For a brief moment, one of the things Corner M3K9 Cave has is an entrance to what Kellen has nicknamed the Labyrinth. That only lasts until he steps out through it, upon which it quickly fades away. 
Kellen doesn’t even glance at it as that happens though. He’s busy enough getting used to the sudden change from the rich, dense magic in the Labyrinth to… none? 

There is, indeed, nothing remotely similar to the strength of the magic that Kellen felt in the maze. He finds himself at the entrance of a cave in the middle of the woods, full of supplies strewn out across the floor, although looking around reveals small, well-organized shelves where they're also kept. Quite a few maps are easily visible, to name one thing.

The lack of magic feels as strange as its excess within the Labyrinth was -if not more. Still, he pushes the sensation to focus on his environment. 

Kellen frowns a little at the supplies on the floor and nods at the shelves, much preferring the order of the later. He quickly notices the maps and examines one, curious to see where he is and whether he can understand the language.

The map shows a quite detailed depiction of the surrounding area, together with a map of the wider area in one section and a very simplified map, covered in straight, colorful lines, in a corner of the second map. It looks like the third map covers a significantly larger area than the 2 smaller maps.

Although he already knows that this is not his world (if he had any doubts before stepping through the doorway, the lack of magic got rid of them), he’s still interested in whether this place looks similar to any that he knows. Something else that might be useful would be a town. He knows that there is some sort of civilisation because of the supplies in this cave, and contacting people -assuming that they aren’t hostile and can communicate with him- should be helpful.

It looks like a cave, and the woods outside look like woods, any differences being subtle. Kellen would find that there's a rather inviting path between the trees, heading down, the same way as a river on the map that ends past what looks like the outskirts of a city.

Since the vegetation is mostly recognisable, as much so as can be expected given his very basic knowledge of plants, he feels a bit more confident on the people being similar to him. 
He appreciates the path since he’s not great at following maps and begins walking down it as soon as he’s done looking around. Are there any people in sight? 

He sees a woman pushing a baby in a stroller, heading up the path he's going down. She waves at him, but doesn't pay him much attention.

He politely waves back at her and decides against taking to her. For one thing, she doesn’t seem interested in him and, in addition, she probably wouldn’t be able to help. So, he just walks past her and continues to follow the path

It takes a fair bit before the forest thins out, and Kellen can see super-tall buildings rising from a sea of modest trees and ponds on grass cut to be perfectly, immaculately straight. There are people of all ages playing, including quite a few swinging foam swords at each other.

The contrast between the tall buildings and the sword-fighting confuses him before he remembers that ren faires exist and some people probably do this back at him too, although  it’s certainly less common. What hasn’t surprised him so far is that the people look like him, which is probably just due to human anthropocentrism. 

He slows down on his jogging as he gets closer to the other people, now listening in case he recognises the language. His typical low-level magic usage allowing him to hear them despite the remaining distance.

The language is totally unfamiliar to Kellen, sounding nothing like any language he's ever heard!

That’s… weird. At least it’s still spoken and the phonemes aren’t terrible, right?

He's quite sure he'd be able to replicate the phonemes, yes. There's only a few people communicating with signs.

That’s good, he thinks. And if it ends up giving him trouble, the signed language might work too. He’s still not excited about being unable to communicate, though!

A few glances turn to Kellen, but people don't pay more than a few moments' attention.

He waves at some of the people but decides to continue towards the buildings. He’s hoping to find someone who seems like the right person to talk to, atlhough he doesn’t know what that looks like.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to stand out much. There are some people who wear small rectangular on their clothes, in various colors and sometimes in 2 different colors, but mostly they just wear various forms of athletic clothing or brightly colored short skirts.

Why doesn’t anyone look important? That makes things unnecessarily harder! He knows that this train of thought doesn’t make much sense but still, he just wants a way back! He’s never asked to travel between dimensions and isn’t happy about it happening. His sister would probably be enjoying it more… and let’s not think about that, missing his family doesn’t help him focus.

