I learned two things over the next year.
One: "integrated with user's body" does not mean "telepathic control."
Two: baby hands are a hate crime.
By nine months I could roll, by ten I could pull myself up, and by eleven I could wobble along the rails like a tiny drunk sailor. None of that helped me open a menu. The Thaum Pilot 5 would only obey if I summoned it—two slow taps over my sternum with the knuckles of my right hand—and even then I had to operate it like a normal device. Stylus and all.
Which is a hilarious thing to realize when your grip strength tops out at "mashed pea."
I finally got consistent about two weeks ago. Enough coordination to pinch the stylus, enough balance to sit cross-legged under a crib during afternoon nap, enough patience to peck letters without jabbing my own nose. The caretakers think I'm an unusually quiet toddler. They're not wrong. I'm just also an unusually quiet toddler with a palm-sized productivity suite from beyond.
Today's hideout is behind the toy bin, where the shadow from the window drapes a neat triangle across the floorboards. I tap my chest twice.
The Thaum Pilot 5 blooms into my hands with a soft warmth, like someone pressed a mug of tea into my palms.
> [Resume]
Foreign World Memo Services™
"Hello, old friend," I whisper, which in practice sounds like "El-o fren."
I thumb open Memo. The list has grown enough to require scrolling. Seeing it all lined up like this makes the last two weeks feel real.
STORIES – Little Red Riding Hood (partial; missing 2nd woods scene)
STORIES – Stone Soup (nearly complete)
STORIES – Hare & Tortoise (can't remember ending phrasing)
STORIES – Three Brothers & a Bridge (memory patch; needs polish)
LYRICS – Lullaby: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (full)
LYRICS – Country Roads (missing Verse 2 line 3)
LYRICS – Scarborough Fair (partial; fix chorus order)
NOTES – Orphanage Roster (Room A)
NOTES – Prices (Market Street)
NOTES – Caretaker Schedules (approx.)
IDEAS – "Trading Cards" (shinobi portraits?)
IDEAS – "Serial Story" (weekly cliffhangers?)
MAP – Orphanage Ground Floor (v0.3)
MAP – Alley to Market (v0.1)
I tap Little Red Riding Hood. The first lines fill the screen in my crooked toddler print:
> Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a village near the forest. Whenever she went out, the little girl wore a red riding cloak, so everyone in the village called her Little Red Riding Hood.
It's not perfect. I can't remember exactly how the grandmother's house is described, and I'm pretty sure there's a second encounter with the wolf in the woods before he reaches the cottage. But the bones are there. The tone is there.
The plan isn't to make these "ninja-friendly" or sprinkle in shuriken. The originals were popular for a reason. You don't tamper with the good stuff. All I'm doing is rebuilding them from the scattered bricks in my head and hoping the walls still stand.
Earlier this week, I tested Stone Soup on "Loud Baby" during morning play. I crouched beside his blocks and spun it slow, voice low enough that the caretakers thought I was babbling. By the halfway mark, his fists had gone still. By the ending, he was leaning against me, staring like I'd just pulled candy from thin air. Good sign. The rhythm's still there.
Back to the list. LYRICS – Twinkle is complete—easy win. Country Roads is almost there; I hum the missing phrase and the caretakers hum back without realizing it's from my world. Scarborough Fair is a mess. I'll fake it until I remember.
I open NOTES – Prices (Market Street). Numbers stare back: rice, lamp oil, needles, paper, string. I've been creeping down there in caretaker shadows, counting coins at the stalls while pretending to chase dust motes. Every few days I adjust the entries. A pattern is starting to form—market day swells, rain dips.
I nudge over to MAP – Orphanage Ground Floor (v0.3). The shaky outline of our building spreads out, straighter than my hands deserve. Weeks ago I learned to set a scale—crib rail = one meter—so my lines stop wobbling into nonsense. Doors, cupboards, the creaky third board near the window: all marked. MAP – Alley to Market (v0.1) is a dotted line with two hazard notes: "dog naps here" and "slippery step."
The stylus shakes once. I take a breath and steady it against my index finger like a little chisel. Time to review the rest.
