A jogger on the hiking trail nearby pauses, decides it was probably a songbird, and keeps jogging.

"Help! Medic! I've fallen and may have been injured!"

Well, that doesn't sound like a songbird.

The jogger jogs over. "Hi!" he says. "I'm annoyed at you for being reckless in the wilderness and interrupting my exercise. Do you need me to call emergency services?"

"This is a park you utter nincompoop. Or I'm suffering from amnesia. The last thing I can remember I was in a park."

"This is the Appalachian Trail! I guess technically it's a park but it's - not the kind of park you should climb trees in for fun! I think you're the nincompoop here. - and I don't even have signal. I am going to have to run most of a mile up trail to the crest of this hill to get signal to call for help. Next time, you should stay home, climb a tree in your backyard. Dumbass."

"You do that then, my insurance will pay you." What a rude person.

She was in her backyard, insofar as she has a backyard, which is a concept she had not previously been exposed to! Why does she know what a backyard is!

...Also is she actually in the wilderness? It sure does smell...unclean?

The jogger jogs off, less irritated now that they've been assured this person has wilderness retrieval insurance, which they didn't even know was a thing.

She checks herself for injuries and finds no signs of anything serious, apart from the amnesia, which is probably pretty serious! Especially if she's in the wilderness and doesn't remember how she got here.

About an hour later, there's the sound of a helicopter roaring in the air above her. It lands neatly in a small patch of clear trail.

A woman jumps out. " - we're looking for an injured hiker."

"Over here! I haven't noticed any signs of gross physical injury but I think I'm suffering from amnesia, I don't remember how I got here."

"What's the last thing you do remember?"

"I was listening to a book in a park. I think I remember the past sixty minutes or so while I was lying here waiting for a pickup, but not how I got from the park to here."

"What's your name?"

"Alsaiah Vetar"

"What's today's date."

"Ninety-six and six years, ten months, five days."

Something is TERRIBLY WRONG about the way she said that.

- blink blink blink. "Uh, can you say that again? I think I misheard."

"Ninety-six and six years, ten months, five days. Since the first errata. Is this an arithmetic test? Uhhh... Two thousand three hundred and four and two hundred twenty-four and three years since the creation of the Roman Republic but I don't remember the days or months. Am I saying the numbers wrong? It feels like I'm saying the numbers wrong."

"You're saying.... different ....numbers.....than people use for those things - and actually I think you're additionally saying them wrong."

"Are you saying that I have lost years of my life to amnesia? How many?"

"I - don't know what the first errata is and I am more informed than average! I know there was a Roman Republic but I don't know exactly when it was and if I did I'd say it in - different numbers than you're speaking in. I have never heard of a person losing years of their life to amnesia."

"Something is deeply troubling here and you should probably take me to a hospital for a brain scan right away."

Well, they do have a whole ambulance here for that! Off they go.

All of these buildings are tiny and the city air tastes terrible and also still tastes terrible inside?

"How would you test for having thirty-two-and-five years of not memories. Not memories? Not memories. Mistaken memories. How do you test for thirty-two-and-five years of mistaken memories. Because I am having the experience of having thirty-two-and-five years of mistaken memories and if my memories are not mistaken I'm a time traveller or an alien from another universe." WHY CAN'T SHE TALK RIGHT!?!?!??!?!?!

" - wow, that's an incredibly weird problem. It's kind of terrifying that that can even happen to people, actually! You know who's going to involve himself, Dr. Keledar, and he's totally going to get a paper out of it. Whether you have - mistake memories, somehow, or are an alien or a time traveller, he'll get a paper out of it. I need you to give me your arm for the blood pressure test."

She has an arm, which contains pressurized blood.

"We could probably check by seeing if things I know from my maybe-mistake memories are things that I would not - probably - know in other ways. I know how to operate a space truck but if that's - not... the way things aren't... - if I'm an alien my world's space trucks will operate differently than yours. I know how to maintain my truck's reactor, I suppose I could at least run the design by a nuclear engineer for - how much they think it will work when they think about it - Also there's this expressive language problem I keep running into."

