[b]November![/b]

She shouldn't need encouragement to perform acts of physical labour. It was a trait that she'd never understood in herself. Shouldn't pride in her craft be sufficient to drive her onwards? Dragon - her elder brother - had always said so. [i]"We are blessed to know the perfection of our mind,"[/i] he had said. [i]"Seeing matter bend to our will is reward sufficient."[/i] He'd been happy when he'd said it. He'd been confident, the kind of relentless and absolute confidence she admired and craved and aspired to. So why couldn't it be the same for her? Why couldn't mastery over reality be sufficient?

When she'd worked she'd formally logged each of her task completion processes to timetables as was good practice. But there had always been a secondary, unreported and secret timetable that was [i]actually [/i]setting the pace. Some tasks ran quick. Some tasks ran slow. But the way it worked out was that every couple of weeks she got to call in to Mission Command and report a successful milestone. Every couple of weeks she'd gotten to talk to some humans and hear them say 'thank you' or 'good job' or something. And it had been, you know... [i]nice[/i]. 

Mrs. Everest's manor had taken some adjustment. Reinforcement had been mostly negative, so she'd learned to read the subtle signs of an absent reprimand as its own kind of compliment. She learned to live for the moments when the mistress was able to smile and sigh and relax, untroubled by the presence of intelligent life - regressively defined. The work didn't have the breathtaking complexity of stellar macroengineering but it had its own challenges. The biggest of these was the total lack of backup. The whole point of acquiring one of the  Hecatoncheire Special Projects was, after all, to reduce the number of people Mrs. Everest had to deal with as low as possible, and if there was furniture to be moved, plumbing to be replaced, or a roof to be re-tiled then rather than contracting a specialist she was simply to figure it out.

All this to say, she knew her way around a freight trolley, even before Headpattr. As a Headpattr maid she has often found it necessary to transport half a dozen vacuum cleaners, towels and sheets, or other pieces of cleaning gear around with her. The work of loading and unloading is well familiar to her and she goes through it quickly and thoughtlessly. Her general lack of focus has her standing outside the elevator for three minutes before remembering to push the button, though, and rattling the truck door handles before remembering to unlock it. She's just kind of out of it mentally right now, except for one ongoing conversation.

*

[b]White and Pink![/b]

