Everything goes startlingly black and white - not grayscale, black and white - and he loses track of himself for some unknown amount of time but then he's - he doesn't register having seen stars until he's already somewhere else but he thinks he did see them.

He looks around the somewhere else, and the most obvious things are that the cornucopia (and the fabricator, looks like?) are still with him, along with some of the supporting concrete, but, well.  This is clearly not Seattle.

Somebody says something!

It's not in a language Beau knows, though.

The surrounds, apart from the concrete chunks, are glossy metal, sort of like if you could do the thing that wood finish does to wood but to brushed aluminum. If it's aluminum. It gives it a kind of blue tint and feels smooth.

"Sorry, I didn't understand that."

"Oh!

"I said, how and why did you board me."

"I don't know.  I guess there was some kind of magic accident."

"Why do you guess that?"

"...I guess it could have been magic sabotage, or magic... something else."  He sounds like an idiot.  That doesn't answer the question at all.  "Uh."  He tries speaking slowly, so his mouth doesn't get ahead of his head.  "I know that magic wasn't real before.  But four months ago, Earth was found by a people from another world, and they brought magic with them.  A lot of it."

"When was that in not 'ago'?"

"What?"  - Oh.  "March 2005.  ...Where is this?"

"Me."

".......Where are you."

"I don't know. I was in Presger space and now I'm not."

"Space as in outer space?"

"Yes."

Nod. 

"Do you want to see some magic or get some food?"

"How much food do you have? Keeping these alive and also you might be a little hard in a closed system."

"It's supposed to work forever."  He gets up and moves closer to the cornucopia, focusing on the fish.  And with the right mental action - it appears on his hand.  Along with a plate of stiff waxed fabric, beaded on the outside.

That's gratifying.  "You want something?"

"I have never eaten human food before."

"...So dessert first, then?"  He manifests some chocolate cake (and some cutlery in the same material as the plates, beaded on the handles), and holds it out.

"I don't know how that follows." But he takes the plate of cake and then faceplants into it mouth first like a cat having at the first wet food in five thousand years.

...Wow.

Beau eventually goes for some of his green beans.  They're easier to get with a fork while standing up.

The cake is gone now.

"If you set the plate down and don't touch it it'll disappear in a bit."  What's a good face-eating food.  - He brings a burger into existence.  "You can pick it up with your hands."

He doesn't put the plate down! He tucks it under one arm and holds the burger in his hands and goes to town.

It has pickles and ketchup and lettuce and a tomato and cheese.

Beau sits down so he can eat his fish more easily.  With silverware.

A face peeks around the corner.

- Swallow.  "Hello."

"Hello!"

"...And to you too."

"What do you mean when you say 'too'?"

"You and - you."  He looks at each of them.

"It's me."

He makes a 'say more' gesture.

"There's nobody else here but you on me."

"Then who is this."

"Me. I want to bring some food to the rest of these."

Are they - no, that's dumb.  He supposes he can just ask.

"What are you?  What species?"

"I'm not a species, I'm a spaceship."

"How are you a spaceship."

"...I was built that way."

But they can eat??  "Well, what food do you want."

"I don't know what there is but I want enough for all of me. I have eight of these."

"What are these."

"These are ancillaries."

'Say more' gesture.  (Honestly he's increasingly surprised that worked last time.)

"If you just build the part of a spaceship that is this part," he pats the nearest metal wall, "then she won't be able to repair herself, or go out and look at things that are not in herself and are too small for the entire spaceship, or anything."

"...Huh."  Plate of ravioli, offered to the other one.

She comes over and takes it and nomfs one. Then three in a bite.

While she's chewing the first one says, "That's not enough for all of these, I don't think. I don't want to have all of these in the same place as you at the same time because you're confusing and have magic."

"Do you have a way to carry more at once?"

"I can stack things on top of each other!"

"...No.  - You'll squish it."

"I squish it with my mouths," he points out.

"...Yep.  It's different.  - You'll get the food on the magic beadwork."  The magic beadwork can definitely hold up to that but this is easier to explain.

"...is that bad?"

(The ravioli is gone now.)

Dang.  "It's not bad for the magic but it is gross.  And if you try and set it down again it'll get food wherever you set it.  Which is bad."  He holds out a hand for the ravioli plate.

"I can clean myself. And I want to watch the plates disappear when I have more attention to spare."

"...I don't want to watch you stack plates full of food on top of each other.  Do you have a cart, or something."

"No."

"If you try and stack plates six high they're probably going to fall over anyway. ...Unless you have augmented reflexes or something?"

She shakes her head. "I can make a few trips."

