat back down. “I won’t.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  A few mier, Alexander returned with a simple berry-fvored protein bar from one of the vending maes on the main passage.

  The girl’s eyes lit up when she saw the colorful red er. He ha to her. Alexander was afraid her eyes would pop out of their sockets as she held the ed snack.

  “Don’t get used to it,” he muttered and moved behind the desk. “Your rumbling stomach was just disturbing my train of thought.”

  If the girl heard him, she didn’t respond. She was too busy fighting the foil er to get at the tents within.

  He sighed again, plug the treat away from the girl, and carefully peeled open one side before handing it back to her.

  “Thank you!” she mumbled around a mouthful as she tried to bite into the hard bar. Which robably made more difficult by the fact she was missing a few of her baby teeth.

  He shook his head aurned his focus to his project, tuning out the girl's noisy eating. At least her stomach had finally stopped grumbling. It was unfortuhat the orphans only got two meals a day but he didn’t have the resources to do anything about that. Nor did he think it was his pce to butt in. Holy, most of the kids he had seen looked healthy enough, if a bit small and skinny. It wasn’t the skinniness of malnutrition though. So it was likely that whoever took care of them, did their best.

  After finishing her meal, Yulia jabbered on for another half hour befetting fidgety again and wandering off.

  It robably for the best. Alexander didn’t dislike the girl. But he couldn’t sit here aertain her all day either. Hopefully, she would soon lose i in him and move on to other activities.

  Not long after the girl left, Alexander fihe thing he had been w on. It grade to his prihe thing about the 3D printers of the twenty-fourth tury was that they were nothing like the ones from his time. Why should they be? There had been nearly four hundred years of improvements and tweaks to the process.

  The only thing that remained from the early twenty-first tury prio the one he used now was their relian building in yers. But that was all. The new printers were faster, sleeker, and could print multiple materials all at the same time. They still left thin yer lines as they printed but it was nearly impossible to tell. The lines looked more like a slight texturing than anything else. You really had to look with a magnifying gss to see the truth. When he realized this, he looked at some other items and found pretty much everything with plex geometry rinted. Although you could tell better processes had been used for the inal parts.

  Alexander had been exposed to real manufactured goods from both his previous life and through his time w for Yuri. Not everything rinted, certain items likely still o be maed, or required specific sedary processes that printers just couldn’t perform.

  One of those processes was called zero-g printing. The teique had been covered in an article in one of Yuri’s old manufacturing publications. It certainly wasn’t something he could replicate ihe station, assuming he could even figure out the method without purchasing a likely very expensive manual on the subject, but he thought he might be able to fake something simir if the name of the process was accurate.

  The only reasohought this ossible was thanks in part to all the manuals Yuri owned. Humanity, it seems, had only retly discovered artificial gravity. And by retly, maybe i hundred years.

  Alexander had parsed this out due to the publications avaible for sale. The articles he found on the subjely dated back about seventy years. And the things were horrifically expensive. Like in the billions of credits for one dot; that may or may not have what you were looking for. It was clear whoever had discovered the key to artificial gravity, didn’t want anyone else pying with it.

  That was fine, Alexander wasn’t ied in artificial gravity. Well, that wasn’t true. He was, just nht now. He had learned a bit about the subject based on ship subsystems. Mostly from older models of ships that called for a capacitor buffer.

  He had thought it strao require a capacitor buffer at the time but the more knowledge he unlocked, the more he began to piece things together. It was odd. He wasn’t sure if this mental acuity was something that came from his time as a flesh and blood human or something strictly from the body he was housed in.

  While he had muted emotions, it was still hard sometimes not to let the existential dread flood through his mind. Was he still himself? Or was he some amalgamation of man and mae? Did it matter? Was he truly any less Alexander?

  He let those thoughts flit through his mind as he installed the small interrupter he had built. If his theory on how the gravity pting funed was correct, this ring of copper and circuits should shield the area around it from the effects of gravity. Or at least the artificial kind.

  Alexander clicked the st po in pd plugged in the wire to the trol module. Theepped bad flicked the swit. There was a blur followed by a loud metallic *WHOOMP*.

  One of his articuted hands rose up and made a fist before thumping lightly oop of his desk. The device had worked… sort of. He turo where his broken printer y crumpled in a heap against the wall, a wall that now sported a nice-sized dent.

  It seems he only partially uood the cept of artificial gravity. And while he already had an idea of how to alleviate this issue, this mistake was going to be expensive. With an annoyed huff, he walked down the hall and purchased a new printer. His rept was a much cheaper model than his previous one, but it was all he had the spare credits for. Selling his old printer for scrap to the statioer ed him a small return. Just enough to keep him running for an additional month.

  He decided not to do any more testing on his actual printer. Instead, he bought a simple mp and used that to test with.

  It was a good thing he had because it took three more tries to get the frequency correct so it would stop ripping the bolts out and throwing the mp across the room.

  By then another job had e iing him enough moo test his ges on the printer without w too much.

  The test went well. The printer didn’t break the anchor bolts that held it to the floor, and he was able to print something without anything going wrong with his device. However, that’s when the sed issue reared its head. The printer software was desigo pensate for a certain amount of gravity. It took Alexawo grueling days to adjust the settings to get the prio fun the way it did before his little update, which wasn’t great. No matter what he did, he realized this much cheaper printer did not have the ability to pensate for his improvement.

  With a defeated sigh, he removed his upgrade aed the printer settings. His vision of improving the printer would have to wait until he could purchase a better model.