It's beyond bizarre to see someone hit by a truck in this day and age, but you don't need a specialist to treat someone hit with blunt force trauma like that. They can get the ambulance in, move the mystery patient very smoothly, and look over to learn as much as possible from the unconscious patient on the way to one of the ICUs. Feel the pulse, take a blood pressure reading, know the right blood type for a transfusion, lazily wave an ultrasound probe because why not. And the clothes are pretty unsalvageable so chop them up they do, asking for a hospital onesie from the laundry team for their mystery patient in that sky blue color that everyone loves. And a nametag to put outside the door to the ward, to make it clear that there's a Mystery Patient inside. No allergy tattoo to be seen.
It takes a lot, but eventually the patient is stable enough and they can just trust that all the wires she's hooked up to and the infrared camera keeping an eye on the whole room is enough monitoring for her to be safe.
Mystery patient is very mysterious! No tattoos, no identification that survived the crash, and their phone- which was strapped to her arm for some reason- has for all intents and purposes returned to sand.
She will eventually return to consciousness. This is a mistake, because she feels like she was hit by a truck. This matches up with her last memory being a truck hitting her. Training kicks in before she opens her eyes. Center and ground. Work out from the center. Heartbeat? check. Breathing? check. Everything that's supposed to move still moving and everything that's not supposed to move not moving? Check. Quick breathing exercise. Try and orient location. Open eyes.
Well it's an ultra-nice hospital room, there's a nice slight breeze and thoughtful, stimulating background noise coming from an unseen fan, the AC is turned super-high and lots of space in the room. There are lots of wires and tubes sticking into in like a pincushion, and a onesie of a wonderful-feeling soft material mostly in the back. It's somehow moved almost completely out of the way in front, to fit all the wires and tubes sticking out there.
Reach to start removing wires and tubes... then stop. Orient first.
She's in a hospital room. A nice one. Probably these things are in her for her health and could be bad to remove. Look for signs and information. How much can she feel around without disturbing the pincushion? Probably there's going to be information somewhere she can read.
Well, there's technical and complicated text on the machines around her? Some of them are a bit hard to reach, and she can stand up in the hospital bed to move closer without bumping into the many things plugged into her... but not really move much more than that.
Okay, well whatever she's able to read is probably the most important information for her to have from the hospital's perspective. Maybe look for something closer than the text on the machines first though. Braille, where her hands were on the bed? Maybe a call button? Her deck would be ideal.
Feeling around, very near her hands when lying down in the bed, is indeed a row of big round buttons with braille! Stretching to read them or knowing the meaning of the braille seems quite impossible, though.
A friendly nurse walks in extremely quickly afterwards. "Are you hungry? Or curious? Or something else? I can grab whatever you need for you."
"Uh, hi! Mostly curious I think?" Well, no. mostly feeling like a pincushion. "...Are we good to unhook me?"
She races her eyes over the machines she's hooked up. "Most of them, actually, and the few you still need can be put on the same cart or lifted by the hoisting machine to let you move around more easily. I'll get that started?" She begins unhooking Education, giving her an extra few seconds to say something before starting to disconnect a lot of the machines. Then she deftly grabs a phone that she taps a few times to get a box on ropes in the the ceiling to hover over the bed, and lowers it before attaching it to the heaviest of the machines that Education is attached to. "You should be safe to stand up and walk around a little I think? I'm ready to catch you if necessary. Or wait actually, you might feel safer if you're worried about falling with that machine ready to grab you?"
Oh, fancy setup. Stormy hasn't ever been in a new hospital. Or ever really a hospital properly as a patient before come to think of it. It's nice, she should steal some ideas for her room.
"Thanks, I appreciate it. Let's see how I do standing." She'll anchor three points as she gets up and takes a few steps- one foot on the ground, one hand on the bed, other hand on whatever is convenient to grab. Probably that hoisting machine box. Then yolo and...
Well, she's a little shaky but not that bad for being hit by a truck. Sore, sure, but everything seems to be in working order. She'll take a few steps and look for her deck. "Oh, did my deck make it?"
"If that's the electronic device then no, it was smushed to dust. You'll have to get a new one."
"Well, fuck. Thanks..." She realized she never got the nice nurse's name, "I'm Education Storm, by the way. It's nice to meet you."
Flags, she's going to look for the nurse's flags and get her name.
The nurse is named Mona. There's even pretty calligraphy above her plainly-written nametag on the uniform itself! She just smiles at Education.
That... is an odd name. It must be in a language Stormy doesn't speak. She's not going to try to avoid messing it up.
"So, uh, next steps?"
"I mean, you recover completely? You came to fairly fast already, and we can check you out early and send you to recover at home, but we're still going to want to keep you here for at least a day or two before your discharge."
Stormy nods, that's reasonable.
"I can take a day or two, that's fine. I should check another deck out from Stores while we wait then." Something is wrong there, niggling at the back of her mind. She can't pin it down though. Instead, she's reminded of her biological needs all being overdue at once. "I should probably get some food in me and shower."