"Yeah, I put on your charts that your speech is disfluent, which is a bad sign with a head injury. I'm considering it somewhat likely you've had a minor stroke, but the scans'll catch that, even if I'm pretty sure they can't tell the difference between missing memories and being a time traveller or an alien."

"As far as I can tell my speech is perfectly fluent unless I'm talking about numbers or the thing I can't remember any of the words for! A stroke does seem pretty likely though and it's fair to check that before calling in a nuclear engineer."

They send her off for scans. 

"Well, you're not having a stroke, which is good news for you because strokes are dangerous, but bad news for me because now I have no idea what to put in your chart. You really think we should call, uh, a nuclear engineer?"

"It's a way to test if the things I know from my maybe-mistake memories are things that are not mistakes! Unless nuclear engineering is very simple and everyone learns it in school. In the world I remember nuclear engineering is not very basic and people mostly only learn it if they have relevant jobs."

"I sure don't know any nuclear engineering. I'll call a nuclear engineer for you. I'm not actually sure if I'm supposed to do that but I hate having a patient who's a complete mystery, and it's weird enough I don't think I'll get fired for it."

Off the nurse goes. 

The nuclear physicist shows up about an hour later. "Hey, uh, your nurse said you have the kind of medical emergency that requires a nuclear physicist and might involve time travel and I would love to help. Though it seems pretty unlikely time travel was involved."

"Either I have a lot of memories that don't correspond to things that happened outside of my head, or I am an alien, or I am a time traveller, or something else is happening that I haven't thought of. Some of my memories that might be mistaken are about maintaining a small molten thorium salt reactor. If my description of how a small molten thorium salt reactor works is accurate, and there aren't any nuclear engineers matching my description who have recently gone missing, which I assume there are not or someone would have identified me already, then my memories are most likely not mistaken. If, better yet, you can confirm that my reactor design would work but is not in use anywhere in the world then I am likely an alien or time traveller."

She says this kind of slowly because all of this does not seem to have been obvious to the people around her, and if she's from another universe she's pretty sure, based on the gaping holes in her new vocabulary, that she's been transported to one where people are much stupider and haven't invented the concepts of [truth values] or [inference]. She would've bet a lot of money yesterday that those things came earlier on the tech tree than, say, nuclear reactors but apparently not.

(OK, actually it's much more likely she's just having a bizarre fever dream, in which case none of these people or the world around her is real at all, but there's no point in operating in that world because she has already tried everything she can think of short of suicide to wake herself.)

" - that was a very intimidating speech from a likely delirium patient," he says. "I am nervous and slightly aroused. We do not have small molten thorium salt reactors, because most people don't like nuclear energy, because radiation is invisible and scares people. We do have papers about them so you could have just read one of the papers and then suffered - some kind of bizarre horrifying brain damage, if the design you know is the one in the papers."

How about she just explains how the reactor works and ignores the sexual commentary from this random physicist who JUST MET HER FIVE MINUTES AGO.

He takes notes. "I'm going to need to - compare this with the papers we've got, this isn't my exact specialty. But. There are not a lot of people who have that information and I don't think any of them mysteriously went missing, and you are very coherent and good at math for someone with a brain injury. Or even someone without a brain injury. Also cute. I'm leaving now."

That was weird.

The nurse comes back in. "All your scans are normal. I have to decide whether to refer you to psychiatric or discharge you as healthy. Any idea whether you're crazy?"

"I have the belief that I'm an alien or a time traveller, a noticeable vocabulary gap, and I express numbers in a nonstandard way. I am maybe delusional but I think not in a way where I am a danger to others."

"If I discharge you are you likely to end up arrested for shoplifting or home invasion or something in that class where I'll get hassled over having decided to discharge?"