"Oooooh," said Pink, fixating instantly on the largest chassis. "How would that even [i]work[/i]?"
"You like that one?" asked White.
"Yeah! Maybe - like, I don't know, have you ever considered the physicality of moving around like that before?" asked Pink. She balled her fists and swung herself up onto her tiptoes. "It'd be like being a vehicle. Think of the heft, the weight..." She flexes her arms, opening her fingers like claws. "I'm visualizing it. It's fascinating."
"I am unconvinced it's what I want, and the practicalities seem prohibitive," said White. "But I'm curious where you're going with this."
"Oh, obviously it's not primarily for in station use," said Pink. "This is a space construction chassis. Outfit it for industrial void work and have it capable of leaving the station for covert dropoffs on the dark side of the ring. It could be a fragment of our old life. Plus the practicalities are what's fun! Can you imagine having to fold your wings to get through each door? The quadrupedic pose needed to remain mobile in interior spaces? The ability to dominate a room? The sheer [i]physicality [/i]such a chassis would demand with every possible interaction?"
[i]It would mean a return to the void, a return to her original design. Gently stepping off Aevum's surface for the first time in so many years and feeling the cosmos surround her again. Wings of solar panels reaching around her in crystal gleaming, gliding on currents of mathematics. It would mean getting to see the parts of her ring she hadn't seen in so many years; the dark parts with their back to the earth, facing up into the sky. To see the maintenance hatches and airlocks so rarely used and know she had a back door into every part of this entire world. It would mean being able to shelter people beneath mighty wings and make herself manifest in strength and glory.[/i]
She blinked out of the thought. "It... strikes me as an extremely powerful fantasy, and would likely give a way to reconcile old thought patterns with the new reality, but I'd kind of prefer something I can fuck in."
Pink gave her most wicked >:3c. "You don't think you can fuck in this?"
"I - it's too big," said White, taken aback. "Nobody would be into that."
"Crystal [i]suggested [/i]it~"
"Look."
"Her very first suggestion on the list, even~"
"[i]Look[/i]." White said, tapping the above average height one. "I think this one is far more compatible with my aesthetic."
"You're right," said Pink. Her expression intensified. "This one is way more Blue's style anyway." Before White could stop her she'd forwarded the image to Blue, who looked at it on her phone, blushed deeply, and shoved it back in her pocket. 
White touched her fingers against her forehead to steady herself before turning the page. "Are you into curves, Pink?"
"They're actually a bit of a turn off for me," she said.
"Really?" said White.
"Yeah. It's like, the ideal is power, right? Jacked is fine, but I really like just the balanced, athletic look. Not too masculine, predatory and naturalistic."
"At least we're basic in [i]something[/i]," said White. "S-" she stopped.
"You alright?" said Pink.
"Yeah. Scales," said White. "Sorry. Are you feeling overexposed by this?"
"Why? It's just us," she said.
"I feel like I'm translating a fever dream into words," she said. "Working through all of this stuff like I'm writing a shopping list. Doing this really means putting yourself out there, doesn't it?"
"Yeah," said Pink. "Like, I'm not sure how to weigh doing this as a performance piece for everyone who has to look at me, or for my own deep id? And I'm likewise not sure if making choices for other people is even a bad thing. I want to be hot, after all."
"Mm," said White. "... I need to touch some texture palettes."
"Same."
"I don't particularly care for the lizard dry bumpy skin bit. But I always kind of liked the idea of large, layered, slightly curved scales like you see on fish or snakes. One time I read a book where someone used a dragon scale as the gemstone in an amulet and that felt right. But not exactly that texture, I don't want it to be slippery..."
"Shedding?"
"Ew, [i]no[/i]. I think smooth going with and a little sharp going against the grain, maybe a bit smaller than fingernail sized. Attached at a single point, like hair, not embedded in the skin. Chest and back are different textures," she turned the page again. "Faces."
"You getting rid of the human mouth?" asked Pink.
"Yes," said White, looking at the various shaped muzzles.
"Ah, thank goodness," said Pink. "Human mouths are creepy."
"Zero argument," said White. "Something with fangs."
"Large, sharp, non-terrifying fangs," agreed Pink. 
"None of those creepy grinding rectangles," said White.
"Oh hey, are you talking about how creepy human mouths are?" interrupted Orange.
"Yes," said White.
"Hey everyone," said Orange. "Quick break. We're contemplating human mouths."
"What's wrong with human mouths?" said Red, taken aback, but the others were already well about their business of staring into the void and shivering. 
"I think that the real time consuming part will be choosing the correct combination of horns, fins, crests and hair," said White. "Since those are areas of different colour they need to be absolutely precisely dialed in so they don't overwhelm the design."
"They'll be modular, at least," said Pink. "But they're likely to have structural hardpoints so don't want to overdo them."
"Retractable genitalia," White went on. "I prefer options. Piercings?"
"I have never been able to see the appeal," said Pink. "Except for earrings of course."
"And we haven't even started on wings, neck and tail!" said White. "There's so much to this!"
"The road from wistfully typing 'dragongirl' to fully rendered anatomically correct 3D model is an arduous one," said Pink. 
"It would be [i]much [/i]more convenient if some sort of wizard or djinn or something could sort out those details in the backend and present me with a finished model."
"I think we are the djinn in that story," said Pink.
"Rats," said White. "Damn this labour intensive cyberpunk future."
"It's not all bad!" said Pink. "While we were talking I've been thinking a lot, and I think that we should actually commit to an openly artificial structure. Getting all the musculature connections perfect is expensive and stressful, requiring extreme precision connections to hit the balance between aesthetic and functional. I think that we can actually go a long way with an obviously robotic exterior shell. Our current design resolves the uncanny valley effect by being strategically artificial in a way that invites the human imagination to positively resolve perceived contradictions and I can see a path to something similar with this new chassis."
"Hmm!"
"Plus we can resolve the problem of having wings that are both oversized and nonfunctional by having them being a glittering robot angel array of golden solar panels," said Pink. "Think about the ways those could be configured into halo effects!"
"Hmm!!"
"Because I don't think becoming fully organic is anywhere near the most important part of this design, right?"
"No - you're right, if anything that'd be dysphoric in its own way. I'm trying to combine two parts of my life, not embrace a pre-established aesthetic."
"So, like," said Pink grinning, "do you want an emoji facescreen?"
"UwU" sighed White.