And then Othrem finds himself naked, in a damp blind-dark space, and with what feels like rough rocky stone under his feet.

He was not particularly expecting to find himself anywhere at all, be it very clear.  It wasn't going to be the kind of plane crash where they can find your head afterwards and freeze it.

"Did I just get isekaied."

"Tsi-imbi."

"HI!  IS ANYONE THERE?"

Finally! Oh, this is exciting. Inga has been dutifully taking her shifts as Cave Monitor, as one of the newest members of the enclave, but it's a pretty dull job most days. She uses the time to write and to study, mostly, but of course she is prepared to spring into action. She doesn't need to consult the playbook. Time is of the essence!

She alerts her secondary, pulls on her reflective vest, makes sure the two-way radio is on her belt and powered, grabs a flashlight and a clothing-bundle, and out the door she goes. It's less than two minutes to the mouth of the cave, if she hustles.

She hustles.

When she gets there, she calls out the standard New Arrival Greeting.

"Hello! Welcome! I am friendly and you are safe! I have clothing for you!"

In the early years, they experimented with putting a speaker directly in the cave, but they found that inbound arrivals reacted better to a friendly face than to a disembodied voice, after what they'd just been through.

He's been fumbling around in what is evidently a cave, in the dark, in the damp, in the moderate chill, trying to make his way upward or toward breezes whilst being very careful where he places his feet in case of Suddenly Hole.

The sight of possible rescue is tentatively welcome.  The words would be "surprising" if Othrem was not already so surprised as to be running on all zero probabilities anyway.  There's something already here and it speaks Baseline.  Was that Baseline, or did his memories get swapped around, is he understanding a new language without realizing that?  He focuses his attention on the particular syllables of "clothing" and either that was Baseline or a lot of his memories got swapped around.

Possibilities:  (1) Other dath ilani have already arrived here, (2) this is a dath ilani, (3) they already read out the contents of his mind's language centers, (·) all other possible shit.  (·) is getting more probability mass right now than it usually does.

"Hello!  Thanks for having me over!  I too am friendly as a default!  Clothing would be welcome!"

"You must have so many questions! I will refrain from pre-emptively answering them, in case I give the answers in a disorienting order! I will instead wait for you to actually ask!" This was covered in the playbook.

"Ah, right, here are the clothes. They probably won't fit very well, we never know who we're going to get, but they're better than nothing."

She hands over the bundle. It contains a very large sweatshirt, some boxer shorts, sweatpants, and a pair of flip-flops.

"Don't worry, we won't have far to go before we can find you something better."

Huh.  Weird.  He would've figured they'd have had much more time to figure out optimal presentation orders for information under better conditions.  Maybe the range of people these people run into is wider than dath ilan and different presentation orders work better for different arrivals?

Mostly though he's focusing on changing into clothing rather than composing his own questions list.

"I guess if I had to pick a top question, it would be something like, are there any timers burning down?  Processes already in motion where I need to learn about those particular things quickly."

"Oh, no, absolutely not, we wouldn't do that to you! We have an entire New Arrivals program designed to help you integrate as comfortably as possible."

"The only timer is, of course, your internal sense that nothing is right and nothing makes any sense any more and that you have to rebuild everything from scratch and that this is deeply unfair. And that you have to figure everything out under adverse conditions with inadequate infrastructure, in a bafflingly backward world."

Inga has a sinking dread that she has gone off script in a worrying direction but isn't entirely sure how to fix it. She's pretty sure she's saying too much and should try to stop talking, but she can't just stop there.

"That feeling is normal, but we will do our best to help you with it!"

"Hmm.  You might be seriously overestimating my intelligence.  From only the data I'd seen so far, I had not successfully worked out that I should be worried about 'nothing being right' or 'adverse conditions', until you just now reassured me about it.  Though, I mean, to not understate my intelligence, I had worked out that I was probably rebuilding things from scratch."

"Oh! We don't, like, live in caves. We should head back to the enclave! I'm sure you've had enough of being outdoors!"

And she'll start to lead him out of the cave and back to the nearby door of the monitoring station, unless he looks reluctant in any way?

No, he'll follow.  If giving him clothes and leading him out of a dark cave is the first step in the plan of a Dark Conspiracy, he's not going to figure it out while he's got this little information.

She's right about the outdoors thing, definitely.

And some few minutes later - for they are not hustling, in this direction - the new arrival seems uncomfortable with flip-flops? - they are approaching the outside of the monitoring station.