After some more internal grumbling and woe-is-me’ing, he settles on just approaching the first person he finds that doesn’t look very busy.

Eventually, someone waves at Kellen, noting his unusual outfit and distracted look but not saying anything.

Kellen waves back, smiling slightly, and quickly walks closer to them. Although he knows they won’t understand him, he says hello.

It's a quite attractive white-haired woman. She thinks for a few seconds, before saying "hi" in a language that Kellen absolutely doesn't speak.

Well, the unknown language is expected but disappointing. 
Hesitating a little, Kellen repeats the greeting (and hopes that’s what it was). It’s very obvious that this language is new to him.

She nervously waves her hands in circles. Then she takes a deep breath and takes out her phone, showing Kellen a photo of a bedroom before nodding.

He… knows what a bedroom is? He doesn’t know what she means though. He frowns and tilts his head to one side, trying to wordlessly communicate his confusion.

Then she moves to a simplified cartoon drawing of a person sleeping in a bed, before... trying to emote curiosity at Kellen; she feels incredibly awkward.

He’s going to guess that she’s asking if he has somewhere to sleep and shake his head accordingly. And hope that his interpretation is at least somewhat right.

Cynthia nods to herself before moving on. She quickly takes a picture of herself, and shows it to him before having the phone say her name. "Cynthia". Then she moves to simple cartoon illustrations of different things, having the phone say their names. She then takes a few steps, hoping he begins to follow her.

Kellen gestures at himself and says his name in reply to hers. He also quietly repeats all of the words, feeling out the sounds. 
When she begins walking, he immediately follows.

(Oh! She should have thought about what happened after that) After a long walk, Cynthia takes Kellen to a skyscraper. She waves her phone in front of the door for a moment, and it smoothly opens to reveal a row of elevators. Cynthia points upwards, after pressing a button to call one of them down. She finds an image of an apartment building similar to hers, shows it to Kellen and smiles at him.

Pictures and pictograms aren’t the best at clear communication -although they’re much better than nothing- so he’s once again guessing at what Cynthia means. He can’t quite figure out why she’s showing him that picture but she’s been trying to help him so far. So, Kellen just nods and smiles.

She exhales as she takes the elevator up, grabbing a cylindrical key and opening the door to her apartment. It's mostly an impressively spacious open-concept room, and Cynthia gives Kellen a quick look at the compact bedroom and roomy bathroom, with a sliding door in front of the alcove separating the toilet from the rest of the room. Afterwards, Cynthia tries to give Kellen an impromptu language class, starting by saying how to introduce yourself and... hoping she's explained everything well enough for Kellen to respond.

The room looks very nice to him too. Once they’re finished looking around and begin the ‘lesson’ he listens intently. He thinks that stuff like yes and no would be a better starting point but any learning is better than none and he can’t really complain anyway. 
Kellen is pretty sure he’s understood Cynthia’s explanation, at least enough that he tentatively reintroduces himself, following her example.

Cynthia is pleased! She tries to be a good source to learn from, before deciding that he'd probably want to learn some words on his own. She hands over the phone to Kellen, showing off a program with quite a few cartoon illustrations of words for him to tap on and learn. She finds a photo of a plate with some kind of red meal on it, and repeats its word to Kellen again.

He does like learning more on his own! He’s not sure what she means with that image though. Is the word for food? Or is it that specific meal? Well, assuming that she isn’t trying to tell him something, he’ll just repeat the word again. Hopefully learning more words will help with the ambiguity.

Cynthia touches her chin for a moment, before quickly tapping a few buttons on her phone before returning it to Kellen. After a short wait, the chime at her door sounds, and Cynthia walks out to get the food from the short, wheeled robot. She brings the steel box of food back in, placing it on a table in front of him and seeing if Kellen looks hungry.

Kellen glances at the robot, curious, and watches Cynthia bring the box.  He doesn’t know what it contains until she opens it. Once he can see the food, he does look hungry. If he has learned how to ask for permission he’ll do so, otherwise he’ll wait for her to say something.

