Someone comes down from upstairs, walking gingerly and slowly. Despite the heavy, concealing clothes, their frame seems somehow thin and frail. They head over towards the bar and get into a seat with some amount of difficulty and a heavy sigh.

"Good morning, Bar. Another three thousand kilocalorie meal plan today, please. I think I'm making good progress. I'm up another nought point seven pounds. I feel alert, if still weak."

Bar replies to them on a napkin.

"Yes, that sounds good. Thank you."

And then they are tucking in to meal of a hearty bowl of some sort of chili, mashed potatoes, beef, and fries.

"Hi! I have a lot of magic and like solving problems! Got any problems you'd like magically solved, either personally or where your door goes?"

"Magic? I suppose this bar is already rather magic so the disbelief is somewhat... Silly. Hello. I also like solving problems. I'm Jeffries Gobel, a machinist. That means I make precision parts out of metal. Can you rapidly remediate malnutrition without adverse health effects?"

Jeffries Gobel has a very particular way of speaking, like they're watching their tone and diction carefully.

"Pleased to meet you, Jeffries, I'm Anda Vrin-Vanse. I'm familiar with machinists as described; before I became a full-time magic person I worked in machine repair. I can remediate malnutrition without adverse effects as I or most people I know would define them. May I ask Bar if we're the same species? I can still help if we're not, just might want more details first if you'd rather not just let the magic take its cues from your biology." Anda gets the vibe that this is a person who'd prefer Anda do as much of their own detail work as possible.

"I am suffering from malnutrition. I would like to not be. You appear to be the same species as me but I don't know much biology. I don't mind if you check."

The vibes say that Jeffries would prefer he stste things nice and clearly.

A hint of enthusiasm appears in his voice.

"What kinds of machines did you repair? I mostly make parts for pumps and motors. Pumps and motors are the heart of industry, because they use force to distribute materials, like our own hearts!"

Bar confirms that Jeffries is the same kind of human Anda has experience with, so Anda says, "I am fixing your malnutrition now" and replenishes his body's store of all the useful vitamins and minerals, adds a reasonable balance of fat and muscle to all the locations that could use some, and repairs any lingering tissue damage. "I did small appliance installation and repair with a focus on the kinds of machines you get in makerspaces--laser cutters, 3d printers, kilns, drill presses, and similar. Lots of motors, only the occasional pump."

Jeffries shivers uncomfortably and starts fidgeting after this happens.

"That feels strange. I am glad you did it but it's strange. Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. I recognize kilns and drill presses. The settlement I live in has a blast furnace, which is a bit like a kiln. We recycle heat from the smelting as steam to help run the ore lifts and mining drills. I think it's very clever. But it requires some strange turbine designs that can handle a variety of steam conditions, instead of a highly optimized design that is very efficient at a specific set point."

"Oh, that's neat! Want to infodump*?"

*The Convergentlanguage term is a shortening of "explain-unconstrained", by contrast to explanations with a specific practical goal in mind.

"Yes!"

And explaining-unconstrained will commence! It gets technical quickly. From context it sounds like this is some kind of arctic settlement. Heat recycling and pipe repair is a big deal. Anyway they use this kind of additive to alloys for fixtures that will handle high pressure steam because it is resistant to pitting and scaling and corrosion, but it's notably less workable and the chromium is scarce so-

This could go on for a while. His food is getting cold.

Anda's not smart enough to have been an engineer back home, but they've pentagoned a bunch of skills and they're smart enough to ask thoughtful questions now and then! And keep the food warm, they can also do that. Not that it's a problem if Jeffries never eats this particular meal, now that he's healthy, so long as he eats something at some point.

Turbines and water pumps and air blowers and the process of single-part casting radiators for the insides of housing units and alternators that provide power to the greenhouse devices he doesn't understand very well and the water systems for said greenhouses and filters and the design and operation of an industrial shredder and- 

Well, eventually, he'll run out of steam (steam powered devices to talk about, that is). For now. He seems to suddenly notice the food is still there and starts eating again. 

"Ah, you never waste food. It's rude, disrespectful, a sin. If you like solving problems, maybe solve the food problem."

"I'd love to! What sort of food problem is it? Just that it's too cold where you are for most crops to grow?"

"We have steam houses. They are adequate. The problem is something else. I'm not precisely sure but I think it's a matter of exhausting the soil and not having the resources to make proper fertilizer?"

"Do you know the name of a person or institution who'd know more? I can just go around replacing soil with soil I know is good, but if that's not the problem it won't work and will take annoyingly long to be obvious it didn't work. And of course I can just make food in the meantime but I think it'll be better for the economy if I make stuff nobody else is making."