"What will you be having? There's a wonderful barbeque place I know of, and I hope you'll love as much as me. And phones..." she lets Education take a closer look at hers. "I can you find you a model that's as similar as possible, without being too expensive? I can put it on your tab, you don't have to settle cash."
Phones? That doesn't sound right. Something,
Expensive? Tab? Cash? Stormy's blood runs cold. No one's used money since the war. Not even her abusive parents used money. Suddenly this nice hospital takes a sinister overtone. She needs a plan.
"Thanks. I don't have any, uh, 'cash'? on me. So really just whatever gets me on the net is enough." There's no way they'll be dumb enough to let her on the net. It might stall them enough for her to escape and... find the military or something.
"Yeah, I'm aware you don't have cash on you, that's gone extinct. I meant that you could pay for the phone at the same time as your treatment here and not have to pay separately. If you just need to get on the net... for how long? I can lend you one of our spare phones if you just need it temporarily."
"Uh, an hour or two would probably be enough?" More than enough. Either she'll be able to get in touch with someone or she won't long before that.
"Yes, I'll get it come and come back with it. It isn't even a long walk to get it." Mona comes back with a scratched up old phone and an open web browser, handing it to Education. She looks at her in resignation and annoyance.
"Oh, thanks." Why is Mona annoyed? Oh, right. She's part of some weird... something. That Stormy ought to figure out. By looking at this 'phone' thing. Welp, time to go find her people on the net.
The net is completely unrecognizable and nothing of the world she knew exists anywhere on it!
Well, duh. Of course there would be a fake net. Something about that thought felt wrong. She'll file that away for later. For now, next step in escaping a hostile simulation? Figure out where I really am.
"Oh, sorry. I hyperfocused there. Would it be too much to ask to see the stars?" Stormy is vaguely aware of how to navigate by the stars. That should at least let her know which hemisphere she's in.
"...it is very early in the day still. You can look at the night sky over an observatory, or you can use a telepresence robot. Walking out once it's dark could move things that really shouldn't be moved so I must insist you avoid doing so for your own safety." She grits her teeth.
"Okay, thanks. I think I would like to rest now." Yeah, whatever is going on here they don't want her to do that. That means it's obviously the right thing to do.
"Certainly, you'll need to do that," Mona replies in undisguised annoyance.
She's just going to go back to bed and take a nap then. No need to provoke more than she has.
Nobody interrupts her at all, and the peaceful hospital room proves a perfect place to sleep.
And once she's alone she's going to read these machines, and figure out how to get them off of her without setting off any alarms.
...trying results in them getting off of her without any alarms going off. The corridors of the hospital are largely deserted this late at night, and it doesn't take long for Education to find herself outside. The stars look completely different from any she'd ever see from her planet.
Wut.
No, they absolutely cannot be faking the stars. Stormy is going to find a place to sit and look at the stars for a good long time until she figures it out.
After she's sat long enough for the stars to move a little she's going to go back to her room. She's a long way from home, somehow.
Mona quickly finds her, waiting for her just as she turns around. She is looking incredibly sleepy and exasperated. "Can you stop being insane please? What could you possibly want to look at the stars for?"
"Huh? Oh, you can tell where you are from the stars." It doesn't even register that she ought might not share that.
"Although insane might make more sense." There's got to be at least a million people who are insane. There's approximately none people who went so far that the stars changed. "Probably I should check on that."
"Well, what did you think you were doing? And your weird reaction when I told you that you didn't have to settle cash if you want to replace your phone?"
"Well, I thought I was escaping an insane cult that was bizarrely gaslighting me." She'll gesture to the sky, "But obviously I'm the one that's crazy, not the goddamn stars."
Deep breath. "So, I notice I'm confused. Either my cognition is severely impaired or something I believe is wrong."
"...because someone said you don't have to pay cash right now for a new phone to replace the one that was destroyed? Or something subtler?"
"I've never been someplace that uses money before, so yeah I got confused."
"But you know what it is? Did you grow up alone on a deserted island, without even a person from another island trading shells?"
"Nah, I grew up in a religious cult. Moved around a lot, pretty typical deal for that sort of thing." Stormy is still out of it, she doesn't notice that this is likely to get misinterpreted without a shared cultural background.
"I feel like they'd use money though, you're saying they moved around a lot and we use money an extreme amount throughout the globe. If they moved around a lot then they'd need to use money more wouldn't they?"
"Nah, nobody on the planet uses money anymore. We've been on the Blue Book for a while... I dunno, before I was born. Probably before my parents were born?"
"I mean our World Vault Services blockchain thing has also been used for now 40 years I think? That Blue Book sounds like it'd the same, so I guess it's not quite money."
Stormy cry-laughs, "Yeah, not quite money. Fuck. I've been pulling eight shifts a week at the factory since I was 15. All that down the drain just when I need not quite it. What a stupid thing to worry about after getting hit by Truck-kun."
"Well, you started having that job for a reason? Be happy that the... compensation you received had some value for you."