She points at it. "For you. If you want." It's a quite large portion of curry chicken. It's mild, too, and tastes wonderful.

“Thank you”, he replies, nodding. The food both looks and tastes like the one back home, and is also delicious. He usually avoids meat but he’ll try to tell Cynthia later and eat the curry anyway.

...right. What next. Hmm... Cynthia gets several different sniffers using her phone, just in case. "Kellen", she says, pointing at him. "Words. Learn them with me?" This is awkward, wow. But it's going to be so exciting to find out what happened with him!

Kellen feel pretty awkward too but being able to communicate will be so nice! 
“Yes, words”, he nods, “learn… together?”, he pauses for a moment as he looks for that last word. He feels a bit embarrassed and can feel his cheeks warm up.

Cynthia nods, hoping that Kellen can learn the language well with her help. It's not long during their practice together before the 2 sniffers arrive; Cynthia places the 2 rectangular boxes not too far away from them while continuing to help Kellen learn new words with her phone.

When the sniffers arrive, Kellen gestures at them, curious. “What is?”, he asks, cringing internally at his lack of skill with the language.

They're 2 rectangular black plastic boxes, about as big as a large lunchbox, brought in by Cynthia. They arrived very quickly after she put in the order. "Sniffer", she says, pointing at them. Then she taps the phone over the drawing of someone ill in bed, and then the drawing of a nose, making the noises for those words before pointing at the 2 sniffers again.

He repeats the word, nodding, although he doesn’t understand what the other two images have to do with the sniffers. 

“They do… what?”

"Know if sick". Hopefully the pictogram system manages to explain something as abstract as a person knowing something...

It isn’t the easiest concept to get across but they manage to do it. 
“Ohh”, Kellen nods, understanding a bit better. He guesses that the viruses here will be new to his body.

Cynthia does her best to let the new arrival practice with her; she fixes a setting on the app with the pictograms, so that it shows the text for the given word whenever a pictogram gets held.

The writing system is obviously also entirely new to him, so when she changes that setting he aks for something to write with so he can compare it to the one he’s familiar with. 
After a longer while of language practice, Kellen is a bit tired and would prefer asking questions about this world, although he’s not saying it out loud yet.

Cynthia notices Kellen being tired well enough that she gives him a break from the language practice. She asks him if the place he's from is like the place he is now.

Kellen shakes his  head. 
“No, lots is different”, he pauses for a moment, figuring out how to say things, “you have no magic”, he uses his own language for the last word.

Cynthia is confused. She scrolls through the phone, hoping that she eventually manages to show Kellen the pictogram for the new word she's never heard before. Magic is symbolized by a bone in the middle of some stars, but she more or less flies past it as she tries showing Kellen many different pictograms hoping to get lucky.

Between his idea of magic being very different from the image and him not being sure that there even is a word for it in her language, he doesn’t notice it. Instead, after being shown many pictograms unsuccessfully, he decides to try to demonstrate. He won’t do anything very big since he isn’t sure if he’ll be able to refill his reserves but he can still try to get the idea across.
 

He takes a deep breath, feeling the magic-less air and connecting his own magic to it. Kellen then extends a hand towards Cynthia, palm up. His eyes glowing slightly, the air above his hand swirls, forming a small whirlwind.

Cynthia jumps back and shakes her hands, shouting "Magic! Magic" and rushing to tap the pictogram of the bone in a frenzy. "Real magic!"

He lets go of the magic, his eyes dimming back to  normal. Kellen waits for Cynthia to calm down a bit. He feels a bit emptier and hopes that the theories about living beings producing their own magic are true. 

"And other people also do magic?" Cynthia asks. "What magic is there?"

“Yes. All people”, he nods. Then he checks with the pictographs to make sure he’ll use the right words, “Four magics. Air,”-he gestures at himself-“ water, fire and stone. Uhm… shadow? Not sure. Maybe it’s… story?” What he’d like to communicate is that there are rumours of some other types but he doesn’t know if they’re true. 

