The next couple of days were busier than before. When Penny went to the new office she saw new orders from the companies that previously sold their toy robots. There were also a lot of pre orders for the hover board and scooters on their online shop and a lot of orders for the robots that were newly added. She also found out that ever since the press conference there have been a lot of calls from sport equipment shops from all around the country wanting to sell their products. And looking at how busy everyone was, she started thinking it was time to go on a hiring spree.

-I think it is time we hire more people, and by we, I mean you, because I find that kind of work boring and since I am bored I plan to go in my laboratory and thinker with some new ideas I have. Also, In the last few days I completed the finishing touches to the new game console, programmed a few games and am ready to test it. So find me some testers and make sure to include some legal adults for the erotic games. I will deliver 10 game consoles with all the periphery and leave you to set them up for testing. Good day and good luck.-

Next Penny visited the office of Jenny and talked with her about her plans and instructions, after which she gave her a kiss and left the building. On her way out, she noticed everyone’s transport and decided to gift them with a hover scooter each for the work they have done and to help her market the product.

When Penny arrived home, she packed 10 game consoles, chairs, haptic suits, AR/VR glasses, car wheels, game controllers and projection board and beads and called a delivery service, then immediately dimension traveled to Battle Angel Alita, first the movie and then the manga and stole their prosthetic technology and human-machine interface, and when she returned dumped them in her file archive and got to work.

The thing you have to know about Penny is, she didn’t think completely normally and instead of using the new stuff she stole for its intended purpose, she took a tongue and mouth and started studying how to make them herself. She analyzed the heat and cold sensors, the censors that differentiated taste and found some worked a lot like a spectrometer and others more like a human taste buds. But the important thing was, she found out how to make her own.

Next Penny studied a nose, ear and eye prosthetic, but found the eye and ears to be too similar to existing technology and also couldn’t think of an application as a toy, so she excluded them. The nose on the other hand, she studied very carefully and when she was done, got to designing the toy she wanted to make.

First, Penny replaced all mouths and noses of his robot toy designs with the new ones and labeled them v2.0. When he made a few more improvements to them, she would put them on the market as the next generation. Next she designed lips with teeth, which could be removed and replaced, tongue and a small container behind them that could easily be changed. She put the ability to chew and covered the entire design with spider silk to act as cheeks, skin and other necessary components. Next she did the same with the nose and added a miniature vacuum pump to simulate sniffing. Now she just needed to add an AI to the mix and teach it about taste and smell.

Penny fabricated the two toys and downloaded a simple for her, but not exactly simple for the rest of us, AI in the toys and brought them to the kitchen. She took from her fridge a lemon, from a cupboard sold and sugar, a very hot pepper and something bitter from somewhere else. She gave the mouth each taste separately to register, then washed the tongue and then continued with the next and so forth. She had a little trouble with the registering spicy, because it wasn’t exactly a taste but more of a sensation, but after a few trial and error attempts, tinkering with thee hardware and time she succeeded. Next she taught it about hot and cold, combinations of flavors and what humans found tasty and what disgusting. She also taught it that there were preferences between individuals and age groups. Every toy would need to be calibrated according to the user and what he found tasty and disgusting. At the end of the lesson she cooked 3 meals and seasoned them with different amounts of seasoning and taught the AI to differentiate too much, just right and too little. All that was left now was for the AI to taste different exotic flavors to register the combinations and she could save it and distribute it with her toys. After that she could install the technology in Aica and teach her how to cook and all her food preferences.

The nose was programmed both the same and differently. The same as in she had to let it smell all kinds of odors and chemical compounds and as differently from the tongue, which could only taste sour, salty, sweet and bitter and combine them to in different proportions and strength to create taste, smell didn’t have such base, she had to register every smell. For now she started with the most common ones in the house, burned food, different cooked foods, products, gas, flowers, soap, shampoo, perfumes, sweat, shoes, leather and more. She was going to have to make a network connection for the toys to exchange new things in a database and ask users to register them.