"I do not have any known criminal tendencies and don't expect to commit any crimes that I can anticipate being crimes, but all my memories are from a different world and if this country criminalizes stupid things I may break those laws in ignorance."

"This country criminalizes a couple of stupid things but ignorance is a defense and they're not the kind of things where someone'd haul me up to demand to know why I released you. Do you want psych or discharge."

"DIscharge, please, and directions to somewhere where I can get oriented in this city?"

"Sure. You're at Annapolis Central Hospital; you probably want to go to City Hall for new documents? You can explain you're not sure if you're an alien or a time traveller or have amnesia, you'll need documents regardless. It's four blocks to Washington and then left, and then you'll know City Hall when you see it. I don't know what they'll do about housing you, but it's not my job and it is theirs so probably they'll figure it out. If you're actually an alien or a time-traveller then they'll want you to go to Central Island Agency, of course, but I think that's not exactly known for sure yet? I don't know if they''ll want you to go there when they don't know for sure."

"Thank you!" She will go to City Hall for documents.

City Hall's a weirdly short Greek-inspired building that seems to have several wings: 'sentencing', 'documents', and 'mayor'. Waiting in line in Documents is an elderly woman ("the dog ate them", she says morosely), a cheerful set of newlyweds, and a grouchy set of newlyweds.

"I'm either an amnesiac or an alien, and I need some documents! And I guess a way to earn enough money to rent an apartment?"

" - wow. Uh, now I'm not sure whether to follow the procedures for amnesiacs or the procedures for aliens but I'm leaning towards the procedure for amnesiacs because I'm less likely to be laughed at."

"Do those come up ever?"

"The procedure for aliens has never come up. A lot of people go to work in Civil Procedures specifically because they want to write procedures for things that are probably never going to happen, like an alien invasion. The procedure for amnesiacs has probably come up but not while I was on duty, I pretty much only see people who destroyed their documents or lost their documents or got married or got divorced."

"OK, let's use the amnesiac procedure then. My name is Alsaiah Vetar, I assume given that we're using the amnesiac procedure you don't need anything else?"

"Age, if you don't know I'm just going to put approx.30? And a physical description, which I'll just write down here, and then, yes, the rest of the form is blank."

"Thirty-two and five."

" - sorry, can you say that again?"

"Thirty-two and five."

"...so like, thirty-seven?"

"...One two three four five six seven. Yes, thirty-seven. In hindsight I should've noticed the base ten a while ago."

"You're a very young-looking thirty-seven. Okay, I put down thirty-seven."

"And where would I go to arrange housing? And look for employment?"

"That's not technically my job. I guess you don't have any friends you can ask, though. Uh, gimme a minute, I'll Google homeless shelters that also offer job services....

There's a women's shelter on 20th and Broadway. The requirements aren't too onerous."

"What, just for women? What other requirements?"

"Uh, pretty standard. You have to say that you don't have a history of violence, that you don't have a recent history of theft, that you intend to follow the shelter rules - no drugs, no violence, no theft, no loud music except in headphones, clean up after yourself."

No drugs sounds inconvenient if she's stuck there a while, but hopefully she can get her own place before it becomes relevant. Also she will need to source some drugs. But that's a problem for future Alsaiah. Present Alsaiah can collect her documents and walk over to the shelter.

The shelter indeed wants her to recite at the door that she doesn't have a history of violence or a recent history of theft and that she intends to follow the rules. She gets a shared room; the other woman in it is presently out. There's two shelves for her belongings. 

"OK so is this some weird liability thing or do you expect those questions to actually get you useful information?"

" - well, we expect the questions to tell us whether someone has a history of violence and theft, or whether they intend to follow the rules."

"I would expect antisocial behavior like violence and theft to correlate with antisocial behavior like - "

" - You know, on second thought, I think I shouldn't finish that sentence even if I could figure out how to in your language. It could be highly damaging to your civilization if I did. If you can it would probably be for the best if you just forgot I said anything there."

