On the other side of the window is a very startled woman who was in the middle of straightening her hair! She drops her hair straightener and gapes, and then hurries over to open the window (it does open, but only from the inside.)

"I come in peace," Jean informs the woman, because she might just be an alien who looks human to casual inspection, and first contact calls for a slightly grander greeting than thank you, I was worried I'd have to break the glass.

Clambering in nimbly through the window, he adds, "Where am I?"

"Oh good," she says, "I was worried you were a robber." It's a slightly cramped apartment and no two pieces of furniture are in the same style, though most of them have flowers on them. "You're in my apartment, in Paul, Minnesota. How did you get up there?"

That wasn't enough time for his universal translator to pull a corpus from local transmissions, so they're speaking something that's already in the database, or at least a close relative. Human, then, and if she's not identifying the planet, this is Earth, although he's not sure he remembers a country called Minnesota. Or she's an idiot. That's always a possibility. Certainly the design sense would seem to suggest it.

"I encountered a localized spatial anomaly. At closer range than would have been ideal."

"Oh my. You know, I don't think that's ever happened to me before, at least not if it causes you to end up clinging to buildings. Does it usually?"

"It's never happened to me before either! Two of the last five people who fell in came back out as salamanders. They're still not sure about the other three. I don't suppose three other people have showed up clinging to buildings lately?"

"As salamanders? That's horrifying! The poor people! Can they be turned back?"

"The engineers seemed to think it was likely! Certainly I prefer the abrupt relocation, though. I take it I'm on Earth?"

"You sure are! - were you not before?"

"Not a bit! It's going to take me a week to get back."

If all goes well and he doesn't have to get fancy dodging any checkpoints.

"Wow, I never met an astronaut before. Do you have weird muscle and bone problems? I heard that when astronauts get back from space they often have weird muscle and bone problems."

Astronaut! How charmingly antiquated.

"Oh, I'm not, ah, an astronaut. Just traveling." He has no idea what she's on about with bones and muscles.

"Well, this has sort of been delightful and I kind of want to manufacture an excuse for you to stay but I should probably instead ask you to leave because I'm supposed to be getting ready to go to a concert."

"--ooh, a concert. Something good?"

He's momentarily sidetracked from his situation. Performance art is always exciting.

"It's, uh, My Wife And Her Cat, I'm mostly going because my boyfriend's really into it. You said that like you want to be invited to come along but I'm worried you'll make things weird with my boyfriend, like, hey, here's this fairly cute guy who showed up in my apartment today, I invited him on our date."

"Ah," says Jean, who knows better but can't help himself, smiling roguishly, "but am I not cuter than your boyfriend?"

"You are cuter than my boyfriend but I'm not going to dump him for you on those grounds, he has several other desirable qualities and you haven't displayed any yet, and besides I have a self-image as someone who doesn't randomly dump my boyfriend for cute boys I just met. - nonetheless I think when I tell him all that he'll feel insecure and you being there won't help."

"I don't want you to dump your boyfriend for me," Jean says, brightly, ego adequately flattered. "I'm sure he's a lovely man. Might I trouble you to direct me to the nearest shuttle station before I'm on my way?"

"Shuttle station? I don't - know if - I guess there's, like, Florida, where they launch the shuttles from? Is that what you mean?"

"--that sounds fine. How do I get to Florida?"

"Well, usually you'd buy a plane ticket. Or if you don't have any money I guess you could - hitchhike?"

"--sorry, where does money come into it?"

Maybe ... someone who works at the shuttle station is a collector and can be bribed into letting people cut in line???

"Well, to buy the plane ticket."

"To buy -- excuse me, what year is it?"

They give the answer for 2009, but in the Julian calendar.

Jean's universal translator, which has now in fact had time to pull a corpus, gives it to him as a stardate.

...well. A spatio-temporal anomaly, then. If only he'd been a better student of history. He's ... somewhere in between the Eugenics Wars and the Bell Riots? What is he supposed to do with that information.

...he knows exactly what he's going to do with that information.

"Can you direct me to the nearest live-action theater?"

" - the ballet? I think there's one downtown."

"Marvelous, thank you -- how do I get downtown...?"

"There's a subway, or taxis, or you could walk."

"All right -- thank you very much -- ah, is there a way out of here that's not through the window?"

"There is," she says seriously. "Through the door." She points. "And then you'll want to take the elevator down. Do you know how elevators work? Asking that seems condescending but you seem incredibly ignorant."

"I would be delighted to answer your question," Jean says, brightly, "but I fear I am ignorant even of what an elevator is."

"Wow, okay. How about I help you get down to the street level, then."

Elevators are summoned by pressing a button, like so. Then you step inside them, like so, and press 'L'.

"Oh, it's like a turbolift -- it's charming -- how do you tell it where to take you?"

"Well, I pressed L, for the ground level. If you were going to a different floor you'd press a different button."

Jean immediately succumbs to the universal human impulse to press all the buttons.

"What is the matter with you? You have impulse control more characteristic of a five year old!"

Jean thinks this is hilarious.

"Come now, you can't tell me you've never wanted to do the same."

"I have certainly wanted to do the same but I haven't done it because I have impulse control characteristic of a grown adult!"

"A waste of perfectly good impulse control, if you ask me."

"I didn't."

The door opens on every floor.

Jean fails to appear even slightly abashed about this.