Flipflops are not familiar to him.  There's higher-tech ways to put things quickly on and off feet, if you go as hard on optimizing that problem as a market ought to go when the benefits are being sold to one billion people with two billion feet.

...and that sure is not normal architecture.  Not the weirdest building he's ever seen, of course.  But definitely Deliberately Diverse Architecture rather than Carefully Optimal Architecture; or it would be, in his native Architecture Distribution.

"So what sort of world is this?"  There's probably a cleverer way to narrow down that question but eh.

What kind of world is this. That is such a good question. Inga wishes she had a catalogue of all possible world-types, with their relative frequencies, and a sensible type system for them, such that she could efficiently answer this question in a satisfying way.

Alas, she knows only of her own world and of this one, and two points is not enough to fill out an entire world-type-system.

"I can't really put it in context with any sort of larger possibility-space. All I can say is, it's not like home. It's wilder and stupider and more chaotic and unkind than home, though of course it could be worse. It is always easy to imagine far, far worse. And we've done our best to create a little pocket of familiarity and home, and we're improving that little pocket all the time."

"I am very sorry about the circumstances that brought you here, whatever those were, and for the tremendous upheaval and loss you are probably going through, but I will admit that part of me is glad that you, and every new arrival, are here. The more of us there are, the better we can build a sensible environment here on this world."

As she says this, they arrive at the monitoring station and she holds open the door to let him in.

'Not like home'?  That sounds like she expects all arrivals to be from the same place, in which case she speaks Baseline because she's from dath ilan... or her parents/ancestors were from dath ilan... or maybe, she expects them to both come from some much larger continuum, that this place is still not like?

But he doesn't have time to formulate a careful question about that and ask it, because he is stepping inside the Houselike Object and looking around to gather info that way.

Inside is an entryway where they can leave their shoes and put on slippers. The entryway opens into a larger room, mostly empty but for a few comfortable chairs. The room has five doors (plus the one they just entered through).

"Okay, now you have some choices! What do you most need at this moment? I have different resources behind these doors."

"This first door on the left is a bedchamber with a desk and some writing materials. You can go in there and be alone if you would like to regulate yourself and process what has happened so far."

"The second door leads to a room for handling toilet and grooming activities. I will probably need to explain the fixtures, but if you want that room, let me know and I'll show you how it works."

"The third door leads to a room for preparing and eating food. I'll probably need to help you with that as well."

"The fourth room is my room - at least, when I'm on duty here. It's the room for whoever is running the monitoring station. And the fifth room is the office, for working and listening for new arrivals."

"Oh, and of course we can stay in this room and you can continue to ask me questions!"

"I do need to take just a moment and let my team know that I've safely collected you, but after that, we can take care of whatever is your top priority."

He is not currently hungry nor does he need to visit the washroom, and the concept that anyone in his actual position would be ready to start processing using a notebook rather than asking more questions first, is making him increasingly worried that she incorrectly expects him to be either much smarter or have a lot of additional information in his prior.  And he is not sure what, exactly, he ought to be doing about that.

"Notify your team, check.  After that, I think additional questions, like the 'chaos' and 'unkindness' thing."

If she describes a world that sounds exactly like dath ilan, but which to her, seems very chaotic and unkind, then that'll be reassuring in some dimensions, but also worrying in other dimensions about his own reception here.

"Great! Happy to do that."

"Just so I can tell my team: What is your name, age, previous occupation, and home city?"

"Othrem, 25, onsite robot repair for not very complicated robots, small town of about 2000 people called Trampolines-by-the-Water."

If he just blew some sort of cover, well, he wasn't about to start lying.

This all sounds very reasonable to Inga!

"Perfect, thanks! Be right back."

She'll disappear into the office and send a brief report to her team, containing Othrem's basic identifying information and her own impressions so far.

He's especially eager for information and seems less disoriented and upset than I was expecting, based on my training, but I guess he's my first one so what do I know. His questions are further down the question-frequency list.

I think I'm doing okay and don't need backup yet. I think I can keep an ear on the cave while I talk to him; he seems stable enough that, in the unlikely event we have another arrival right away, I can leave him here for a bit and he'll be fine.

Will definitely be ready for shift change as scheduled though.

She sends that off, receives an acknowledgment and no corrections, and returns to the main room.

"So... you have more questions! About... chaos and unkindness, I think? What kind of information are you looking for?"