Cynthia nods slowly, twice. She's... not sure what to about any of this. Kellen's magic is real, but she doubts anyone else's is. So... he's unique, and Cynthia doesn't think he can really use his powers for much...

For the better or for the worst, that last part is true. Kellen’s afinity for magic is pretty average back at home and that’s without the possible dangers of no ambient magic. On the positive side, that should make it easier for him to fit into this world. 

After an awkward pause in the conversation, Kellen clears his throat, “Earlier… what was that brought the food?”

"It's a" she decides to take her phone out of Kellen's hand, for now. "Robot"! the phone says. "Someone I grew up with knows a lot, lot more about them than me. I just know they come here with food and other things, and that they do almost all the things in factories, and some of the things in hospitals. I see a lot of robots in the hospitals, actually."

Kellen carefully repeats the word before continuing to ask questions. “Are they people? Animals? They look metal-like”

"No, they're only" this time finding the pictogram on her phone takes longer "machines!"

“Machines? Like that?”, he gestures at the phone, a bit confused. Are ‘robots’ like the golems and automata of myth, just not magical? 
“And do they-”, he pauses to check the word, since it’s more abstract it was one of the hard to understand ones, “think?”

Cynthia shakes her head. "No more than a clock or car thinks!"

Alright, he knows what clocks and cars are like but robots still feel different. Maybe he’s understanding things wrong but they seem more independent. And now that he’s thinking about it… what do they power  machines with here?

” What moves them?”, that’s vague question but Kellen doesn’t know tech-specific vocabulary yet so hopefully that’ll get his point across!

"Electricity!" This time, Cynthia doesn't feel the need to have the phone saying it.

Have they gone over that word yet? Because Kellen clearly didn’t understand it right if they have. 

She finds the pictogram of a lighting bolt on her phone. (Did she forget that she hadn't taught him that yet? Drat)

That… doesn’t clear things up for him. He thinks that she’d shown him the word already but Kellen doesn’t understand how ‘electricity’ differs from lightning and makes machines work. 

“Like in storms?”

"Like in..." Cynthia would say "like in this phone", but that's confusing, and storms have so much else going on that he might be confused and think electricity refers to something else in the storm! Aah. She tries anyway. "Like from a" this time the phone says it "battery! And phone" Cynthia points at the phone.

He can understand the idea of a battery, it’s like his own magic reserves or the ones of machines in his world. But he doesn’t understand how it stores and uses maybe-not-lightning! 

Kellen looks for a pictograph of a storm and taps on the lightning in it, “is ‘electricity’ that?”

Cynthia hums. "Yes, that thing in it is electricity!"

“And you… trap it?”, some fire inclined people can manipulate lightning but that’s clearly not what this is like.

"Yes! It's made from electrons!" (Cynthia was always bad at science. But now she can finally be the one to explain how things work to someone else!)

This new word sounds similar to electricity, so that makes sense at least. He’s still curious about the topic but he can probably wait until he knows the language better. 
“We don’t use that in my world”, he says, nodding

"I suspected as much!"

Another nod. 
“I have more questions but… not enough words?”, he shrugs, “and much time, right?”

"Very much time! This helps." She puts her phone back in Kellen's hand, before walking off to set up a sleeping bag in the Main Room.

He practices vocabulary while she gets the sleeping bag, occasionally looking up to check what she’s doing. Kellen also thinks about what topics he wants to talk to her about. The most likely to be relevant soon is his vegetarianism, so he’ll bring it up when she isn’t busy anymore.

It doesn't take long before Cynthia is done with putting down the sleeping bag. It seems like it'd be a bit large and unwieldy to bring camping, being quite thick all over, but it looks rather inviting.

Maybe she has guests often? Or it’s easier to carry around than it looks like, robots could help with that? Anyway, that’s not what he wants to ask her when he walks up to her. 
He clears his throat if it’s necessary to get her attention, “I- uh- don’t eat meat”, he tells her, having decided that that’s the simplest wording.