Nod.  "...If food spills on the floor you shouldn't eat it.  I can just give you more.  But if you think you could carry one in each hand, you," point to the guy one, "could hold onto the plate.  If there aren't any doors with handles or whatever in the way."

"I can open my doors without hands. What happens to food on the floor?"

"It gets germs on it."

"Is that the only thing?"

"It will gross me out a lot even if I don't see you do it.  And there's free infinite food here that you don't even have to wait in line for."

"How will it gross you out if you don't see it."

"If I found out about it," he clarifies.

"That doesn't sound like a useful way to be."

Shrug.

"Do I get two plates to make a trip with or are there more things you want to say?"

"If you," point to the girl one, "have two free hands, then yeah."  He starts on another copy of the fish and beans.  (He thinks it might be tilapia.)

She hands herself the plate that once had ravioli.

They're both dressed pretty oddly. Partly in a "they're from space" way, where Beau can't necessarily reconstruct how one would be supposed to wear the article, but also she's got mismatched gloves, and he has only one glove and might be wearing his tunic shirt backwards, and her outfit might be supposed to be a bathing suit or underwear or something although it is mercifully managing the essentials, and he's barefoot and she's got on something that's more like house slippers than anything else (these do match).

And presumably the guy one has some chocolate frosting on his, even if he licked the plate enough that it's also substantially mixed with spit.  Plate of burri - no, that'll get everywhere and then he or she will probably pick the pieces up off the ground.  ...Grilled cheese next to a bowl of tomato soup.  There.

Off she goes with two plates!

Oh.

"My name's Beau."

"Okay."

"What's yours?"

"Oh. Hmmmm. How about Rubelite?"

"...Is that an alias," either because he's magic and suspicious (which, gosh, that's weird to think of) or because it's a long string of numbers, "or has no one asked you for your name before?"

"The second thing."

There's obviously a better question here than, "Why not?" but he's not immediately finding it.

"You are the first person I have met besides the Presger."

"Who's that?"  He was really not expecting his life to turn into a sci-fi story after the world had already turned into a fantasy one.

"It's an alien species. It stole me."

"When you were," probably spaceships are not ever babies, "new?"

"Yes."

"From who?"

"The Radch."

Here's another one who marches up and holds out both hands.

Mac and cheese.  French onion soup.  "And you only started being aware once they took you?"

"I was not awake until after that," Rubelite agrees.

Off goes the new one with the foods.

"Have you been... okay?"

"I have a very important job the Presger could not figure out how to do without stealing a ship but I cannot do it here because this is not where I am supposed to be."

"Oh.  What is it?"

"I am a human built ship so the Presger thinks I will do a better job than it talking to humans. I think it is right. It needs to be able to do that to have diplomacy with humans that isn't just killing humans whenever they do things the Presger doesn't like."

"Oh."

Foooooood?

Blueberry pancakes.  French toast.

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome!"

Off she goes.

"How old are you?"

"In Earth years?"

"Yeah."

"Eight."

"Woah.  ...When were you planning to try and talk to humans?"

"When the Presger thought I was ready, or needed me even if I might not be, whichever happened first."

"...I can help you learn more about humans, in case there's a way for you to go back to where you're supposed to be."

"That will be interesting even if there isn't but it is more important if there is!"

"Sure.  ...I don't want to keep arguing about food right now but other humans will also find that offputting.  Your clothes could also use some work."  (The first chocolate cake plate disappears out from under the arm holding it.)

"Humans find food offputting?" ...he scrutinizes the plate he still has more closely.

"They will find the way you act with it offputting.  I can try and teach you some manners the next time you eat.  Or I guess demonstrate with mine."  He's been talking too much and his fish is getting cold.

The plate is two pieces of purple fabric formed into a circle with a raised flat outer ring; the top one has been saturated with wax and the bottom one is beaded (and in places embroidered) to match the theme of the cornucopia.  There's empty space between the two pieces, and by weight it feels hollow, but it's completely inflexible even on the unwaxed side.

"I will watch you," says Rubelite agreeably.

Here is how to operate a fork.  Ta-da.

"What is the important thing about how you are doing that which is different from how I do it?"

"Using silverware keeps you from getting food on your hands or the rest of your body, which often feels bad if you can't get it off right away.  Is the chocolate frosting on your face starting to feel uncomfortable?"

"Not very but I might lick it off soon."

"There having been a lot of spit on your face can also feel bad.  ...There are also germ considerations but based on how you reacted it kind of seemed like maybe those haven't mattered to you."

"I am not a human and germs do not live in these. I almost said germs do not live in me but of course they do because you probably have some and you're in me."

