"I am not good at walk, but I can walk."

"Doctor, get this young woman some crutches!"

Crutches are provided.

"Now, let's see if we can't show you something a little more interesting than a hospital room."

"...No," she says of the crutches. "I am not good at walk, walk -" She flips through her glossary. "- with more things not good."

The crutch provided looks nonplussed.

"Okay, sure." Edith steps back into the hall and starts down it at a measured pace. "This way. You won't have to be on your feet for long."

Aly walks with a hand on the wall.

They go through a door at the end of the hall. Then down another nearly-identical hall at a perpendicular angle. Then up to a set of heavy metal doors that Aly implants identify as an 'elevator'?

"I was told you wanted to know more about the procedure you underwent after your arrival here." Sanjana speaks up, seemingly reluctantly, while Edith presses a button beside the elevator doors. "As the one who re-calibrated the implants to accommodate your atypical physiology, I might be the only one qualified to answer your questions on the subject."

She sighs.

"So. Ask away."

Aly has her prewritten questions handy. "What do they do? How do they do it? Why do you not try to ask first?"

"Their primary function is to allow you to rapidly acclimate to our language and our environmental circumstances."

The door to the elevators open. Sanjana steps inside.

"They do that by providing you with direct access to new neurological material. The new neurological material was imprinted beforehand with relevant skillsets. Your brain will gradually integrate these skillsets into its own neurons, such that with enough practice you'll be able to navigate the colonies as though you were born into them."

She holds a button on the inside of the elevator. The doors remain open.

"It's typical to establish patient consent before performing a cybernetic procedure as extensive as the one I'm describing, but given the circumstances following standard policy apparently wasn't viable."

"Why didn't you try?" asks Aly, diving into the definition of 'neurological material'.

"I was told they made several unsuccessful attempts to communicate with you before you were sedated?" Edith enters the elevator as well. "In any case, you frightened a lot of people with the way you appeared out of nowhere. A lot of people were concerned that you might be a threat, or that you might know of a threat that you couldn't communicate, and so interviewing you was made a top priority. Right after ensuring your health, of course, and the health of those you inadvertently exposed to your body's pathogens in the aftermath of you arrival."

Aly squints through more definitions. "Can I undo it if I want?" she asks.

Neurological Material (noun): organic matter relating to the anatomy and functions of nerves and the nervous system.

Pathogen (noun): a bacterium, virus, or other microorganism that can cause disease.

"I suppose it'd be possible, once you've integrated the language, to remove the implants and keep the knowledge. It'd be a pointless and risky surgery, though."

"Risky?"

Sanjana motions for Aly to enter the small room that she and Edith now stand in.

"All surgery has risks. Performing additional surgery to sites previously cut open introduces additional risk."

Aly goes into the room. "A person changed a thing about the - implants." She'd had a different placeholder word there in her script but she thinks she remembers what Sanjana called them.

Sanjana nods.

"That was me. I modified them before implantation, to better accommodate your needs."

The doors close behind Aly. The room they're in shudders slightly and... begins to rise?

"My children look like you, but their bodies are very different in several ways. Technology made for them won't work on you quite right, unless someone adjusts it first."

Aly's never been in an automaton elevator but the concept makes sense once she thinks about it. "Not before," she says.

"Oh. Are you talking about the different interface modes? Yes, the digital elements of your implants can be toggled on or off to suit your preferences."

The elevator keeps rattling. As it ascends, standing upright becomes a little easier. It might not be obvious right away, but their effective weight is decreasing with each passing second.

"Perhaps, once you've gotten more familiar with handling our technology, you might like to have control of those toggles transferred to you?"

"Yes," she says, looking for something to grab ahold of.

The elevator rumbles to a stop. Its doors open.

At this point, Aly weighs about half as much as she did back in the hospital.

The room behind is large, irregularly shaped and bustling with people.

She can see several other elevators along the far walls, and three different hallways leading off in different directions.

"Welcome to Outpost 1. There's a whole city out there." She points at the largest of the hallways. "Biggest one in the entirety of the ring. Someone can give you a closer look, later, when you're feeling up to it."

The hallway she's pointing too isn't long. As she crosses the bustling room, it might be possible for Aly to see the balcony beyond it and the cityscape extending beyond that.

That isn't where Edith's heading, though. She stops outside another elevator--one that looks quite ill used--and presses a button beside it.

"Where - go?" asks Aly with a quick look at her glossary.