There is a BOOM, and a bright flash of blue-white light, from off to A's left. It's not quite deafening, just loud; and not quite blinding, just very afterimagey; and when the afterimages fade, there is a ragged-edged circle of bare dirt where once there was a grassy clearing, and in the center of the circle there is a pale humanoid figure, currently lying very still.

Anda stabs Aself with the embroidery needle hard enough to draw blood and says "Filth!" about it. People should pick better locations to set off explosives! 

. . . Oh garbage and ruin that human(H) fucked up with the explosives, didn't H. Anda scrambles to A's feet and runs over, shoving the shirt into one pants pocket and grabbing A's handcomp out of another in case A needs to summon emergency medics. A knows the first aid everyone learns in school, CPR and how to clean a cut and splint a bone and whatnot, but that's it.

H is lying motionless on the ground, completely naked and apparently also completely uninjured. H's body is pristine, without so much as a speck of dirt on any visible surface besides those directly touching the ground. H looks to be about eighteen years old and has jaw-length blonde hair which is fanned out around H's head as though blown back by a strong wind, but, much like the rest of H, not dirty or tangled.

The evidence regarding the recent use of explosives in this area is... mixed. There's no crater, just a flat circle of disturbed earth; there's no smell of any residues that might imply chemical explosives. Actually, in terms of smell, the closest comparison is maybe lightning? Bolts of lightning do not normally, however, strike the ground in the middle of a circle of trees and deliver naked unconscious humans there. That's pretty out-there behaviour for a bolt of lightning. Then again, delivering naked pristine unconscious humans is pretty out-there behaviour for any phenomenon that loud and that violently opposed to grass.

This situation makes no sense! At least the naked person (why is H naked??? none of A's business) isn't visibly injured. Anda makes a quick attempt to wake up, just in case, and when that fails checks if H responds to a loud "Hello?" and if that doesn't work whether H has a pulse in her wrist.

No response to the hello. Pulse seems fine. A few seconds after Anda touches H's wrist, H stirs slightly and makes a noise sort of like "wrrrrrnnnghl?"

Oh thank goodness H's not heartdead. "Do you need a medic?"

"Bvrrrn miaauuugh," says H, dragging a hand up to H's face to rub H's temple in a very headache-looking sort of way. H tries to sit up, fails, and blinks blearily up at Anda, then asks a question which might be in a strange language or might just be so badly slurred it's impossible to make out.

"Are you in pain? Do you have full proprioception? Can you understand me clearly?" Anda asks, slowly and with careful enunciation.

H takes a deep breath and rubs H's head and carefully enunciates... some total nonsense. But total nonsense with clearly distinct phonemes, this time!

Okay, this is--probably the kind of medical problem where A can get the stranger some clothes and help H walk to a medic instead of having someone rush over on an all-terrain? A tries to think what's the polite way to check if this person has the use of H's legs without using language or drawing attention to H's lack of clothing. . . . While A figures that out A can get the shirt out of A's pocket and take the needle out and offer it, that seems like it won't hurt.

H accepts the shirt with a grateful, slightly wry smile, sits up again (more successfully this time), tries and fails to brush the dirt off H's back, looks regretfully at the lovely embroidery, then puts on the shirt. It's a bit big on H's slim frame but, unfortunately, not quite overlarge enough to serve as a dress. H does demonstrate some leg usage in the process of sitting up, though.

Great! Not paralyzed! Probably not bleeding internally! Anda is feeling much more okay with A's decision not to immediately dial 4444. 

Now what. 

Maybe H has one of the one-way kinds of aphasia. "Nod if you can understand me?" Also A starts the camera on A's handcomp recording so if the stranger responds in the same conlang or oldlang or whatever it is A can pass it to a transcription webnode and look up what it means.

Nod! Slightly apologetic incomprehensible sentence!

Okay, yup, Anda has heard stories about historians getting whacked on the head and waking up speaking Imperial Peninsular. A doesn't remember whether it fixed itself or they had to learn Convergentlanguage again but at least this person doesn't seem to be too freaked out about it.

"One moment, I'm going to try to translate that . . ." the transcription webnode has a confident transcript--aaaaand it's wrong. Or the language H is speaking is super obscure. Neither the utterance nor any of the words are turning up plausible results in the first two pages.

"Sorry, I'm not getting any results. Do you want me to help you get to the hospital?"