The next day, Penny updated the design of the hardware a few times, optimized it and then updated it again. After running simulations and finding new ways to optimize the hardware she finally decided to register it as the final version and got to work on integrating it in Aica. She didn’t bother to design a stomach that could digest the food and turn it into electricity and instead just made a compartment that she could empty any time she wanted. Penny updated Aica’s database with flavors and smells she had already registered and after finishing the installation, got to teaching Aica what she liked as a flavor and what she hated. Then she downloaded every teaching video on the internet from how to cut vegetables, to filleting fish and cutting meat. How to deep fry, use a wok and flip pancakes, to making dough and making. Now all she had to do was practice and for Penny to taste test her creations and evaluate them.

Penny didn’t think that her technology was stronger than police dogs and could sniff guns and drugs, or that if trained well it could replace seasoned tasters with perfect evaluations or tell if food had something you are allergic to before you tasted it. She just thought that it would be fun if dolls that could be fed could make faces from good or bad food or that kids could try to feed a first bite of a meal to the mouth, instead of trying it themselves to see if it was tasty or not. The kids could also play at dentist and clean the teeth after meals or change them if they spoiled. The nose could tell when dinner was ready and if it would be good from the smell or if mom burned it again. After all Penny was running a toy company, so she was making toys. That they could be used for other things was just a bonus.

The next day, Penny patented the new sensors and after that she went to the office to see how everyone was doing. She also brought scooters for everyone or so she thought. When she entered the office, she saw a bunch of people in a line waiting to be interviewed. It seems the job ads were successful and a lot of people were responding, even thought they were just a startup. But who could blame them in today’s job economy. When Penny entered Jenny’s office she caught her just as she was sighing deeply and tiredly.

-You look tired. How are you feeling?-

-And who do you think is to blame? You just dumped two incredible products in our hands and left us to deal with the aftermath.-

-Actually it is three products and I just completed another one. How many testers did you hire? I need them to test my newest toy and tell me their opinions.-

Jenny sighed more deeply, but resigned to her fate and continued the conversation after composing herself a little.

-You told us you were bored, but I hoped that meant you were just saying it or hoping for a date or something, but I should have known better. So, what did you make this time? A jetpack, a fully functioning Voltron robot, or maybe an invisible jet?-

-Don’t be silly Jenny, a jetpack is not a toy and a kid could kill itself with one. A Voltron robot is copyrighted and how could you play with something you couldn’t see.-

-You aren’t disagreeing you can make them! Hah, so what DID you make?-

-Just two simple toys, a tasting mouth and smelling nose. They work like human ones and can taste and smell food and other things and if you calibrate them to your preferences they can tell you if something is tasty or smell good and the opposite disgusting and smelly. It can be sold by itself or we can make dolls that can taste their food and smell when they poop themselves and start crying. I need a few testers to test the product and register new tastes and smells in the database because I don’t exactly have the time and it is too repetitive work for me.-

Jenny sighed again and relaxed her body on the backrest of her chair. She suspected that this was also not as simple as Penny made it out to be, but what could she do about it when it was already invented.

-We are still hiring and there are already a few groups of testers taking turns on the game consoles, but we should have a few available. Send us a few samples and I will tell them to test them and work on registering tastes and smells. Do you have any preferences on who we hire to work in the company?-

-More secretaries, PR people and marketing. For now we need more testers and people for the web store and server support. Don’t hire technicians or R&D people, I have that covered. Maybe someone who could design, arts major or something, because I am too busy with the technical aspects to worry about how beautiful the product is.-

-I will tell the others. Maybe in a few days when we have hired more people and things calm down we could have another date. I am wondering what the present you made for me is. I can’t wait to find out.-

Penny blushed when she heard that, but kept her composure on the surface. She stood up, kissed Jenny and then left the office. On her way out she left the scooters she brought with her to Patricia and asked her to distribute them to the original staff.

When Penny got home, she quickly went back to the lab and fueled by lust she made a few quick changes to the project for Jenny, then she fabricated a prototype and then locked herself in her room and tested it the entire night with different degrees of success. In the morning she put the model in a simulation and left the optimization and improvement to the AIs after sharing a few details that could make it better and a few that could should be modified or removed entirely. And now that that was taken care of, she could start planning her third date with Jenny and with a little luck, what she would do to her during the night.