Jim debates giving the full technical explanation, but there's a lot of technological background knowledge needed to completely understand it, so he settles on a more simplified version that'll make sense to someone without that kind of knowledge. "It's kind of similar to transporters, except it's not moving anything from one place to another. It converts energy into matter, based on preprogrammed recipes. There's a lot of stuff it can't do right, like fresh fruit, and it can't make anything where it doesn't know the formula, so nothing too exotic."