The chimera's response was to look over, head tilted slightly, fixing the young woman with a pair of off-colored eyes. She offered a small, polite smile.

"Before I was here? In a manner of speaking. Long before the Empire decided I was best for hauling boxes, a significant portion of my work involved listening to things that other people were not supposed to be able to hear, everything from simple surveillance to pilfering data from devices. Having seen the aim of the task at hand, I thought it prudent to educate myself as best I could. Communication can come in an amazing variety of forms, after all, from smoke signals and flags to what amount to portable brains that speak to one another in highly complex code."

She shrugged, still holding a large book which was of all things, on electromagnetism.

"I'm..." She paused a moment, considering. "Oki Korobase."