"...I don't have a history of violence or theft and plan to follow the rules."

" - great. Welcome. Priority on the computers for people who're job searching."

She is job searching!

And also thinking about how she is in a world where nobody has the concept of deception.

On the one hand, she could take over the planet in a week.

On the other hand, that would be wrong.

You can answer some pre-screening questions and then see jobs that will hire just off your answer to those questions. There's the basic set - history of violence or theft, active user of various drugs - and then if you want you can answer hundreds more about qualifications and certifications you've earned, test scores on various tests, your self-assessed percentile for various traits - which open up more jobs. 

She can answer questionnaires. She can take some of the quicker online tests to put her scores into her job applications. She assumes the online IQ test is stroking her ego, for a moment, before she remembers that if she's right about the world she lives in now that's impossible.

While she's just answering questionnaires and not taking any tests that require her full attention, she is also crawling an online encyclopedia learning everything she can about this planet.

It would be so easy. Naively, it wouldn't take a week. If everyone is so credulous that their language doesn't have a word for falsehood - She could walk into a newsroom and announce that she has just finished recounting the votes in the last elections of every democracy in the world and, oh look, she won all of them.

But - it wouldn't be like taking candy from a baby. It would be as if a small child, full of innocent trust and generosity, had offered to share a cookie with her. And then she'd taken her half of the cookie, and the child's half of the cookie, and all the child's other food, and emptied its family's bank accounts, and left it on a mountaintop to starve.

Or would it? She could do so much good for these people. If she's willing to throw in some threats - not even real threats, she has infinite credibility, there's no need to follow through - she could definitely bring about world peace. All the governments here look less functional than the governments back home despite their people being perfectly honest without any investment in incentivizing honesty. They still have crime, somehow. Is it really so wrong to take a kid's cookie if the next day you show up again and give him five thousand cookies? (Yes. Yes it is.)

It can't actually be that easy, though? In the world she is used to, one-sentence plans to make lots of money don't work, let alone one-sentence plans to take over the world. If there were plans that straightforward to have that large of an impact, someone else would almost certainly have already done it! She's in a different world now, and maybe all her instincts screaming that world conquest is hard, actually, are - wrong? Would she still have that instinct if she were the only human on a planet of moderately-advanced chimpanzees? Is she being fooled by the fact that this world's chimps look remarkably like her? (One part of her brain points out that, as stupid as they are, these people have invented nation-states and nuclear weapons and something resembling modern deterrence theory, which puts them far beyond chimps. Another part of her brain points out that, as stupid as they are, her world's chimpanzees have invented the concept of falsehood, which puts them far beyond the local humanoids. Really it's a toss-up.)

- This is not the time to be wondering about this. She's not going to get any less uniquely advantaged in world conquest in the next month. Right now what she needs is an apartment of her own, a computer of her own, some homebrewed encryption, (which in a world where nobody has the concept of falsehood or concealing information is way less stupid of an idea than it would be in a normal place.) and whatever passes for cognitive drugs around here. (Also her normal doses of supplemental testosterones) And for that she needs - Well. She thought she needed a job, because usually there's not a better short-term way to get money than low-skilled work if you appear somewhere with no legal identity or credit history or skill certifications. But she has learned some things about this world since she arrived at the shelter.

She does a couple more internet searches, writes some numbers down, and walks to the nearest bank.

Chase Annapolis - easy to switch to! - is only a few blocks away. 

"A customer just after lunch casually took all the lollipops and walked off and I'm still thinking about that. How can I help you?" says the teller.

"Hi! I would like to open an account and take out a loan. I have a long list of reasons why I am a good loan candidate but I think it would be a waste of time to start giving them now because I think you don't have loan-granting authority."

"I sure don't! I can help you open an account, and then you can see when either of the loan representatives have an opening. Account name?"

"My name is Alsaiah Vetar, is that what you are asking? Or do customers typically...name their bank accounts...? If you need a globally unique identifying string, my name is unusual and I don't think anyone on this planet shares it."