"I don't know what most people do or how an economy works. It's all so complicated and difficult, not like machining parts. I am only guessing, but maybe 'Sasparilla' Sarah Sampson? People say she is good to spend time with. I hear that at lunch a lot. Or my boss, Head Engineer Larry Medici? He talks to the Baron, so he must know more about what's going on than me."

"I was imagining a farmer or an agronomist but that works too! Anything else I should know before you open your door?"

"I don't know any agronomists. The farmers I know are grumpy and not very good at explaining themselves. If you see any damaged or leaking pipes, especially red pipes, you should tell a technician or engineer right away."

"You got it. What's in those pipes?"

"Water, steam, sewage, fresh air, dirty smelter air, fertilizer mixture, sulfuric acid but that's only within the ore treatment plant itself and the pipe is about ten meters long..."

Jeffries is oriented enough to the conversation to realize that now is the time to stand up and go open the door, but not quite oriented enough to wonder whether giving people with lots of magic who healed their malnutrition access to their world is really a good idea.

So he goes and opens the door. "Good luck!"

Sending Anda places is a great idea according to Anda!

"Thanks!" A second Anda appears next to the first Anda and one of them goes through the door, accompanied by the narration.

They are in an industrial metal hallway. Pipes run along the ceiling along with some electric cables. It's cold, maybe close to the freezing point of water. To the right is a short hall and a door. To the left is a longer hall that splits into two at a T junction, with a few more doors visible. No other person is here now, but there are noises of heavy machinery operating coming from somewhere nearby.

Scry for the nearest person?

A woman and two men repairing some kind of drill in one of the side rooms towards the T-junction! It looks very run down.

Anda goes and knocks on that door.

"Alf, go see what it is."

The younger-looking man trudges over to the door and opens it.

"Hello, what is it?" Frown. "I'm afraid I don't recognize you..."

"Hi! I'm a friendly magic person from another universe. Want anything impossible done?"

"...What? No, what, you're having me on. Magic isn't real and if you want to prove me wrong, give me a bloody pineapple."

"Okay!" Anda holds their hand out and then here is a pineapple. It definitely wasn't there a second ago. "Want to be unaging and immune to disease? That's one of my favourites." Being Anda is fun and they're not sorry.

"What!"

He grabs the pineapple.

"Alf, what's going on over there?" The woman shouts.

"I- Food!"

"Food?"

"There's- This stranger just appeared a fruit- Thank you sir- Huh, spiky? It does look like the one in the book."

The other two are setting down their tools and coming over.

"Well, I'll be a defrosted rat. That's a tropical fruit, they only grow above ten degrees centigrade and take years to do so."

"Have you got your knife? Let's cut it up."

"I do. Ah- Come in, if you like- Should we really have it ourselves?"

"I don't get the impression Mr. Pineapple here is particularly limited to one," Alf says faintly. "He mentioned curing diseases too."

"You can have as many pineapples as you want! Also if you're going to eat it right now we should have plates." Plates: happen. They're pretty blue ceramic ones because it's not like those are harder to either conjure or vanish than paper.

There's a workbench nearby that doesn't have anything besides a bit of sawdust on it; The plates can go there. One of them gets out a big utility knife and starts trying to find the best angle to cut into the pineapple with. They don't appear to intend to wash their hands, though they do take off their work gloves first.

Alf comments, "I'm not entirely sure I'm not dreaming."

The woman says, "If you're making food, pineapple is a rare treat but it's also a bit, hm, sharp? Not to everyone's taste necessarily. At least, that's what my grandpa said. My favorite meal is probably a nice hot potato soup, maybe even with a bit of meat. But if you're really as Santa Claus as it seems p'raps filling warehouse three with cans would be faster."

"I can do both!" Potato soup, with beef, and bowl and spoon. "Which way to warehouse three, and should I just put more of whatever's already in it? Also I'd like to talk to someone who knows what would need to change to make agriculture easy here instead of hard, can you point me at someone who fits that description or failing that at Sarah Sampson or Larry Medici? The person who helped me get here recommended them."

"Thank you kindly. Sarah Sampson? Strange choice. Can you make a map of Imperial Smelter?" Presuming the answer is yes, "We're here, in Chough district. Supplementary industrial and storage. Three is this building, I reckon anything edible and lasting will do. Sarah's place is in Bevings, up here, residential. And Medici is one of the head engineers, he'll be in Mine or Smelter districts." Point. "I'm not sure about farming but the steam houses are all over here, Atkins district."