Cynthia looks terrified for a moment, before blinking 2 times, very slowly. She stutters as she speaks. "I- I- I'll remember that going forwards."

Kellen chuckles, “Don’t worry. That’s good. You did not know.”

"Glad to hear it!"

He nods and smiles back at her. 
“Oh, and do you have… work?”, that’s close enough to asking whether she’s going to be busy and, unlike that, he knows the right words for it.

"Not if you need me for anything!"

“Okay. What do you do?”

"Give people in the hospital hugs, massages, and love!"

Kellen is a bit confused. He thinks he understood all of those words correctly, so he guesses it’s just a job that doesn’t exist in his world and nods. 

“Is it… like why you help me?”

"I help you because it'd be fun to help you!"

“Fun? How?”, he tilts his head to one side, frowning slightly.

"Because you're so new and different!"

“Ahhh… It’s not very fun to I”, he nods, understanding it better now. His sister would do the same.  

After that the conversation leaves place to a comfortable silence and Kellen continues to practice the language for a little while but soon gets tired of it.
He stands up and stretches, “Do you want to go outside?”, he asks Cynthia if she don’t look busy.

"That'd be great, I bet there's tons of things you'll love to see! Is there something you want to see first?"

“I… don’t know? I haven’t seen much”, Kellen shrugs, “do you have ideas?”

"There's a lakefront, a creche with some very fun kids, the local Perpetual Revue, the forest with all the Nature for Everyone Paths, and there's a place where you can get a look at what the inside of the hospital where I work looks like! I think that's sort of fun."

“Creche? What is that? And I came from the forest. The hospital sounds nice.”

"It's a place that's good for kids to stay! They have big, fun playgrounds, and lots of places to read and learn and help people, and adults if they need any help for anything! Oh, and it's not the hospital itself you're seeing, for bacteria reasons. It's right next door, though."

“If that and the creche are close… we can see the two?”, he smiles, glad that she looks excited.

"You'd have to take the subway I think, but it won't take long to get there. No need to wait?"

“Okay!”, he nods and walks to the door.

Cynthia walks ahead of him, calling the elevator and sending the two of them downwards rapidly. The subway entrance is only a block or so away from their building, and a train has practically arrived by the time they've reached the platform. Inside, the seats are made from a very nice-feeling cool mesh material, reminiscent of an office chair.

If there are people around, Kellen will try not to stare at things too obviously, although he’s curious and amazed by most of what he sees. He follows Cynthia closely, not wanting to get lost. 

It doesn't take long before they reach their first spot: a playground, full of climbing walls, surrounded by a ring of tall buildings designed to look like charming and friendly wood houses when seen from ground level. Both boys and girls are wearing skirts, climbing or fighting with foam swords or talking together around their books.

Kellen looks all around, absorbing all the details he can. Skirts are less common and still a bit gendered in his home dimension, and the buildings aren’t usually quite so tall, but he’s most curious about the swordfighting.

“Many children…”, he mimics the duels, lacking the right word.

"Duels like that are really intense, and you get tempted to really give it your all. It's great! It's also about being able to keep each other safe, often. So you can fight off anyone trying to hurt you or your friends and protect them."

“Is it much necessary?”, although even if they aren’t, he can see the fun in it! It might be an interesting thing to learn but he’ll try to improve with the language first. 

"No, almost never. But we like helping, and that's one kind of helping."

“Lots of people are nice here”, he nods, “what other kinds of helping do people do?”

"We try to make everything helping! Helping is a big part of our lives. I'm helping patients, and doctors. And when I go home, someone is helping me with food and cleaning. And if you get pregnant or have children, there are many people helping you and children! Helping is a great thing and we love it."

Kellen nods again, smiling. It’s a bit surprising that it works for a whole society but it’s a very nice surprise. And now this makes him wonder whether they have money… has he seen a word for that?

