"Oh, they're rather big- I think I'd rather one of yours if it comes with a manual or two, that's much more exciting. I was alive before the Frost, you know- We've invented so much in just thirty years, I want to see the future!"

Here's a laptop that doesn't need electricity and has the standard operating system for boring people and grandparents, because that's the only one Anda uses*. Here's several books on the theory and history of computation! Including a couple specifically aimed at people who want to be prepared to invent stuff if they get sent back in time or to an alien planet or whatever. 

(Even though that was not, prior to Anda finding Milliways, a real thing. Wouldn't it be funny if they got these folks to write reviews of those books and the next time they were in Milliways they could stick their head out the door long enough to post the reviews. "Four stars, a time traveler from another universe gave me this and I built my own mainframe in my garage." Hee.)

"Technological progress is awesome! I'm hoping to kick-start new industries more than just give you stuff, because then you can invent things I've never heard of. Also, if the Frost is that recent--I'd want to talk to climatologists about whether it can be done safely, but what do you think general public opinion would be about putting your climate back to how it was before? If a lot of people don't want that I won't do it."

*It's basically Space Ubuntu. 

Oh this is amazing and he wants to spend a week poking stuff on it but he will valiantly finish the conversation.

"Absolutely fix the climate! Just maybe not all at once. We've built things for deadly cold, all the ice melting at once could cause collapses or make people overheat because they pass steam into living areas."

"That's exactly the sort of problem I need to be sure I know about all of before I do anything, yeah. Can you recommend me a person or institution I should talk to about climatology and ditto for infrastructure? If you don't know then the Baron might."

"Maybe you can find New London. If anyone has a whole - guild or academy of weathermen, it'd be them. To the east of here somewhere I think, we used to get news from that direction but not anymore."

Well that's a bit ominous, but if it turns out New London isn't there to send news they'll just have to resurrect them all.

"Alright, thank you. See you later maybe!" They will not keep this person from their shiny foreign books any longer and will instead hunt around with Scrying until they find the Baron and then the Baron's office and go knock on the door, or talk to a secretary or whatever the architecture suggests is the correct way to say hello and ask for a meeting.

The Baron's place sure looks fancy. Well. Compared to the rest of it, it's still rather run down from what was presumably once grandeur. It's also warmer.

The Baron is currently holding court, in fact, in the sense of 'a designated time for people to come up and speak to him with their concerns', and an official is present to give them a place in the queue. The people ahead of Anda seem to be grumpy mine workers, some injured, complaining about conditions down below.

"Hello!" says Anda to the person in front of them in line. "I have magic powers, want anything while we're waiting?"

"Magic powers, really."

The person two spots ahead turns around.

"I don't recognize them, and that's some funny hair. Come on, make a wish. It's more of a lark than standing here waiting."

"I wish the coal bunker was full so I could have a day off."

Coal causes quite a lot of air pollution, and also climate warming though admittedly that seems to be the opposite of a problem right now, and they should really get on solar, but that's Anda's job and not this random guy's. More immediately, the specified coal bunker is not sufficiently uniquely identifiable to scry it and is also not visible from this room.

"I don't know where the bunker is but you can have this if you like," Anda says half-jokingly, and holds out a shopping bag full of coal, entirely unaware that they have fulfilled the duality of Santa Claus.

He takes the bag and peers into it. "Where the bloody hell did this come from?! You just- One second you just had it-"

The shouting is attracting attention from the whole room.

This is not exactly "everything is going according to plan", but it's closer to that than it is to a surprise or a problem. Having already pentagoned good vocal projection skills ages ago, they announce "Everything is fine! I'm a friendly magic person from another universe and I want to help people." to the room at large, complete with friendly little wave.

The guy on the fancy chair projects his own voice. "Calm thyselves, citizens! Peace! Stranger, I would ask that you approach me and speak to this claim. I have the honor of being Baron Hanslich de Kluge, steward of this settlement, charged to act in wisdom and restraint."

Anda hovers Baronwards about twenty centimetres above the floor, trailing purple sparkles that vanish after a couple seconds because that's their vibe right now. "Pleased to meet you! I'm Anda. I was hoping to speak to you about improvements I could make to your infrastructure and agriculture and possibly your planet's climate, though I'll need to consult with multiple stakeholders about that last."

