"We don't have to think about them much because there's so many nice people helping keep us safe from them, and even if they're not-nice, they don't do much because they know they'll just be stopped."

“There… might be more in my world? Or more not nice but also not not-nice people. So they aren’t all bad but not all want to help”

"Worlds and people are different!" Cynthia giggles. One of the kids runs over to Cynthia. "You're such a pretty lady!" She thanks him, before he runs off to play and practice using (simulated) pepper spray and a baton with an adult and some of the other kids, including a few girls.

He nods, “very true.” He smiles when the child compliments Cynthia and then watches him practice. 
“I like this world. Well, but the no-magic.”

"I love this world!" Cynthia walks around, showing Kellen the playground equipment: artificial trees designed for climbing in, swings, slides, and different kinds of balance challenges. "Where do you want to go next?"

The playground looks familiar enough for him to recognize most stuff but is an improved version. He’d be tempted to try out some of the challenges if there weren’t so many kids around. 
“You said the not-hospital?”

"Yes, that's a good place to go!" She goes on the subway again, taking it to right outside the hospital. It's a similarly tall building, surrounded by balconies full of greenery that lets every patient have a view of nature as they recover. She takes Kellen the short way to the exhibit, part of a small museum showing off how the city has changed and improved things: old and new classrooms, some playground equipment, how sewage treatment infrastructure has changed, and the city's newest and nicest hospital rooms.

Cynthia brings Kellen to the room as promised, showing a roomy, inviting space with softly padded floors, an extra wide bed, a pair of thickly padded chairs for people to sit on and a bathroom with grab bars everywhere and lots of space in front of the toilet, together with a shower behind a shower cabinet taking up almost half the room. All the doors of the room are very wide sliding doors that feel weightless when pushed.

Kellen follows Cynthia to the room, although he’ll also want to see the rest of the museum afterwards. The hospital room looks very welcoming and comfortable. The ones back in his dimension aren’t bad but this one puts them to shame. If everything he’s seen so far wasn’t also lovely, he’d think that the real hospital rooms aren’t like this one. But so far it looks like things really are that good here! And best not to tempt fate by saying much about that.

He lets Cynthia know that the room is great, and this hospital must be very good, although with some awkward pauses as he finds the right words.

Cythia thinks it'd make sense to have a look at classrooms next. They used to use wooden benches behind wooden tables, but now the ideal is kids being able to sit or stand or cross the legs because that's better for circulation and for concentration, so they use a system with a tablet on an arm that follows the kids around instead of sitting rigidly. They're thinking of trying out a system where the kids have their rooms right next to the classroom, with them sitting down behind a floor-to-ceiling window and looking out at the teacher in their room setup just how they like it; although it is expensive, that's no reason to not do things that pay for themselves, and making people smarter and healthier pays for itself constantly. Money Makes You Care Right, as the saying goes.

Kellen is pretty sure that they’re still using chairs or benches with tables in his world’s schools and all this innovations amaze him. What likely amazes him most though is that their saying holds true. Or at  least he hasn’t seen any mentions yet of someone placing money before other’s wellbeing, which he asks Cynthia about to confirm it.

"When might money be coming before others' wellbeing? If you mean taking someone's money: everybody wants to stop you, and we manage to work together to make you stop, so you can't really do that. 'Only a wall can actually stop where your fist goes', of course, but... everyone taking property and other-defense classes works just like a wall does! You can't really... do that?"

Kellen nods, “Not here, right. It has happened where I’m from. Many people care more about themselves than others. It’s good that everyone cares and helps here.”

"Well, of course everyone cares more about themselves than others. They just want things to work so they don't have to fight others and get to live in peace and safety."

“Maybe… people like fighting more in my world? Because they do it. Or we don’t think about what things will do.”

"It's easy to not think!" Cynthia smiles.

Kellen chuckles, nodding, “it is. But it’s very good when people do think.”

Cynthia thinks the next thing to show Kellen is the small exhibit showing info on sewage treatment. "Cities used to be unbelievably dirty places where everyone got sick all the time! But now they're super-clean and super-safe. In our world, we have a thing about making things that were bad or uncomfortable good and nice. Lots of people thought that cities give people too little space, but now we have elevators so we can make things super-duper tall and have more space for people. It's good and nice and we love it." 

The exhibit is mostly the text plaque, with a small diorama of the system used today and the last one. Waste used to just be moved as far away from people as possible, maybe into the sea. This meant many people couldn't live in one place at once, because the waste would be more than could easily be moved. And this meant everything was so unbelievably dirty!

Later, people used chemicals and let things sit in big pools before sending them out to sea. This took up a lot of space, and when there was a lot of water all at once the pools could overflow, or water could come back up again from the sewers! This was cleaner, but still dirty, so rivers and the sea had to be given up to to stop people from being sick from the dirty water. This was the previous system shown in the diorama.

Today, the goal is using the best bacteria to turn all the waste into much less disgusting things. The water is sent through special paper-like material that has lots of specially-chosen bacteria on it, that eats all the unhealthy things to make the water safer, and this makes the water safe enough that you don't have to worry about getting sick from the river. It's shown in the diorama, and all the stuff is much, much smaller than the old system with pools.

In special areas with very few people, like farms, they use a system where the water goes to the field and everything else gets burned. It needs lots more space and handles very few people, but it needs much less help to work well. Now they work on better bacteria and better fields so it's easier for more places to be kept clean of human waste, like the beautiful forests!

For being a small exhibit, it has a lot of information! Not that Kellen understands everything, although he gets the general ideas (and he asks Cynthia a few questions). He also didn’t know much about sewers to begin with, so he isn’t sure how these compare to his world’s. They’re likely better, based on how many things are. Kellen doubts that he’ll ever be able to return home -which he tries not to think about much- but if he manages to, there’s a lot they could learn from this world.

“Your people know much.”, he says, still admiring the dioramas, “Do you have many museums?”

"Yes, we have museums all over the place! We love knowing things, even things that we might not put to use, it feels a lot like helping."

“Tomorrow we see another one?”, he doesn’t know if there are any others nearby but he hopes so!

"Yes?" Cynthia is hesitant. "We have a... holiday where we pretend there's an illness and we have to stay safe. So we stay inside all day, or only go outside with a mask on. I like how doing that makes me feel so safe, and want to do it with you! But maybe more museums first?"

He shrugs, “we can stay inside. We have time.” He can wait to see the museums and he’s obviously going to respect the local holidays. Cynthia is already taking time off work to help him, so he wants to respect her preferences.

"Oh! It's not that the holiday is tomorrow... it's supposed to be a surprise, that's part of the appeal! It's just that we're due and it'd be awkward if you weren't prepared."

“You don’t know when it is?”, well, that fits the theme. He wonders if the holiday’s ever been used to cover up for a real quarantine.

“Then… tomorrow we see? If it is, we stay inside. If not, we go to museum?”

"Yes, yes we can do that! But first, we have to get you into the system. But don't worry, that will be amazingly quick!"