It looks like a town of maybe 2000-3000 people.

"Sounds good! Anything else I can do for you while I do that? I can be in a few places at once." Scrying the warehouse and putting food in it! More of what's in there plus everything shelf-stable from their old grocery store back home.

The person taking inventory startles and drops his clipboard, then looks around in shock and leaves it there, walking towards the exit.

"Can I get new boots? And a coat? Warm as ya can have 'em."

"Ooh. Same. Pants too, may as well."

"Me too. What's your name, unless you want people to call you Santa Claus and think it's Christmas Holiday? Want anything in return?"

Audio projection to clipboard guy: "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!"

Boots and coats and pants, in the correct sizes. "I'm Anda. You could let me make you able to choose your own aging rate and also immune to diseases? Or if you don't want that you could tell other people about me so I stop being startling a little sooner."

Clipboard guy asks if he's hallucinating or dreaming? They definitely do NOT have this much food.

"Isn't that like... Hubris? Surpassing God's design or something?" 

"Screw God." This seems to startle the other two. "If God sent the frost he's evil, and he didn't he's unworthy."

"Everything is okay, or at least as okay as it was two minutes ago," Anda tells clipboard guy, sticking an illusion of himself somewhere conveniently visible. "I'm a friendly magic person from another universe and I want to solve problems. Someone asked me to put more food in here. If I messed up your inventory I can get you a count of everything." Scry-shoulder-surf the clipboard for the desired format.

"Who is this God person who might object to people being healthy? I should give them a chance to talk me around but it's not likely."

"Uh... Sure. I mean- Someone probably ought to tell the Baron."

"God created the world and set everything in motion and passed down teachings. He saved everyone from Hell and will guide them to Heaven so long as we live good and faithful lives according to scripture."

"Or so they say."

"Not today, Harrel. Of all days! I have faith. Everyone should have faith, we'll be happy in the ever-after."

Harrel shrugs.

"The decline of Christianity here is a shameful thing."

Harrel sighs. "Shouldn't have said anything."

"I can go tell the Baron if you want. Want anything else before I go? Immunity to aging and diseases? Recently dead people you'd like back alive who would have somewhere to live lined up?"

"I'm very confused, can you explain your dispute like I'm from another planet and not especially bright?"

"Christians believe among other things that a very smart, very magical person created the world and everything else. This person is called God. They also say that God left instructions on the proper way to live a good life, and that evil people will suffer forever after they die and good people will live in paradise after they die. I think they're wrong and it's all made up."

"It's more complicated than that," The woman says, sulking a bit. "There are recorded miracles, and teachings from the Apostles..."

Alf is Super Staying Out Of It.

In the warehouse:

"...You can return the dead to life? Praise God! Please, my mother and brother both froze in the last Whiteout. I have enough crownmark saved to support them."

"If some people are suffering forever that's obviously the biggest problem and I should raise someone from the dead to check. Someone in the other room just asked me to raise their dead relatives so that's, uh, convenient inasmuch as someone being dead can be convenient. Please hold for a couple minutes and I'll get back to you with results."

In the warehouse: "Okay!" and a pair of eights to get this person's dead parent and sibling back! And not in the forking way, to be clear, they want those people removed from anywhere else they are and located here instead, with healthy bodies and all their memories including anything they experienced since they died.

The now-trio in the warehouse go into a tearful, if confused, reunion. The two resurrectees don't seem to remember anything past being trapped in an overturned truck in a blizzard.

Anda turns off their visual on the room and then as soon as the lack of post-death memories is established they turn off their audio.

"Okay," they say to the religion debaters, "the resurrected people don't remember anything from being dead even when I specifically tried to make sure they would if there was anything to remember, so there's probably no emergency on that front. But bringing back a lot of dead people is a reasonable thing to prioritize anyway, once I talk to the Baron or other relevant parties about helping with infrastructure so you don't end up with more people than you have room for."

...Angelique is going to thank Anda politely for the food and go pray now, thank you.

"We shouldn't take up any more of your time," Alf says politely, after that.

"Okay! Would you like to be able to contact me telepathically in case you think of anything else later?"

"Would that... Bother you?"

"Sure," the older one says. "You never have to use it unless it's an emergency, Alf. Though really what I need is a full belly, a warm room, and full night's sleep. I can think more after all that."

"I can think thirty-two independent trains of thought at the same time, and I usually keep a couple of them freed up for interruptions, and if I need to be doing more things than that I can make more copies of myself--I've done it before and it went fine. There's an amount of annoying you could be that would get me to stop picking up, and an amount of busy I could be that would get me to stop picking up, but we're not likely to hit either one."