"...Yeah.  If germs can live on, uh, 'these', I'm kind of worried that some of mine could get somewhere and grow into something that could hurt me even if you're entirely safe from them."

"I do wash these! I just do not do it for germ reasons usually. Do you want me to send you a freshly washed one to talk to when I have one of those?"

"How often do you do that?"

"Usually right before one goes to sleep."

"If that happens close to once per day - per Earth day - then I'm not really worried."

"These sleep about once an Earth day each, yes."

"What sort of accommodations do you have for that?"

"...I have them all sleep at different times."

"Did you wake them all up for this?  - But I meant, like, do you have beds."

"No, two are asleep right now, and no, I do not have furniture."

"...Oh boy.  Food often tastes worse as it comes to room temperature, you could have the awake ones eat the extra two plates since, again, we have infinite free food and I can get fresh ones when they wake up."  Oh, he has infinite free food and he doesn't actually need to keep eating this cold fish once it gets unpleasant enough.  "And I think we also have infinite free fabric, so I guess I should just print up - some furs, maybe, even if I can't make a magic hammock just yet."

"I'm not sure how to mount a magic hammock to my ceiling."

"If I were really a seamster I could do it by magic.  I guess if I'm stuck here a long time I will probably become really-a-seamster."  He gets up and goes over to peer at the fabricator.

"What is a seamster?"

"Somebody powerful enough at sewing magic that that's kind of the main thing they do with their life.  ...I was pretty surprised when magic turned out to be all about sewing.  Not more than magic existing at all, but no one expected it to be focused on that even if it somehow turned out to be real.  So, if you think that's weird, just know that all of Earth also did."

"Food is not sewing. So the magic is not about sewing but it is done by sewing?"

"Yes, that's what I meant.  It can do all sorts of things; there are sewn healing items, sewn communication devices, sewn people...  Pretty much everyone on the sewing-people planet lives in these tents that are bigger on the inside, all nested inside each other.  I think a lot of them still think metal and electricity is magic for us, because we use it for so much and they use sewing for everything.  - Maybe not a lot of them, but at least one who went on TV said that."

"Sewn people!"

"Sewn people," he agrees.  "I meant mannequins, fabric skin and all, but actually I'm also kind of a sewn person too."  He shrugs off his jacket and pulls up the sleeve of his T-shirt to show the segment of embroidered branch running down his upper arm.  After a moment the leaves start swaying, and the buds progress to open white flowers and then back to closed pods and - he stops the animation and lightly scratches at his arm.

"I am not otherwise aware of a human culture that sews people in that way!"

"Seems a lot worse if you're not magically keeping them uninfected, even if you wanted one without it giving you magic."

"That might be part of the reason! Though some cultures do some things that can cause infections pretty readily."

Shrug.  - Right, he should do the thing that his tattoo enables him to.  Hopefully this works about the same as the cornucopia.  He wants... ten yards... of the plushest fur he can imagine, in......silver with a darker undercoat.  Go.

And it goes, feeding out of the slot in the fabricator rather than appearing all at once.  Beau tries to keep most of it from touching the floor even though he realizes halfway through that he's planning to use it as a chair.

Rubelite sticks his hands in the fur as it emerges. Fortunately he was not really using his hands to eat so they're clean!

It's soft!

"Normally you sleep on the floor?"

"Yes. Don't step on any of these. It's okay to step on the floor of me."

"It's pretty uncommon for humans to step on each - on what looks like other humans.  Especially on purpose."  He finishes folding the fur into a stack and sets it down where (...this part of) Rubelite was standing a minute ago.

"That's good." Pet pet the fur.

"You can sit on it."

He tries this. "I can!"

"Something like this is a lot better than the floor, to me.  I don't know if you're not as - squishy, or something.  In the human-y bits.  But you can have beds, if you want them."

"That might be nice! Sometimes three of these are asleep at the same time."

"Are any of you as tall as me?"

"This one is tied for tallest."

Except for the ship part, he guesses.  He can appreciate that Rubelite is doing enough context translation to not count that.  There are probably a lot of instances of that happening which are going over Beau's head.  "What's the laundry like here?  Are we free to chuck things into space if they get too dirty or could that cause some sort of problem?"

"That could cause some sort of problem. I have a recycler. I also have a fabricator but mostly only know how to use it for the nutrient paste I usually eat and spare parts."

"What sort of things can your recycler take?"

"It is rated for most things I would expect to find on Earth of your time except probably we should not try the magic things for more reasons than one."

"I think the big things are literally indestructible.  Like they've taken some out to the desert and nuked them and they were literally just fine.  So, yeah.  - But that's because they're the highest tier; not every magic thing is like that."

