"Everything would be run by some random nowhere country out in the boonies - No, that's not right at all, I should be serious. Let me look at the article on smartphones a little more..." 

Audrey pages through and clicks some links, then raises an eyebrow. 

"... If you don't have government intervention," she says, "Apple is going to take over the world. Not quite literally, but they have the core idea - that a smartphone is a personal computer that you can fit in your pocket - and looking at their interfaces it looks like something out of my world in some ways. They're going to steal so much market share from Symbian, unless some other company steals their ideas and brings them to market first. Everyone - and I mean everyone, something like ninety percent of the world population, maybe a little less since your world is less competent - will have a personal minicomputer made by whatever company ends up owning the smartphone market, or else their biggest competitor. Apple has the core idea - build an ecosystem and let anyone else put their apps on it, let them do the hard work while the owner verifies the security - but they're going to own it as a private company rather than security standards being set by any government body. It's going to get hard to do anything with a smartphone that Apple or whoever wins doesn't want you to do. In my world eventually the government gets involved and they start signing packages as valid and it becomes hard to get access to applications the government doesn't want you to have, but I think this world is less - enclosed - than that and hopefully will stay so, it's one of the small advantages you do have, not having that kind of control over your devices."

She takes a breath. "Eventually all the stuff that's going on on the internet - the huge creativity and bursts of real awe, and probably also all the really nasty stuff, I don't know what you get here - will have a die-back as financial viability starts to rear its head. You're going to end up beholden to advertisers or else the government to keep your public forums and social networks running, and that's going to be real bad for public discourse in multiple ways - both because you're going to be drowning in advertisements and because you're going to be subject to censorship from brands or governments that don't want to be associated with content that's not photogenic or politically correct. Politics... Politics is going to explode. It was bad enough on my world when all the random little asrai cults could suddenly all talk to each other and coordinate, and it's going to be worse here when you have a lot more people who don't have people's better interests in mind. You're going to see increasing polarization because now everyone who likes a policy can get together over the internet and advocate for it together, and everyone who hates it can get together and complain." 

She shakes her head. "It's going to be a real mess," she says bluntly. "But you're also going to - it's going to be so much more than anyone here can imagine, too. I haven't even gotten into the advancements they're making with AI these days..." 

"Oh. Oh, shit. I don't actually know how possible this is, I'm not an expert at this stuff, but it's a pretty big deal on my world that it might be possible to create a super-intelligent AI by emulating the human brain in electronics, and your world might be not smart enough to stop that from happening by accident. You might only have a few more decades before this planet goes away."

"Well shit. Okay. So it sounds like my plan should be to invest in Apple and whoever their eventual big competitor is, see if any other obvious things turn up that remind you of winning investments from your world, and then if I haven't managed to bail out of this universe by then throw all the financial weight I've got behind stalling any AI pushes that don't have 'careful and human-safe' as their highest priorities. And hope that at some point we figure out how to make your trick take passengers so I can be somewhere else when it goes tits up.."

"Yeah. In my world there are machines that can make artificial digital art, writing, music, photographs and videos that are all good enough to pass casual inspection as human-made, though they tend to be a little... bland? Like, in order to make quality machine art you have to instruct the machine in most of the details of the composition, otherwise it fills in the gap with the most everyday thing you can imagine, which in some cases isn't even a real object." 

She exhales. 

"We have automated cars as well, which are smart enough to handle road conditions in many major cities. We've solved the protein folding problem. We've had AI players beat human grandmasters at many games of turn based strategy we expected would be hard because they involve pattern recognition. That kind of thing. When we started getting results like that, the general population started taking the warnings about AI maybe being smarter than us a lot more seriously. Basically the experts' opinion is that, like chess, there's going to be a discontinuous jump from no capability at reasoning to more ability than humans have - and if AI gets there then we're probably screwed. So there was a scramble and now there are tight regulations on AI development and the fabrication of certain types of high-performance computer chips in bulk."

"Yep, sounds like your people are a bit wiser than Earth's. I'll have to plan to bail out, and take as much Earth culture as I can fit in a suitcase when I go, probably."

She sighs and shakes her head.