"We do name and date of birth and they're almost always uniquely identifying in combination. A-L-S-A-I-A-H V-E-T-A-R? And date of birth?"

"... Can I see a calendar?"

Sure, she can probably dig one up somewhere. There's one on the next receptionist over's desk. It is presented. 

She flips through it but it doesn't have quite as much information as she needs.

"When is the spring equinox?"

"Oh, shoot, I can never remember that stuff. Mel? When's the spring equinox?"

        "March 20th, 21st, depends on the year."

"September 19th, 1972!"

"Great. So you can access your bank account with your card, which I'm going to print out for you in a moment here, or by entering your name and date of birth. No one else can use your card, if you want to let someone else access your funds you need to get them their own card as an authorized user. Funds are insured up to $200,000 because we are members of the FDIC."

"Thank you. Let's check if there's a loan appointment available?"

"On it. - okay, there's one today with Anders, but he's a bit of an asshole, if your case is kind of complicated you might want to wait for Suvets, who's a bit more generous with loaning to people who look moderately likely to default."

"What default rate is considered moderately likely? My case is kind of complicated but I have reason to believe that I am very unlikely to default, relative to your typical customers. Are loan decisions made by single people such that there is not a review process standardizing rates between Anders and Suvets?"

"They get some flexibility within broad guidelines and get bonuses at the end of the year depending who was more predictive, because there are so many intangibles involved in figuring out if someone's a good credit risk," she rattles off as if from memory, "or that's what's in the handbook, anyway, I couldn't tell you how well it actually works, I only started here a couple months ago. Uh, I think normal interest rates for an unsecured loan with no history are - 10%? I can't figure out the default rate from there but maybe you can, you seem sharp."

"I have a credit history, but my old bank does not at present exist so it's hard to get the records and we'd be going off of my memory. I don't know if that makes this complicated enough to prefer Anders instead of Suvets. When is Suvets' next appointment?"

"Do you have a particularly bad memory? Lots of clients go off memory, that's fine. Suvets' next appointment is Thursday, looks like."

"If I take the appointment with Anders today, does that preclude taking the appointment with Suvets on Thursday?"

"They usually won't see a customer the other branch agent declined for a loan, it's not really worth their time on average."

She doesn't love it but she can in fact attest to plenty of good reasons to give her a loan, so probably her worst case is getting worse terms than she'd like, in which case she can always refinance later when she has more of a record in this world.

"Ugh, fine. I will take the appointment with Anders."

"Cool, I'll put you in. You seem kind of weird so I'll make a note of that too."

"I am kind of weird so that's a good call! What time is the appointment?"

"3."

Then she will be back at three for her appointment with Anders.

He looks her up and down grumpily. "Are you employed?"

"I was employed until recently, but am currently unemployed because my last employer doesn't exist right now. My previous salary was around $327,680 annually if I'm doing the currency conversions right. I think the transferable skills from that job give me at minimum between $131072 and $163840 annually in earning potential working as a salaried employee for positions I am confident I could get within a few months. I plan to pursue those jobs, and expect to change plans only if I expect the risk of me being unable to repay my loans due to that choice to be less than one in two hundred fifty six. I self-assess as having at least ninety-six point ninth percentile skill at risk-evaluation relative to the local population. I have twenty-one years of credit history and have never missed a payment or defaulted."

Blink blink blink. 

"Do you have savings or investment accounts with Chase or with another bank?"

"I did last week, but my bank has also ceased to exist in the same universe as me so those will not be available as collateral. If you are instead looking for evidence of propensity to save rather than consume, I had around $3,145,728 saved."

" - okay, you're a good candidate for a loan and everything else is not strictly my business, but your bank ceased to exist in the same universe as you???? Actually maybe that is my concern if it happens to my bank that I work for!"

"It was in a different regulatory environment, I don't think you have to worry."