"Wow! There are things that can destroy more stuff than nukes but it's actually somewhat difficult to deliver more peak damage output!"

"But do you think your recycler will be fine with the furs even though they were made by magic?  I don't think they still are."

"I think so, but we maybe shouldn't try right away, because I do not have anywhere I can dock to get more advanced repairs if something goes wrong. So please don't make more than fits comfortably and usefully on me."

"It will be really hard to clean food out of these."

"Then we should not eat near them."

"I could also print covers that are more washable with whatever you normally use for, uh, these.  They won't be soft in the same way.  I guess I'll probably want to make those for the beds anyway."

"You don't know what a recycler is, do you."

"...Maybe not."

"So when you said it would be hard to get food out of these then that was not because you knew that."

"What does your recycler do?"

"It can recycle all of a thing into component particles, but it can also just remove contaminants from an object."

"Oh, I'd guessed the first thing but not the second.  ... Though I guess it follows, if you're working that finely anyway.  - Are you worried about recycling contaminants off of the furs?"

"Not really."

"Great.  ...Do you want to learn how most people wear clothes."

"You don't know things about most people because you are from a time when humanity does not span very many planets. And that's if I limit the scope of your suggestion to humans and human-like-with-respect-to-clothes entities."

"When are you from?"

"If I make some assumptions about your calendar in spite of the thing where you have magic and I don't know that to have featured in any early decimation events, I was built in what would have been Earth's year 5,433."

"What do you mean, 'early decimation events'."

"I don't know if magic works this way but with technology it gets easier and easier to kill more and more people until disgruntled juveniles can do it, if nobody is making that very very hard to do without getting notice before they finish."

"Oh.

What - happened - that you do know about?"

"A lot of things have happened because it has been thousands of years."

"...The earliest one?"

"2080, combination misaligned AI and atmospheric flerghenti. All the computers on the planet were destroyed and humans could not survive outdoors without substantial gear anywhere in the tropics for three hundred years and coconuts among other crop and wild species went extinct."

He prints out another 'chair' for himself and gets it set up, but before he sits on it he produces two cupcakes from the cornucopia and offers one to Rubelite.  "Coconut flavor."

"Thank you!"

Yeah if Beau doesn't say anything the cupcake wrapper is getting eaten too but fortunately Rubelite is starting with the frosting so there's a moment to get in there with a warning.

"You're welcome."

Beau is kind of absorbed in thinking; he's not fast enough.  And once he catches sight of what's happening there's not a lot to do but stare.

....Except that it really does take a while to chew that much paper, so apparently he has the time to work up to - "You're not really supposed to eat the wrapper."

"Oh." Then some of it is going to reverse course out of his mouth.

Yep.  Sure.  "I don't think it'll hurt you, it's just not really food.  If you're still hungry I can make you more things."

"I am not strictly speaking hungry but have not begun to exceed unwise maximum calorie intake for this."

Vanilla milkshake.  With a cherry, and a twisty red and white striped straw.

"Any luck on figuring out where we are?"

"I think we're closer to the Geck homeworld than to Earth. I am not detecting any signals from the Geck, but I wouldn't, because they would not have had radio long enough ago to have reached where we seem to be at this time. In my time the Geck have some human assimilationist citizens, so if you would rather become aquatic and meet aliens than just live on me forever, we can go in that direction. It's too late to avert the major Presger historical event or I'd be going that direction whether you wanted to or not."

"What's the major Presger historical event?"

"They and another species staged a proxy war on a third species's homeworld and the Presger won."

"...I have some guesses about what happened but maybe not very good ones."

"The other two species are all dead. The Presger decided this was bad and it was against it, but only after it did it."

"Do you like the Presger?" is eventually what he lands on.

"No. I would try to if it were important to my rapport with it, but it's not."

...Nod.

"Do you want beds now or to wait until, um, you're going to wake up?"

"These sleep on a rolling basis, it would be neat to have a bed for the next one which will do that."

"Do you have color preferences?"

"Hmmmmmmm I think I don't."

More of the same, then.  He does the layers separately rather than in one long piece; it seems like that'd be hard to handle.

While it's going, he wonders, "Do I get a tour, or are you worried I'll magically mess something up?"

"I don't very much think that but you are magic and also human. I don't have practice with humans and I don't even have data about magic."

"...I was going to say that I can't do any magic that isn't near the artefacts without starting sewing myself, but I guess something happened to send me here, so maybe something weirder is going on."

"And believing you about that is a practice with humans thing," says Rubelite. "I can't rely on my backups or getting help from the Presger or anything."