Totally Just a Fishing Maid

Working title: Gone Fishin'
The title I ultimately decided on is a play on card names in Tanto Cuore. It's essentially Dominion but with anime maids--check it out if that sounds interesting. What's relevant here is that the maid cards in that game have brief descriptors: Cooking Maid, Laundry Maid, Treasury Maid, Nap Maid, and so on. So I'm following that pattern with Totally Just a Fishing Maid, because that's exactly who and what she is.

The image I used is of an original character done by whoisshe on Pixiv (first or fourth image, they're apparently identical).

After deciding on Finland for the maid's cover story's birthplace, I looked up a bunch of Finnish averages to construct her completely plausible backstory.

Thanks to Akane and OmniScribbler for beta reading and additional contributions. Additional thanks to Wikisource for providing scans and a (mostly) complete plain text transcription of the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

All persons depicted are fictitious, not owned by me, and above the age of 18.

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TRANSCRIPT:
"Master, I have retrieved tonight's supper from the river."
"Oh, fantastic! You got a beautiful salmon, nice work! Can't wait for... uh..."
"... Master? Is something the matter?"
"Your hook looks completely unused. For that matter, where's your bait?"
"I didn't require either to catch this fish."
"H-how did you catch it, if not with the rod and bait?"
"I just reached in and grabbed it. I actually moved fast enough that the splashing water missed me. Have I failed to meet your expectations, master?"
"I-I-- no, it's just... mind-boggling that you're capable of something like that!"
"Master, I honestly can't tell if you're mocking me or severely underestimating me. Are you not capable of simply reaching into a river and pulling out a fish? I had assumed you asked me to do it since you're paying for my services, but could it be that you actually aren't capable of a task as mundane as that?"
"I... well, I wouldn't ordinarily, but... I suppose it's possible, at least? I'm not sure what to say, honestly. Uh, where are you from again?"
"I was born in Helsinki, Finland. My mother, currently age 59, is a shop sales assistant, while my father, currently age 61, is a heavy truck and lorry driver. I am 28 years old, starting this job as your maid immediately after finishing college."
"Uh... okay. I didn't really ask about most of that, but okay. Are you... being defensive? You seem a bit more tense now than you were a moment ago."
"...I don't know what you're talking about. My blood pressure, respiration, and electrodermal activity are all perfectly normal and relaxed."
"And that's another thing. The way you talk is really, um... encyclopedic, I guess? It's... odd."
"Is it really so odd that I've read every encyclopedia? What are they there for, if not to be read?"
"I'm not sure we're on the same page here. It-- w-wait, every encyclopedia?"
"Oh yes. Every encyclopedia--every document deemed worth saving, really--across every medium from as far back as six thousand years ago. It's possible that I've missed a few, but I figure what I don't read about I can experience firsthand."
"Y-you're pulling my leg, aren't you?"
"No...? I'm holding the fish I caught with one hand and the rod with the other. What I am doing is speaking to you. If you're skeptical, then I can prove it. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, volume 17, slightly past halfway down the left column of page 646: 'MAP, a representation, on a plane and a reduced scale, of part or the whole of the earth’s surface. If specially designed to meet the--'"
"Okay, okay, okay, I believe you! I can't believe it, but I believe... you? I... never mind, you know what I mean. How are you able to read and remember so much?"
"The same way any human would, of course. The vast majority of written works are publicly available online, so scanning and processing those en masse is laughably easy--hundreds of petabytes in milliseconds, everything in minutes. Strictly-offline works, of course, call for a bit of research. Find where the work is stored and how the location is structured--more likely than not, that information is online. Then teleport there, observe the work long enough to mentally process it, and teleport back. The process can get tedious with my upper limit of only 65,535 active duplicate bodies, but it's still more efficient than reaching into a body of water for sustenance. Did you hire me in hopes of increasing that efficiency? Because the solution there is not to continue feeding the curse, but to eliminate it at its source."
"...I need a... a nap."
"Of course, master. Shall I prepare your supper now or preserve it in temporal stasis for later?"
"...I don't feel qualified to answer that. Please use your best judgment... and talk like a normal person when I wake up. Pretend if you must, just... do whatever it takes, alright?"
"Yes, master. Sleep well."