Dubious nose-scrunch. Thoughtful frown. Considering head-wobble. Uncertain shrug. Bonus sentence. (No translation.)

Okay, Anda needs to stop flailing and be systematic about this. "[Nod] means yes, [headshake] means no. Are you physically injured? Are you mentally injured other than in your ability to speak Convergentlanguage? Are you having any urgent problems that aren't either of those?" A pauses after each question to give the stranger time to respond. And also belatedly remembers to switch A's barette to a neutral off.

Physically injured: H prods a few body parts, a knee and an elbow and H's ribs, then decides ultimately on a headshake.

Mentally injured: H thinks about it for a few seconds and then decides on a headshake.

Urgent problems that aren't either of those: H gestures wryly at H's pantsless area, shrugs, and shakes H's head.

Further verbal commentary continues to be untranslatable.

"Would you like help getting home?" Even if H is fully oriented and can read the station names alright with the aphasia H clearly doesn't have a wallet. But then again maybe H has a skinchip and can get home fine and wants Anda to go away and mind A's own business, which would also be valid except A'd like H's message pointer so A can get the shirt back eventually, A put a lot of time into it already.

Dark ironic laughter shading in the direction of tears, though not getting all the way there. Helpless shrug. Too many headshakes to just be an answer to the question.

Oh no. Possibly this person's reasons for being in a confusing explosion in the woods with no clothes on are worse than "H thought it would be awesome". 

". . . Do you want to come back to my home and get some more clothes and some food and--whatever else makes sense?"

Grateful smile! Firm nod.

"Okay. Let's do that." Great. They have a plan. Anda stands up and offers the stranger a hand in doing the same. "My name's Anda."

The stranger gratefully accepts. And nods acknowledgment at the news of Anda's name, and repeats, "Anda," pointing to Anda, and then adds, "Rosy," gesturing reciprocally.

Anda nods, confirms "Rosy," and leads the way back to the station entrance. Is Rosy(R) walking unsteadily enough that it might make sense to offer an arm and steer for the lift rather than the stairs?

Definitely a bit slow and wobbly at first, but steady and with decent balance, and improving visibly as Rosy gets into R's stride. Probably not necessary to steer for the lift, especially if the stairs have handrails to lean on.

They do have handrails, and a nice grippy surface on the treads. Anda watches to make sure Rosy doesn't have problems and adapts to whatever pace R wants to go at but doesn't attempt physical contact unless R starts actively falling down the stairs.

When they get to the paygates at the bottom A beeps A's paycard on two different gates to pay for them both. (The first one activates A's yearly pass; the second one gets seamlessly detected as presumably for a second person and charged separately as a single ride ticket.)

Rosy emits a probable thank-you in R's mysterious untranslatable language and ventures through the gate! R seems unfamiliar with this exact style of paygate (slightly hesitant about the details of how to pass through) but familiar with the general concept (appears confident and oriented about other aspects of the situation, realized Anda was paying for R and made Probable Gratitude Noises).

"Did you come here from a different city recently?" Anda asks once they're through.

The platform has benches; Anda doesn't take one because Rosy obviously shouldn't sit down without pants and given that it feels politer to stay standing. The LED signboard above the platform says Inbound: 10m.

Rosy finds a wall to lean against, and glances at the sign in what seems like a plausibly literate way, and considers how to answer Anda's question, and settles on a weary nod accompanied by some more ironic laughter.

"Do you understand--I'm not expecting you to try to explain it in gestures or anything, but do you have an explanation for what that odd not-explosion was, about a minute before you woke up?" Anda still has no idea what happened there and A'd feel a lot better if someone did.

(The signboard decrements from 10 to 7.)

For some reason, Rosy seems to be having some trouble answering that question. R eventually settles, after a few false starts, on a deliberately ambiguous half-nod half-shake headwobble, plus a bonus handwobble to inject some extra uncertainty.

Unfortunate, but at least it's not a straight no. "Uh, in case you're disoriented enough to want me to say, this is Bridgecity's farstation. And I don't know how long you were unconscious; I heard a boom and saw a flash and looked over and there you were. You woke up pretty quickly so I've been guessing that the boom knocked you out but I didn't see that directly."

Oh look, it's our good friend Ironic Laughter, back again for another quick visit!