Yes he has! Its pictogram is shiny glass beads.

Ohh, yeah, that one was a bit hard to understand at first because it looks different than his world’s money. He’s still curious as to how it fits together with the niceness! 
He’ll have to be a bit blunt asking because it’s hard to use more complex structures but here goes his attempt, “You have that and money too?”

"Yes, money makes... improving things easier. We actually take money very seriously and care a very, very large amount about it. Caring is helping! And money makes caring... better?"

“I don’t understand”, he replies, and he isn’t sure if that’s because he’s lacking precise vocabulary or because of the underlying ideas.

Cynthia shrugs. "Money makes you careful."

“So not-nice people want to help too?”

"No, it's that... nice people can be wrong. And money can... show them how and stop them being wrong?" (Drat! She has no idea of how to explain this with a limited vocabulary)

“Do you have not-nice people?”, that’s hard to belive but it is a different world, “and I don’t think I have the right words to understand why you use money”

"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!"

“Into the system?”, he repeats, not sure what the sentence means.

"Well, we have to get tax money from things like people building houses or offices or mines so people don't get to have parks or start their own mines anymore, and we think it's important that people always think in terms of money, so almost all that tax money goes directly just to people. And afterwards we talk about things like building subways and roads and playgrounds and all those kinds of things, using the money that we could otherwise get directly ourselves."

"I... don't understand", Kellen replies, more confused by this explanation than he already was before. "The system?"

"The money system! We have currency for emergencies, but the money system is much easier because you don't have to carry the money around, or worry about dropping it somewhere."

Kellen nods, “ohh, okay. Do we do it now? How do we do it?”

"Well, usually you get to be in it when you're born, and the parents use your money for you on your behalf. But if they missed you when you were born, or something went wrong, you go to a police station, register all the information in your eyes and fingers, and get a new account in the system, losing all the money in your old account if you had any money or an account."

That sounds surprisingly simple! Although he doesn’t know if he’ll get in trouble for not being registered before. Won’t the police expect him to have some sort of legal proof of his existence? Which doesn’t exist here, since he pretty much appeared out of thin air, so he won’t be on their database. Well, they’ll face that problem if it becomes one and try not to worry when it might not matter. 
“So… is a police station near?”

"Unfortunately not, it'd take a bit of a subway ride. But they can't really close, can they? So we can get over there and get you in today, it really doesn't take long."

“Okay”, he nods and covers a yawn. It isn’t all that late yet but he’s been up for a long while. Kellen still wants to go get registered into the system though, so he heads for the door.

Cynthia leads Kellen onto the subway, taking him all the way to the nearest police station. She's let them know the situation in advance, so the machine that takes the fingerprints and the eye scan should be ready. "This man hasn't been joined the system yet. He needs to be given an account." She motions for him to get his fingerprints taken and his eyes scanned, in front of the bored-looking police officer waiting behind a counter.

Things get done swiftly and Kellen is glad that he earlier thought about how to spell his name in the local writing system. It would have been embarrassing to get asked how it was written and have no answer! It still makes him feel awkward anyway when he gets asked questions and stumbles over the words but not as badly so. All in all, it goes pretty well and they can leave the station with an account for Kellen in not much time. 

Kellen receives a card with a special film that makes it impossible to see anything when not looking at it straight on. It has a the information needed for accessing his account. "Next, you'll want a phone to actually get to use it. But maybe we'd want to purchase that tomorrow?"

He puts the card away into his pocket after examining it a bit (the special film is pretty interesting). Kellen then yawns again before shrugging and replying to Cynthia, "You know best. I don't need it today, right?"

"No, there's really no rush!"

He smiles, "We go back to your house?"

"We do that, yes!"

And so they can both take the subway again, exit near her building, and walk the last short distance. 

Cynthia walks over to her sleeping bag, making herself cozy in it. She's thinking of reading a bit on her phone, before finally finding some sleep; she knows that it's going to feel amazing.