"Yeah. It's a messy situation. If I did develop the ability to bring you out, then maybe we could save some other people too, I just... it would be a whole-ass mess. Bringing everyone from your world might destroy mine, but picking and choosing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I'd probably have to pick and choose if we're looking at a small number of actual people..."

She tilts her head. "Still. Who knows what might happen if we get back to my world and share the fact of the magic. It would be... exciting... but that might genuinely have a shot at saving your world. I mean, it's clearly a whole new branch of physics, you know?" 

She nods and pulls Audrey into a hug. "You're a good girl. You're a really good girl. I'm proud of you, y'know that?"

She hugs back hard and smiles. "Thank you. Stressy. But it'll take decades for your world to catch up, and that's time we can take to figure out a solution. So. We'll be okay."

"We will."

Sable runs her hands softly through Audrey's hair.

"We've got time, and we can focus on just getting you settled in for now. You don't need to be worrying about this stressful stuff just yet."

She presses a soft kiss to Audrey's forehead.

She hugs her firmly and breathes out.

"Love you." 

"Love you too, sweetie."

Another warm squeeze.

"So what d'you wanna do with the rest of tonight? Test out your chat client? Talk about gaming options? Get introduced to the writing and art programs?"

"Let's test the chat client and then we can talk about gaming." 

"Okay! It's this icon here."

She points at it on the screen.

"It should automatically log in, and it should always show me as online, though my status may change depending on where I'm signed-in."

"Okay, let me just see here..."

She clicks, and logs in. The interface visibly throws her for a moment, but after a second she adapts.

Audrey: I should have guessed you wouldn't have a built in facet-switcher. Alas. I guess I'll just have to preface our messages with who is speaking. 

A: Fortunately each of us has a different first initial, so...

A: Hopefully this works for you too?

A little notification sounds from her pocket. She pulls out her phone — a clunky-looking thing with a slide-out keyboard — and taps out a reply.

Yeah, that's obvious enough. There's no facet-switcher, but I could probably write a plugin to add one. The information would only come through for people who installed the same plugin, but installing plugins isn't hard. I'd be glad to if it'd add comfort.

Anyway, yep. That's working clearly enough.

She puts her phone away again.

"That'll reach me just about everywhere."

"Ah, the magic of the internet! It's good to have it back." She giggles and sets the lap desk and its laptop aside and gets up and hugs Sable again. "Thank you so much. So - gaming things, you said?" 

Happy foster-daughter hugs, yay!

"Right, gaming! So PC gaming is somewhat heavily specialized toward strategy games, though I think more things will get built for PC or ported to at some point, and there are some things. If you want exploration and cuteness and platforming, though, your best bets are probably consoles. Can I open a few tabs for you?"

"For sure!" Bounce bounce.

Up come tabs on a couple recent Zelda games, a couple recent Pokémon games, the latest DS and Wii Mario games, the Nintendo DS, and the Wii.

"Oh the DS is super cute! Just look at those little buttons, it's so retro! And the design looks really solid. You barely even have touchscreens and they've hit almost perfectly on the clam-shell model of device most people carry on my homeworld, with the touch screen on the bottom and the reinforced hinge for durability. You do get hinge failures sometimes on that kind of model but it's better than having the screens exposed where they can bash into things. And, well, people on my world really love when things are toyetic and easy to intuit how to use. This looks super like it's designed that way. Can you show me the recent releases for it?" 

"Sure!" she replies with a giggle. "It's kind of hilarious that you're calling our latest handheld console retro, though. Makes sense, but funny."

She separates out the tabs for Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Pokémon Diamond/Pearl, New Super Mario Bros., Mario Party DS, and Super Princess Peach.

"These ones, although GameBoy Advance titles are compatible with the DS as well."

Audrey checks the tabs for each of them, and considers a little bit. "Pokemon Diamond and Pearl look interesting. They're about battling the mons rather than cuddling them, huh? That's kind of cool. How long has the DS been around? What other games exist for it?" 

"It's been around for about three years, and there are lots. There's a dedicated game store I can take you to tomorrow to browse basically everything, and also select from the available colors of DS. I haven't been keeping up with the selection of DS games, but there should be lots."