"I'm looking for a loan or line of credit of around $16,384 to cover a few months' expenses, but might be interested in a larger loan if the terms are good. What can you offer me?"

"I'm sorry, I'm distracted from my job by how incredibly weird you are and it's difficult to be professional when you have no idea what's going on and it involves alternate universes. I'll probably recover in a couple of minutes and be able to look at loans for you."

She was really hoping he'd assume 'ceased to exist in the same universe as me' would just mean 'ceased to exist'. She really doesn't want to lie to these people!

(If she were being properly virtuous here she would be avoiding deliberately misleading them but that would make her life so much more difficult while she's still figuring things out and getting oriented! She does not want to commit to being a famous visitor from another reality if she can avoid it.)

"I'm sorry, I know I am weird relative to most people you're likely to meet here and I talk in confusing ways sometimes. I also ceased to exist in the same universe as my great-grandfather when he died, and my favorite childhood cold dessert place when it went out of business. It just the sort of thing that happens sometimes! Usually less surprisingly and life-changingly than when it happened to my employer and my bank within a week of each other, but."

(Was that crossing a line? That was kind of crossing a line.)

He looks so confused! "If your bank just...closed down...where is your money now?"

"Inaccessible to me! Which is why I would like a loan."

Headshake. "So - you don't have a bank anymore, and you don't have a credit record, and you have millions of dollars that are inaccessible to you, and you don't have a job but expect to get one, and you think you're 97th percentile for -

- do you perchance suspect you speak any languages I wouldn't have heard of. My theory is that you work for the secret FS government project on Central Island whose representatives speak a different language to make it harder for them to accidentally tell everyone exactly they work on but it's considered rude to ask about that directly since it's secret for national security reasons!"

"I suspect I do, but that is because I was raised in an obscure country that no American I've met has ever heard of and not because I work for the FS government, which I do not."

"Huh, okay. Well - I can get you $20,000 at 5%, to be repaid monthly in $500 increments unless you refinance."

"That is adequate, thank you! Is there anything else I have to do or will you just put the money in my account?"

"You have to read out the agreement to repay." He passes it to her.

She reads out the agreement, assuming it's not very complicated. If it's very complicated she will want to read it carefully and silently first.

It's not very complicated. She agrees to make her payments, or renegotiate the loan first. If she doesn't do that she will be in default. They can take money from her bank accounts or from her wages if she's in default, subject to certain restrictions*, and other potential creditors will ask about defaults.

*Garnishing of her bank account can't leave her with less than $125 and garnishing of her wages can't reduce them to less than $300 in a biweekly period, and garnishment for child support or court fees gets priority over private creditors. 

Then she will agree to pay! And this will cause her to have money which can be exchanged for goods and for services! Like apartments! And drugs! Starting with the apartment. She checked some listings at the shelter so now she can just... go back to the shelter to send them an email? She should acquire a computer. While she's emailing apartment managers she will also search for an electronics store.

There's a Best Buy and a Radio Shack on the street not too far from the shelter. 

She will investigate both, Radio Shack first in order to test her hypothesis that store names are somehow not considered contentful, and it will not be a literal shack selling nothing but radios.

It's not a literal shack! A sign on the door informs her that they started in a shack but have now gotten a normal storefront and kept the name for recognizability. In addition to radios it sells electronic parts, lots of electronic parts. 

She is pretty sure her comparative advantage in this world is not building a computer out of transistors. She'll try the Best Buy even though it probably won't actually have optimal goods for sale.

Indeed it doesn't but it does have computers, and a sign that reads 'price matching guarantee: if you find the exact same item cheaper somewhere else, we will undercut them by 10%! This doesn't end up getting used very often but it means that our people whose job it is to go check if anywhere else is cheaper are incentivized to try really hard at that!'

"Hello! I want to buy a portable computer and a tutorial in how to use it."