"Thank you for your help!" he says, when they finally reach the ground floor. "I hope the concert is as lovely as you are."

(Then he walks face-first into the door of the building. It isn't even glass.)

"- good luck, you'll need it," she says, and then leaves.

It is hardly his fault that her door is broken!!

Jean wanders around the ground floor, attempting to find a non-broken door. Surely one of these doors will open when he -- more cautiously -- walks up to it.

No, you have to open them. With the handle.

With the what now?

...it does eventually occur to Jean that perhaps those objects are meant for grasping, and from there it only takes a few minutes' experimentation before he figures the door out.

Then he'll find himself on the streets of Chicago! They're kind of grubby, and it's windy, and it's rush hour; there's lots of traffic. Billboards say things like "Underground Ballet. Rated 'pretty good for a first try' by critics and if enough people don't come see it on the strength of that rating, we won't get the chance to improve." and "Ziperidol. It's an incredibly effective anti-nausea medication and we want to make it widely available in stores but it's only approved for cancer patients right now. If you are a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy there's a 91% chance you'll be really glad you saw this ad, based on our study of 200 patients in two different cities."

...advertising has come a long way in the last century.

Well. Even if the ballet is disastrous, it's still an authentic turn-of-the-millennium ballet.

Jean wanders in search of someone to buttonhole who doesn't look like they're in too much of a rush.

Tourists, with a map and clunky box camera?

Woman pacing angrily outside a restaurant?

Security guard outside a fancy building, standing at attention though no one's going in or out?

The tourists have a map, which seems promising. (A paper map! Like they're pirates!)

"--excuse me, I seem to have gotten myself terribly lost. Do you know how to get downtown from here?"

"We were just trying to figure that out! So we're here -" he points, "I think, and we want to go here - I think -"

"He said he'd probably be able to find the way and now I'm irritated with him," says the woman.

"I will probably be able to find the way! It might take a couple of false starts but we're not even in a particular hurry such that those will be inconvenient!"

Confused foreigners! Exactly what he needs to blend in with.

"Would it trouble you terribly if I followed along with you as far as downtown? Every time I try to find my way alone I just seem to get more lost."

"I don't mind as long as you're not some kind of weirdo," the man says. "Okay - I think - this way." And he starts off.

Jean is several kinds of weirdo, but he can pretend otherwise on a temporary basis!

He follows along gamely, taking in the sights. This city is so dirty, that part really doesn't come through in old pictures. The paving stones are incredible, though -- no two quite alike. And the clothes people wear! Natural fabrics, actually woven!

Eventually they find their way downtown! The buildings are taller and there are a lot of restaurants and some theaters. All the theaters seem to be offering ballet, stand-up comedy, or animals doing tricks. 

"I told you I'd find my way and I'm annoyed you didn't have more confidence in me," the man is saying to his wife. 

"I think I correctly expected there'd be a lot of getting lost and confused along the way, and I actually don't like that!" she says back. "But I'm hoping now we can stop having this argument so that dinner isn't unpleasant and the nice man following us doesn't judge us."

These people are very ... frank? It's odd. Takes all sorts, he supposes. Counterproductive as regards judging, though.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he assures them. "I must take my leave now, though -- this is where I'm heading -- goodbye, and thank you!"

"I hope you have a nice evening! You have better odds than us!"

Off they go.

Jean finds a theater advertising ballet, observes briefly from a distance until he feels confident in his ability to work the doors, and then heads in confidently! This works a surprising amount of the time for getting into places.

"Did you buy a ticket?" an usher asks him.

Damn. "Someone else already took it on my way in -- I just had to step out for a second to--" (take a call? did they already have portable communicators in 2009?) "--stretch my legs -- I'm sorry, is that a problem?"

" - as long as you bought it, I don't need to see it."

"Oh, all right. Thank you!"

This must be a money thing. Jean supposes that if you're just selling tickets, and you sell all of them, you have no further reason to care if the people who attend your event are the same people who purchased the tickets.

Time to go find his seat for AUTHENTIC TURN-OF-THE-MILLENNIUM BALLET.

It's actually quite good! Ballet might be a larger share of this society's live entertainment and cultural priorities than Jean would have expected!!

Jean is sold on the early twenty-first century.

When the ballet is over, he will reluctantly exit the theater. And immediately go in search of ANOTHER BALLET. If any are available at this hour.

- yeah, there's a late night ballet. It's somewhat more erotic than the first one.

They again ask him if he bought a ticket.

He did buy a ticket. Definitely. Jean is a person who has money, and has used it to purchase goods and services, in the past and not in the future.

Jean is having the best night.

"Ballet fan?" the person sitting next to him says at intermission. "You look so happy I thought you might be on drugs but too lucid for that."

"Drugs are not half this much fun."

"You should tell the dancers that, I bet they'd appreciate it. I'm here for my girlfriend, I can probably get you backstage with the dancers after if you're not going to grope them."

"--oh, would you? I should be with the angels. I promise not to grope anyone who doesn't grope me first."

"Sure thing. My girlfriend's the one in the green petals, back row."

"Oh she's lovely. And so talented! You're a very lucky man."

He looks somewhat baffled by this but nods after a second. "I am a lucky man."

"To have such an artist, I mean. Anyone would think himself the luckiest man on earth."

"Anyone. But there are - a dozen dancers on stage. I suppose Arielle is the prettiest."