That's pretty convincing!

"Most urgently if you are able, the annihilation of the bacterium which causes dysentery across the entire locality would be quite beneficial... I welcome you, Anda, and invite you into my office with my closest aides where we can discuss without interruption."

"Of course! Done." For a definition of locality that refers to the gravity well of the nearest star, because fuck that shit. "Lead the way."

He declares court adjourned and tells the aides to give an extra ration to anyone still waiting. To an office they go with just a little bit of pomp!

The office phone is ringing. He picks it up, and assures the person on the other side that all is well and will be handled.

"Ah, here we are. Sorry about that, I didn't want the scene too out of control. Magic, eh? I suppose offering you a drink or snack would be redundant, Anda? Or should I say, Santa Claus?" He lifts one eyebrow in wry amusement. "Is this a 'help me help you' conversation? I'll try to adapt quickly."

"It is that! I can do, not anything, but fairly close to it, but I just got here and don't know what things people want done. I want advice on what infrastructure should exist, what the climate should be, should the crops or the soil they grow in be different, are there any other diseases you'd like eradicated, that sort of thing. Plus a way to take requests from individuals for one-off things like raising dead people; I can design various systems for making requests by magic but I don't have a way of making everyone aware they exist without startling people."

"I don't actually have that much of a record of what things were like before the frost. Some of the older generation remember it. I don't think a sudden return to green hills and dales or what have you would be undisruptive, though it would be quite miraculous. I can think of a few targeted miracles that would essentially allow over nine in ten here to have a week long holiday while we figure out what to do next... No booze, though. Or very limited rations of it, at least. You'll also want to contact other settlements. Some have radio transceivers, others are used to beacons of light in the sky communicating with a semaphore code, the Morse Code."

Is Morse Code a pentagonable language? It is! "A few targeted miracles that would give most people a holiday sounds great, let me know what they are when you think of them. And what's 'booze', so I know not to accidentally make it? Also, I can be in multiple places at once, if there's a list of all settlements and everyone who might want anything lives in a settlement I can just go to them all."

"Booze is alcohol- Ethanol in drink mixtures created by the fermentation of grains," A frown. "It's used as a relaxant and social drug, like coffee and tea or laudanum or tobacco, sometimes to excess, very common and popular, I take it too sometimes. But... Sometimes to excess. You can't really stop people from making bootleg booze if they're not in danger of imminently starving, so the usual strategy is to make official booze you know is safe, and ration it out so it's difficult for someone to overdose or show up to work drunk."

He is digging around in his desk drawers for papers as he explains this.

"Here we are. An old Imperial Exploration Corps map. This should have every site of note that was built and settled back when the Frost first arrived in 1894. I have little idea which of these sites remain viable today, or for that matter whether new ones have been founded that are not on this map."

"Thanks! Just a minute , please . . ." Anda makes a scale model of the planet with little gemstone pins wherever there are people, with the type of gemstone determined by the (base eight) order of magnitude of the number of people in a location. Is it few enough settlements that they should just fork a few times and dispatch 2-3 mindthreads for each settlement, or are there a lot of tiny scattered groups?

Presuming a sensible method of determining just how close together constitutes, 'a location', there are relatively few surviving groups in the 1-8 and 9-64 range. Hundreds number in the 65-512 range, almost as many in 513-4096, about a hundred in 4097-32768, exactly 21 in 23769-262144, and just one in 262145-2097152. The largest gem corresponds to 'New London' on the IEC map. The current location is in the 513-4096 bucket.

Most of the gems marking surviving settlements, especially large ones, are concentrated on the highly northern landmasses, but several are scattered throughout more middling latitudes, too, and a few dots all around the globe have a few of the first three sizes of gems, mostly near volcanic activity zones.

Anda is confused about why most people are this far north if they're too cold and would prefer to be warmer. What does the rest of the globe look like? Are the polar caps larger or smaller than what Firstplanet has? Is there something obviously wrong with the lower latitudes?

Oh, the whole planet's an iceball. There's a bit of liquid ocean around the vast Pacific, near the equator.