Stormy just shakes her head. "Well, what now that you know I can't pay you?"
"You can pay us? Like the hospital was just made by putting concrete around a mold with all the plastic tubes for plumbing built into it and we put in a bunch of cheap rotomolded plastic furniture and all the medical monitors are like. One sensor and a computer chip from a microwave hooked up to a screen. Why would any of this have to be expensive? Of course you have to pay the doctors and everyone else, but basic can absolutely scrounge up the money to get you looked at by a doctor and some nurses after a car crash, it's not a that much money relative to all the basic you'll make in your life."
"Basic?" That sounds like, "UBI? Uh, is that even something I would get?" Well, it's probably something an alien would get on Ailor but who can tell with a different world.
"Yeah, you would. Like, just go to a police station, give your biometrics, and start getting your account and your UBI? It's basically impossible for you to live or do anything without both, here."
Stormy considers that for a bit. "That seems like the obvious and reasonable first thing to do, then. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing you can undo, though, so I should sleep on it before deciding if there's a reason I should try not doing that."
"Yeah, we'd want you here for a bit in any case. Have a nice recovery!"
Stormy nods, getting up and doing stretches that look more like dancing. Sitting under the stars for hours is nice but it's hard on the body. And on that nice onesie they lent her, that has to be dirty now. She'll brush it off. "Yeah, I think I will. And then probably go get registered and... I dunno. Figure out work and school and so on."
Education gets to recover in peace, and see a lot of cool and neat medical devices along the way! Eventually she's ready to be discharged, pointed at the nearest police station, and told to show the officer the bill for her hospital stay to get help in paying it.
Cool, she'll find out what a 'police' is! That can't have been translating well.
Hot, hot, hot hot! Gingers burn easily and wherever she is manages that terrible balance of too sunny not to protect yourself and too hot to wear clothes.
Police are people who prevent crimes and help make sure contracts are followed. And one of them, once Education gets to the station, guides her through doing the biometrics, getting on basic income and finally paying the bill for her hospital stay.
Okay, she can do that with a minimal amount of panicking over the thought that there's so much crime they need dedicated people for it. She keeps bumping into things that pattern-match bad things at home but turn out to be harmless. She'll reward herself with that BBQ place that Mona recommended. It was good. And reflexively reach for her deck to write a reminder to look up how to "mona" because the translation doesn't seem to come through there.
One thing she'll notice is how the food is always in such huge portions, including at the BBQ. Did she remember a deck? If there isn't one there is no way to look something up.
She has not, in fact, picked out a replacement for her deck. She was waiting until she had eyes on her finances so that she didn't accidentally screw herself over. Now that she has that and a full belly, she'll check out General Stores or a Library to see what she can get for starter equipment and what she can skip straight to best in slot. They have those here?
The first place to buy a phone is a dedicated store for it, showing a wide range of options of different sizes and colors. They're not very different when it comes to the internals, although they do come in very different options for materials.
Titanium is translating. Aluminum is translating. Plastic is not translating. She'll get titanium since that's what she's familiar with. Any of them designed to strap to her forearm and be used one handed?
Some of them are small enough to be easily held and used in one hand, none are meant to be strapped to her forearm. There are patterns for pockets, to let someone sew in a perfectly-sized pocket for her phone into whatever clothes she chooses to wear.
Okay, she'll easily fall into a rabbit hole of calculating stats / $ and comparing minute differences until she finds her phone.
It doesn't take long to find the perfect option; the displays are easy to parse and laid out well.
Then off to the clothing stores with her new phone and the pocket pattern. She'll put some notes in like "Teach neworld what a deck is?" and "Do something nice for Mona." and "Isekai goals?" for later. And she'll start Googling everything. Like what a BBQ is.
She's not allowed to bring the pattern, they're only meant to show what the pocket would look like when sewn onto clothes. BBQ is meat prepared using fuel on a metal grill!
Oh, huh. Okay, time for clothes shopping. What does new world use for flags? That will probably tell her a lot about the place.
The standard clothes have a weird theme: thin, tight or short. They show off her body, and impress in how closely they fit.
She hasn't seen a flag, so far.
Okay that... sorta makes sense. It's stupid hot here with lots of beaches. The clothes probably do well in the water and aren't too hot. She's going to be dogged on looking up how to flag, though. And the default safe-words- it might not be red/yellow/green or they might be reversed or something. That's a common isekai trope.
An enthusiastic woman rushes over to take Education's measurement. All the clothes need to fit precisely to look right.
She can get a dress or yoga pants with a broad selection of pockets, or a separate belt of pockets, the latter seeming like the more common approach!
Belt, vest, and backpack in MOLL-E is a common combo back home. She'll take the closest they have. Then explicitly ask how to signal that people can just come up and talk to her, or to ask before touching, or so on.
Those are indeed options, though not particularly common ones. She'll have to wait to get them sent over from nearby stores.
...body language? Has she somehow forgotten everything she ever learned in body language class?
No body language classes. She should sign up for one of those, probably.