Jon laughed as they both read the instructions. "Parts? Give me a break. You couldn't make a girl by putting together parts. It doesn't make any sense. We just open up the kit and it works like the replicator, except it's single function and it has a bigger open space, once we open it up."
Jon and Karyn began to unstack the boxes and put the kit together. The boxes were strangely heavy; they had to contain enough mass to make what Jon specified, after all. They could replenish some of the mass by using water, but they'd also need a certain amount of organic material.
The centerpiece of the kit was a box that had an even heavier core in it, labelled "computer core". There were also some wires, some more pieces of metal, and several plastic panels. The plastic panels fit in the pieces of metal to make a sort of hollow tube bigger than the Replomat itself, though containing much more empty space.
Jon, following the instructions, turned on the kit. It went through a bootup process and said through the computer link, "Self-check successful."
"By the way," said Jon, "there's something I've been wondering. Why does a freeware download with no license, usage, or royalty fees have a trademark and a registration symbol on it?"
The machine didn't reply.
"Replomat, why does a freeware download have a trademark and a registration symbol?"
"This unit is programmed to use trademark and copyright symbols unless specific instructions are in a program to do otherwise. This may lead to some non-trademarked items getting trademarks by mistake, if the programmer inserted no instructions concerning them."
"I can't believe it really called itself 'this unit'. All right. Now, let's start up this kit...."
"Wait a minute," said Karyn. "Replomat, who else has used the kit?"