"Oh, I'm glad you're not just looking, we get paid on commissions so I irrationally resent everyone who comes here and doesn't want to buy things. I'm going to try to sell you a more expensive computer than you probably need but in my defense expensive computers are extremely cool and will let you play video games and stuff."

"I am unlikely to buy an expensive computer unless the expensive computers have noticeable-to-me superiority at basic computing tasks. The only ones I can think of that have nontrivial hardware requirements are networking and text-audio biconversion but I'm not a computer person so I might be wrong about that. Depending on price I might also want a non-networked computer and portable data storage? Alternately, I could be upsold on computer hardware if there are hardware-intensive video games, but I would need to be convinced that I wanted to play those video games first."

"Cool, in that case let's spend five minutes in the video games aisle so you can look at some demos and see if you're actually going to be willing to spend a couple hundred dollars for better hardware for video games, they're basically the only thing that's worth getting better hardware for aside from wedding photographers. I guess some people work in computing-intensive industries but I assume they get computers from their jobs, they don't show up at Best Buy."

She is curious about whether these people have invented fiction, and what sorts of hardware-intensive video games they have if they haven't.

They have not, judging by the video games aisle, invented fiction. They have immersive underwater/Grand Canyon/International Space Station/rainforest self-guided tours, and lots and lots of puzzle games, and some caring-for-simulated-critters (the box: they definitely do not have any kind of subjective experience but you'll likely relate to and empathize with them as if they do!). 

When in Rome.

"I think these mostly suck and the ones that seem interesting don't look hardware-intensive. It was worth checking but I want a cheap computer."

"I'm disappointed but not surprised," he says, and gets her a cheap computer.

Can she also purchase a tutorial on its use? She's not familiar with the preloaded software or how to remove it or to install additional software or remap the keyboard or anything.

Yeah, she can also purchase that, from him if she thinks they have okay rapport or she can take her chances with the other three Best Buy employees on duty right now, though he doesn't recommend Shannon, who doesn't actually really understand anything too complicated like how to remap the keyboard.

"You seem adequate."

Cool. Here's how computers work. They're really pretty user-friendly these days but a lot of people don't want to spend a weekend learning so they don't learn and then they think computers are incomprehensible. He can go over all the obvious things one wants their computer to be able to do.

She will learn all the obvious things one wants a computer to be able to do! Because these people have not invented deception, this list unsurprisingly does not include anything about encryption! It's possible this best buy employee is missing other important things, but since he does cover "connecting to the internet" and "what Google is" she's not too worried about her ability to bootstrap to anything else this planet knows how to make a computer do.

The text-to-speech is horrible and the speech-to-text is... nonexistent? That's inconvenient.

"You'd think it wouldn't be too hard for a computer to do that, right? But it turns out it's very hard," he says cheerfully. "I'll ring you up, then?"

She doesn't know the seventeenth thing about computers so maybe it is in fact harder than she thought. She'll pay for her computer and access the internet and check her email to see if she has an apartment now?

Yep, this apartment will take her, going off her assurances that she has always paid her rent and not trashed previous apartments. She can come get the keys at the front office. There's an address given.

Physical keys! It's like she's in some spy thriller or historical drama! She lets herself in to her apartment and goes online to buy some furniture -

What do you mean the apartment doesn't come with an internet connection? How is that not standard? Do a lot of people just... not want internet access in their homes?

"No, everyone wants it, but there are different providers, and some people get it bundled with their cable or whatever. I'm worried you're going to be a high maintenance tenant," says the person at the front desk. "Just call Comcast or something, Comcast is fine for most purposes."

There are... multiple providers. Who all have separate network cable runs to this apartment building? Well that seems inefficient and wasteful but maybe this civilization doesn't know any better ways to avoid monopolies. And a monopoly on internet service would be pretty terrible. So, how exactly does she call Comcast without an internet connection? Should she go somewhere with a public connection and handle it from there?

Oh, the apartment does have a phone line included. 