I close Memo and tap Foreign World Timekeeping Services™. The clock ticks in tiny, smug stability. Alarms, timers, stopwatch—blessedly precise. I've been using the stopwatch to time nap cycles and caretaker rounds. Turns out Mrs. Sumi does everything in multiples of five. If she were a lock, she'd open on the first try.
Next: Foreign World Weather Services™. Today's line reads:
> Konoha – Orphanage District
Current: Light overcast, 9°C
Next hour: drizzle begins at 14:03, ends at 14:31. Wind shift at 14:12 to NE (6–8 km/h).
Last week I thought "to the minute" was marketing fluff. Then I watched the first drop hit the window at 14:03 while three babies sneezed in chorus. I haven't decided what to do with that yet. But there's money in knowing things before other people do. There's always money in that.
Foreign World Calculation Services™ opens to a simple keypad. It also hides a unit converter three taps deep. I've been teaching myself the local measures from eavesdropping—kan, monme, ryo—and marrying them to the modern ones in my head. The app doesn't care; it adds cleanly either way. I don't need fireworks from this. Just honesty.
Foreign World Contact Services™ is a neat, empty address book. I've started filling it anyway:
SUMI, caretaker – soft hands; sings off-key; schedule: 6–2
GEN, caretaker – pockets candy; schedule: 2–10
"Loud Baby" – crib 3, likes blanket edge
"Kicker" – crib 5, enemy of ribs
MERCHANT – Rice Stall – right of fountain, haggles hard
MERCHANT – Lamp Oil – honest face, cheap wicks
No birthdays, no addresses. But each line has a Notes field, and Notes can become dossiers. Dossiers become leverage. And one day, leverage becomes rent.
Foreign World Calendar Services™ stares up at me like a dare. I haven't touched it since the bureaucrat said "haunted," and not out of superstition. I just don't like black boxes. But information is information.
I crack it open.
A clean month view fills the screen. The title bar reads:
> Year 61 After Founding – March
My finger hovers. Empty squares—except one. Two days from now, a faint gray dot. I tap it.
> Reminder: Don't open the window.
I stare. I definitely didn't write that. The caretakers don't even know this thing exists. The note has no time, no author, no extra details. Just the sentence. I close the calendar slowly and feel a tickle at the base of my skull, the way you do when someone whispers your name from another room.
"Later," I tell the device. "We'll dance later."
Foreign World Map Services™ is kinder. The app doesn't pretend to know where I am; it just holds straight lines for me when I can't. It lets me layer my observations. Distances look respectable when I assign a reference. No magic. Just… useful. You can build an empire on useful.
Finally, Foreign World Translation Services™. The description line is excellent corporate nonsense: Converts written or spoken input between any mutually compatible languages supported by this device. Input accepted via stylus, touch, or voice-to-text capture. There's room there, like a door left on the latch.
I've kept my experiments small: nursery words, market words, lullabies. English to "Common," Common to English, the occasional test in a dialect the caretakers slap my hand for mangling. The voice-to-text works if I over-enunciate like a children's show host. It garbles if I mumble through baby teeth.
I almost asked it to translate something that wasn't a language. Almost. But I can feel it—the moment I shove at that door, the slog begins. Weeks. Months. And my secret stops being a toy and becomes a project. Projects eat time. I have four years until Concealment Mode ends. Projects can wait until I have pockets.
Somewhere in the room a baby coughs, then hiccups, then surrenders to sleep. The afternoon light stripes the floor through thin curtains; dust hangs in slow galaxies. I set an alarm for twenty minutes and tuck the stylus into the loop like it's a ritual.
I back out to Memo and add one last file:
IDEAS – Rain Day Services (laundry? umbrellas? hot broth?)
The list looks good. It looks like progress.
Footsteps squeak down the hall. I tap my chest twice. The Thaum Pilot 5 dissolves into warmth that spreads and fades, leaving only the faintest weight where it rests out of sight.
I roll onto my side, pull the blanket to my chin, and let my eyelids sag. Being a genius schemer is exhausting when your legs are marshmallows.
Tomorrow I'll test the weather line. The day after, maybe I'll peek at the window note. And one day—one day soon—I'll stop treating "mutually compatible" like a fence and start treating it like a challenge.
For now, I nap.
The alarm will wake me. It always does.