Kellen also lays down wherever Cynthia tells him he should sleep. He's looking forward to getting some rest, it's been a pretty intense day. He's arrived at a different world, crammed as much of its language as possible into his brain, visited a museum... and he's also used some magic. He's been intentionally not thinking about that. He'll have to see if in the morning he still feels a bit magically tired, at least to decide if he should avoid using it again here. 

Cynthia insists Kellen sleep on her bed; beds are comfortable for everyone, but a sleeping bag only really works for the person it's designed to fit.

The sleeping bags he knows don't work very well for anyone but he'll take her word for it. He's too sleepy to try to argue. Sleepy enough that he falls asleep almost as soon as his body touches the mattress. 

The next morning, Cynthia wakes up, sitting on her phone at the dining table and wearing just her special underwear designed to match her skin color as perfectly as possible.

Amongst the first things Kellen does after waking up is checking on his magic reserves. Fortunately, they feel pretty much full again, so he shouldn't need to worry about them unless he uses them up all at once. 
Soon after that he gets out of bed and he wasn't expecting to find Cynthia looking just about naked when he steps out of the room. So he freezes by the door and instinctively mutters an apology in his native language. 

Cynthia just smiles and waves at him. "You can come in if you like!" She stretches her arms a bit. "Clothes like these are pretty standard and part of most anyone's wardrobe."

Kellen waves back and nods, still slightly reluctant as he steps closer to the dining table and her. “Good morning.”

"Are there any clothes it'd make sense for you to get, you think? You'd want a mask, at least, if you want to do the 'pretend there's an illness around' thing."

Cynthia flashes Kellen a wry smile, before standing up to do some more stretches. They include bending over.

"Or maybe you're curious about what kind of clothes we tend to wear? Hmm..."

“A mask, yes”, he nods, “I want to do that. Oh, and is the holiday today?”

 Kellen looks away for a moment when she stands up but he’s pretty calm overall now that he knows Cynthia is comfortable being seen in those clothes. 
“Learning more is good. I saw many skirts yesterday…?”

"I don't know yet, it'd be a bit unlikely though. But so would an actual pandemic, so that's no excuse to be unprepared!"

"Yes, there are a lot of skirts, and there's supppsed to be a 'proper' way to wear them. But adults mostly do pants or leggings, they're a bit more practical. I wear dresses a lot, but that's for work reasons. And there are people who wear formalwear masks all the time! But that's mostly professors or people with fancy jobs."

Kellen nods again as she explains. "How do dresses have work reasons for you? And what are formalwear masks like? Is it... like a uniform?", he has to look up that last word.

"Ahh, formalwear masks!" Cynthia finds an image of a fursuit head. It's a blue and white antropomorphic wolf, with very large green eyes. "And about my dress... well, I have to look different to doctors and nurses, so I wear a dress because it'd be too impractical for them, so they'd never wear one. And because they make me look so much better and I love that!"

He does not understand how those masks relate to the fancy jobs unless it's a prize things. It isn't an important thing to understand though, so he'll leave it be. 

"The dress makes sense, then. It's also good that you love it!"

"I own lots of them, actually! Maybe you might want a look at some of them..."

"Uh, sure", Kellen shrugs. 

Cynthia runs over to her closet, revealing several different kinds of dress; most of them are black, with some in white or in a similar color as her skin. Cynthia begins by quickly putting on one of the shorter black dresses, quickly pulling it over her head and getting her arms through the sleeves. It reaches to a bit above her knees, with an elaborate lace pattern all over it. "Like how this makes me look?" She spins around to let Kellen see all angles.

Kellen isn't much into fashion (yes, he does braid some of his hair but that doesn't mean he's interested in clothing) but he can still appreciate how nice Cynthia looks. Which is also positively influenced by how happy she looks. 

He nods, "You look very pretty."

"Thank you!" she says. "Wanna see me put on something else? I haven't made up my mind about what to have on for today, so I'll try on a few other dresses and see how I feel about them."