Cheri was the world's smartest koala, at least she thought she was. She lived alone, though, in the Bluegrass Zoo where she was known as the cute little koala that people just came to look at. Not even her zoo neighbors were good to talk too, since the meerkats were only interested in digging tunnels (although that had a benefit to her). And the other neighbors, well Cheri suspected that the sea lions were up to something nefarious given how often they huddled together and seemed to be laughing. She was the only koala in her exhibit, unfortunately.
The zoo's owner didn't seem interested in getting her a companion, not even another herbivore. Cheri wasn't sure why; her enclosure surely had plenty of space for a friend or two. However, the owner was more interested in other animals. Sometimes they were off training the sea lions, dolphins, and belugas for some show. And other times, they were at the whole other end of the zoo working on some ambitious exhibit. They were keeping what animal would go there under wraps, but she was sure it wasn't a massive biome for koalas.
Being the world's smartest koala, Cheri found ways to spend her time productively. It started with borrowing (so to speak) her zookeeper's phone to order a laptop for herself. Using the zoo's free wireless, Cheri joined the Acme Online University in order to teach herself many things: biology, computer programming, and more. The university didn't care that she was a koala. In fact, they praised her paper on optimizing premade machine kits to reduce failure rates. They said that it might even work for coyotes.
"This doesn't help me meet another koala," Cheri said to herself one day as she was looking for a new class to take. "There's no koala dating site. And even though the zookeeper says my cuteness is a benefit to the zoo, they won't bring in another one. They don't even mention my intelligence. Not that they know how smart I am. But I should be able to figure something out. What do I do?"
She debated between debate and philosophy, not sure if she should take one of them before the other. Unable to decide that either, she clicked over to the school's store. They often had deals on kits, which she found fun to put together. She'd made an elaborate underground secret lair for herself from the meerkats' tunnels, and then had a hilarious time buzzing them with pterodactyl drones. What would the store have on sale today?
An automated floor cleaner, an assortment of catapults, My First Hover Tank, mystery crates of various bits and bobs, a starter anvil collection, an all-in-one genetic engineering lab…
"An all in one lab?" she noticed, brightening at the offer. "Discounted heavily too, for some broken beakers and a chipped worktable. But I've got replacements for those right here. Hmm, if the zoo won't give me some friends, I'll just make them."
Delighted with that idea, Cheri quickly bought the all-in-one genetic engineering lab and brought out some robotic diggers to make sure her secret lair had enough space.
The Acme Company boasted discreet delivery, which meant that a week later, Cheri got one massive wooden crate with no labels about what it was. It had been flown to her exhibit in the dark so nobody saw it. While she did have to pay the delivery person extra to bring the crate down to the lair, it was still a secret. It took another week to get the lab together, getting bits of construction done between hours of being cute among the eucalyptus for the zoo guests. She didn't mind that down time since she could plan out her projects.
When she had the lab together, she was ready to make the best use of it. The lab included a cloning chamber, but it could do more than simple cloning. The brochure that came with the all-in-one kit described that enthusiastically. 'This chamber can clone anything, yes, but it can do much more than that! Want to specially design unquestionably loyal lab assistants to take care of the chores? You can do that! Want to save an endangered species or even revive an extinct one? You can do that (be on the look out for Grow-Your-Own-Dinosaur kits too!)! Want to create a unique 50-foot-tall kaiju monster? You'll need to bring the chamber into a large space, but you can do that! Tired of waiting around and want to create the man/woman/person-of-indeterminate-gender-and-species of your dreams? You can do that! Remember, the Acme Corporation does not discriminate and supports you in all your creative ventures.'
"I want a bunch of friends," Cheri said, setting up the cloning chamber to do what she wanted. "But I don't want to spend a lot of time setting up their personalities. It'd be more fun to be surprised. So I'm going to download my collection of dating sims into the personality selector. It should make koalas with very different personalities as a result."
After setting things up, she set the cloning chamber to run. It hadn't asked her how many koalas she wanted to create. But it couldn't be that many, right? It would run out of whatever materials it used and not make any more. She'd checked over it and it should work just fine.
It took just a minute before another koala appeared. He had fur almost covering his eyes. "Oh, hey. I'm Goth."
"I see," Cheri said. "But what's your name? I'm Cheri."
"That's my name and personality," Goth said, walking out and looking around. "I'll just find somewhere to lurk and mope, never mind me."