"Well, sure, why not. I'd also like to not ever be cold again and not get old and all that. Most people would, probably. Oh, can you stick one of those difference computing engines in here? I read a book about how to use one to characterize steam systems and it seemed neat."

Nice suite of aging-control and temperature-control and injury resistance and disease immunity, coming right up! "There you go, and I can make a difference engine but my world has much more advanced computation technology and I can also make that! Or books on how to make it, that's an even better idea. How big is a difference engine, so I know where to put it?"

"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.

It's still kind of confusing. "Why don't more people live on the Equator? It looks like it's a bit warmer there."

"I believe that is probably because, ah... Only the richest and most industrialized nations managed to build infrastructure that actually survived the Last Autumn and the many years that have passed since. And those were concentrated... Here and here." Europe and North America. "In the IEC's case we went north, which was closer, and built on the ice that was already at the poles to get away from, ahem, desperate people. The logic at the time was- Save a few or save none."

"That must have been a terrible time to live in. I'm sorry."

"If large sections of the planet are uninhabited, I might be able to do something like--fix the climate in a latitude band nobody's in, build cities designed by people here to work well in a better climate, and once all the infrastructure is in place I could teleport people and their stuff into their new apartments."

"I can't pretend it's been easy. Is it poor character of me that I'm a wee bit angry at you? Assuming you're legitimate in your magical ability to solve everything that's plagued us for decades, that is. I'd have some alcohol but it would make me a hypocrite."

Sigh.

"Inviting people to a restored climate zone is a grand idea and you should implement it. I'll be happy to never see another bloody snowflake again, once my responsibilities here are fully discharged."

"I'm not sure why you'd be angry at me, so if you want me to do anything differently you'll need to explain, but if you don't want to explain that's alright. I'll get on making that restored climate zone."

Another mindthread starts scrying various times from a perspective in geostationary orbit, adding spectrometry and other new senses and skill-pentagons as necessary, trying to understand how the climate got like this.

"It's irrational. That you didn't suffer the Frost, that everything until now perhaps was pointless-" He shakes his head. "Like I said. Irrational. Perhaps more frustration, regret, relief manifesting in strange ways."

The Baron is still gathering papers as he slowly muses aloud, though...

How fast Anda discovers this might vary, especially if not piggybacking off of local academic work on the subject, but: The ultimate culprit was a one-two-three punch of a massive asteroid impact setting the largest forest in the world on fire, and said asteroid happening to coincide with a supervolcanic eruption that, combined with the forest, spat so much ash high into the atmosphere that a significant portion of the globe iced over. This ice now reflects more sunlight than before, leading to persistent global cold temperatures; Such a phenomenon has been theorized under the name 'snowball planet'. Such climate swings are not out of the question to occur naturally.

"You lived the best lives you could. You kept civilization going. That's not pointless." 

Finding relevant books is one of the things Anda's magic is worst at, so the theoretical end will take a while, but noticing the asteroid and the ash-clouds is fairly straightforward. It's not magic, therefore it's not going to actively fight them, therefore they can fix it. In parallel with the climatology and the conversation, other Anda-threads start finding the leaders of other settlements to discuss the plan.

"Well, I've a list of requests, I shan't bother you with the day to day running- Unless you want to meet people, who I'm sure will be grateful."

The list has a lot of things like 'food' and 'medicine' and 'tools' and 'new houses built to actual proper code instead of continuous compromises' and 'magic ever-burning smogless coal??'

There are a lot of other settlements, only some have clear leaders. New London is the grandest; They actually have a sort of metro system consisting of elevated cable cars leading back and forth between two dozen sites in the frostlands. They're... Mostly doing alright? Some people are hungry, some people are destitute, some are sick, but things seem overall stable. There are factories, there are schools, there is even street art. Currently the leader there is overseeing a parliamentary debate on the duties and obligations of doctors.

Other places are significantly worse off in most cases. Several of them seem to be practicing slavery, or at least some form of forced labor. People tend to be sick, or have very few possessions, or be thin and malnourished. One particular town is currently having a public execution, with the woman who is to be executed being asked if she has any final words before her Judgement before God.

Anda would love to meet people! They like most people and they like having more people nearby to request stuff. And here's food and medicine and tools and LED lamps and all the books required to build them and likewise for solar panels!

The forced labor is not great but making a new habitable zone will be a great time to make an extra city for anyone who doesn't like their current situation and enforce exit rights via point-to-site teleportation.

. . . Anda is going to be a nosy parker and pastscry that person to see what they're being accused of and whether they did it.