Fine. She'll figure out how to use the "phone line" to call Comcast.

It transpires that she needs a "phone".

One more trip to Best Buy and she is sitting on the floor of her apartment, with no furniture but a phone, calling Comcast.

"Hi. I would like to subscribe to an internet connection for my apartment."

"Hi! I hate my job. Are you an existing Comcast customer or are you opening a new account?"

"I am opening a new account." She gives her name and address.

"Okay. And do you want our bundles - Comcast with cable, Comcast with HBO, Comcast with sports channels except your local teams..."

"I assume 'cable' is a particular term of art? What's that, what's HBO, why are sports channels sold separately from the regular internet and why wouldn't I want my local teams..."

"Cable is additional TV channels besides the basic ones that are available to anyone with a receiver. HBO is a specific channel that's usually expensive and makes high production value TV shows that are sexier than the ones on other channels, and we have a package with them so you can get it for a discount. Sports are a popular thing people want on their TV. You aren't allowed to broadcast local sports teams because that interferes with other licensing arrangements, so the national sports teams will show games everywhere except where they are local. This call is going to go over my average-call-duration because you're so ignorant and I'm annoyed about that. Can I sign you up for Comcast with cable, I have a performance metric around that one."

"Why is video content on a different internet than the regular internet?"

"Well, there's also streaming on the internet but most cable shows aren't available streaming. I'm not sure why not. Probably someone couldn't make money off it under capitalism."

...

"And cable shows are mostly for entertainment?" whatever that means here? "In that case I would like regular internet, without cable, nor porn, nor nonlocal sports. What is your price and is it different than the prices offered by your competitors?"

"$39 a month for the first six months, then $99 a month. Depending on your area, we might or might not have competitors. If we do, we're probably cheaper than them for the first six months but the idea is that switching is enough of a hassle you won't bother."

"That's not even diabolical, it's just stupid."

She hangs up and goes to get a cup of tea because for some reason the only places that reliably have public internet are restaurants with a focus on hot stimulant beverages. And look up what other possible internet providers there are for her apartment.

It's just Comcast or AT&T.

Well she's going to try to order some furniture now, because it'll take a few hours to get delivered, and then go back to use her phone to call AT&T.

...OK she's going to go call AT&T now, and plan to sleep on the floor because it will take days to get furniture delivered. She was kind of assuming stores would have furniture warehouses in this city but apparently not???

"Hi. I would like to subscribe to an internet connection for my apartment."

"I'm hoping this will be short because I need to take a shit. What's your apartment address?"

She will give it, while inwardly questioning the conditions under which telephone operators apparently have to work?

"Oh, yeah, we don't provide service to that block, sorry."

"...Are you sure? Your website said otherwise, is it often out of date?"

"Yeah, probably it's just pulling off the county level and we do serve your county but actually when I put that address in I get 'no service'."

why. why would the public-facing website present inaccurate coverage data when the company clearly has the ability to quickly generate accurate coverage data.

"This is annoying and disappointing and if I meaningfully had the ability to choose your service I would decline it."

"Uh huh. Bye."

She will call Comcast again.

"I would like an internet connection for my apartment, I am not interested in cable, or porn, or nonlocal sports teams."

"Right, okay. It's $39 for six months and $99 after that."

"I really hope this is illegal and I can sue your management about it."

"- why would it be illegal. Not that I care if you sue our management, they do suck."

"I don't know the local laws but I am hoping there is some anti-oligopoly regulation that would cover this situation." If not that is one more point in the "take over the world" column.

"Well I kinda doubt it, but be my guest. I'll go ahead and sign you up. The phone tree to cancel is way more annoying."

"Yes I inferred this, it's another thing I'm hoping is illegal."

"Good luck but I expect they wrote a loophole in the law or something. All right, you're all set. I have mailed your equipment to your address. It should arrive in 2-5 business days."

This has been an incredibly stressful day and if she had a crying endocrine system she might very well be crying about it now!