The cloning chamber beeped again, bringing out another koala; she had longer fur on her ears that looked a bit like pigtails. "Hello! I'm Sunny! Hmm?" Sunny looked over and saw Goth, instantly smiling. "Hey, you're cute!" She hurried off the chamber's platform and somehow tripped up on the one inch drop. "Ow."
"I don't think we're going to get along," Goth said, heading away to find somewhere to lurk.
Getting back to her feet, Sunny ran off after. "Hey, don't give up so soon! We could be great friends!"
"They're certainly going to make things interesting," Cheri said, happy with this. Then the chamber beeped again. "Hmm, another?"
Another koala appeared, and for some reason, he had a red rose with him. "Ah, what a vision of loveliness to greet me," he said, coming over and offering her the rose. "You must be a princess for how awestruck you had me at first sight!"
She blushed, but took the rose. "Um, no, I'm a self-taught scientist, not a princess. Thank you; I'm Cheri."
He gave her a charming smile. "I hope you don't mind if I treat you as a princess, dear Cheri. I am Francois, and I hope to make your every wish come true."
Giggling at that, Cheri said, "Well I wished for company, and now I have you, Goth, and Sunny..." the chamber beeped again, three times. "Um, and…?"
While there were strangely three female koalas in the chamber now, they didn't look alike. "Hey, what gives?" one of them said, coming forward. "So like, we're the three nameless NPCs who only exist to gossip background information that you should already know, and bully the heroine if she goes after a popular boy? You're a real weirdo for calling us out."
"Yeah, total weirdo," another of them said, following the other out.
"Oh dear," Cheri said. She wanted friends, not bullies. But perhaps that was a risk of using the dating sims.
Then the third one said, "Oh, but be careful with this Francois cause he's the slick hunk who flirts with every girl he sees. You'd be an idiot to go for him."
"No no no," Francois said, shaking his head. "That may be who I once was, but I swear, I've changed, heart and soul, all because of this brilliant beauty. Cheri, I won't let you down."
The first of the nameless ones narrowed her eyes. Seeing that this would be trouble, Cheri did the first thing that came to mind. "Um, hey, this will get confusing, so how about I give you names? You can be, um, Betty, Barbie, and Betsy."
"Oh nice, I love those names," Barbie said.
"Hooray, we got names!" Betsy said, twirling around.
"W-wait!" Betty said, her eyes wide. "But, but if we have names, we can't be those NPCs! Aaaaah, who are we now?!" And she started wailing.
"There there, we'll figure something out," Betsy said as she and Barbie pulled Betty away.
"Phew, I hope that keeps them from being bullies," Cheri said.
Francois was then at her side, taking her paw. "Do not mind the drama queen, she doesn't matter."
She nearly giggled again, but then the cloning chamber beeped twice. One male koala rushed out of the chamber. "Hey, pass the ball to me!" he called.
"Got it, bro!" the other said, kicking a pink soccer ball to the other. He then ran after him to get above ground so they could do soccer drills.
"I should really see about stopping this machine," Cheri said, going over to the controls to figure out what to do. But there was no off switch.
The next morning, there were a hundred and one koalas in the Bluegrass Zoo. And Cheri got called into the owner's office to explain what happened. She was very nervous about it since she had to explain about the university courses, her account with the Acme Corporation, and how the cloning chamber was a lot more efficient than she'd first judged it to be. "I was just lonely, so I did what I could," she finished with. "Sorry for messing everything up."
The owner gave her a hard look for a moment, but then relented and sighed. "Sorry, I didn't realize you were that unhappy like that. But there's too many koalas for your exhibit now. We have to adopt them off to other zoos now."
"Um, could Francois at least stay with me?" Cheri said. There were a few others from the incident who were nice and interesting, but she wanted him to stay the most.
"Sure, and we could see about reworking the exhibit for you two," the owner said. "Hmm, I didn't realize you were so intelligent. Is that machine still workable?"
"Yes, but I have to make adjustments to get exact quantities before it can be safely run again," she said.
"Could you revive some dinosaurs with it?" the owner asked, keenly interested in that. "The research lab is extremely expensive, but we can't get prehistoric grants until we have prehistoric animals.
Cheri nodded. "Sure thing, as long as the zoo is prepared to have dinosaurs, I could make some for you."
While there was an incident a year later with one of the new tyrannosauruses escaping and eating up ten guests in seconds, there wasn't much to slow down the zoo's booming fame because of Cheri's new position as the resident paleontologist.
A/N: This came out of an exchange prompt where the character was 'Koala who made 100 koalas when left unattended', after what could happen if a player gets distracted in the game. I went with a less obvious interpretation of it.