Anda cannot tell if that was a "you are saying obvious stuff and it's annoying" laugh or an "I am confused about something that isn't any of that" laugh. "Is there something else you're hoping I'll explain?"

Slow, uncertain nod that maybe started out intending to be a headshake.

"Okay. Unfortunately I'm not immediately guessing what it is . . . " A can provide the current date and time, and attempt to bring up a map of where they are relative to Bridgecity proper, though the latter takes a long time because they're underground and A's handcomp signal is trash.

Gestures possibly intended to request even more map expansion to higher layers?

A can zoom out the map . . . actually A can just give Rosy the handcomp and let R look at whatever geography thing R wants to look at. And peer curiously over R's shoulder unless R indicates an objection.

Rosy seems to be going for: all of the geography. All of it. Starting with the continents and working R's way back down toward Bridgecity, but also spot-checking some other seemingly random locations. Anda is welcome to shoulder-surf this expedition.

That makes Anda somewhat more concerned about Rosy's level of being hit on the head, but R already declined medical attention and maybe R just likes maps. A'll just let R look at maps until the train arrives if that's what R wants to do.

Apparently Rosy does want to do that! After the initial Bridgecity deep dive and some bopping around the globe examining various areas at various zoom levels in search of unknown features, R zeroes in on an area north of the Great Lakes and spends the rest of the wait studying it in detail.

Anda has a bunch of yes-or-no questions and isn't sure which ones to prioritize. A gets Rosy's attention when the train arrives if R doesn't notice; the PA system (which has been silent this whole time) additionally says "Inbound train. Inbound train." As they're boarding, A takes advantage of the interruption to ask "Where were you before you came to Bridgecity?"

...headshake. Also offering Anda A's handcomp back in case A wants it.

Perfectly reasonable thing to not want to disclose. A takes A's handcomp back and pockets it and leans against a wall of the (currently empty except for them) train car. "We need to go all the way to Interchange and get on the blue line." There's a map with the stop names on each wall of the car; the little LED next to "Farstation" is currently illuminated.

"Departing." says the ceiling speaker. The train, when it accelerates out of the station a second later, does not fuck around about it. 

Rosy is not quite sufficiently well braced to weather such abrupt acceleration, but has good reflexes and recovers without falling.

"Did the map answer your question alright? . . . Can you read Convergentlanguage right now as well as understand it?"

A hesitant nod and then a much firmer one.

"Do you want to try typing in Convergentlanguage and see if that works? That might be stupid, I'm not a neuroscientist."

Rosy considers that possibility for a few seconds and then nods.

Handcomp with the documents app pulled up. And opened to a random soup recipe in case having a sample of Convergentlanguage text visible helps.

Rosy, very slowly and with much consideration beforehand, picks out a single word: "typing"

Then R starts copying out the visible parts of the soup recipe, much faster and more fluently although not in any objective sense fast or fluent. R's possibly trying to assemble some kind of message out of recipe fragments, but R might also just be demonstrating how much easier it is to copy a visible example than generate a word out of thin air.

Anda waits a while in case a recipe-fragments message becomes clear, then asks, "Do you think this is going to be a better method of communicating than my trying to come up with better yes-or-no questions? Would it help if I pulled up a list of the most common 64 words?"

Uncertain wobble to the first question; firm nod to the second.

Then A can pull up such a list and stick it in a new document and give it back to Rosy to play around with.

"Once we get to my home I can set you up with language-learning software if you think it will help." Generally speaking language-learning software is for learning any language that isn't Convergentlanguage, but there's probably a Convergentlanguage package for this exact kind of situation, or at least the adjacent situation of people who have had strokes or something.

I do this
say what I do

"I do this, say what I do . . . are you saying that you'll use typing to say things about what you'll do, or are you asking me to say what you're doing? You're typing messages using a selection of common words as a prompt."

I can typing words from typing words prompt
I can not say words from say words prompt
I can typing words from say words prompt but not as good

"Okay, rephrasing to check my parse: you can produce typed content but not spoken content and having a bunch of typed example words available helps. Do you want me to type things I communicate to you instead of speaking them?"

They reach the next stop; some people get on and look with undisguised but dispassionate curiosity at the sight of two people, one of them pantsless, sharing a handcomp. Anda turns on the red light on A's barette again and a rail-thin person(B) in head to toe cheetah print with a green light on B's headband aborts an attempt to stand close enough to eavesdrop over the train noise and sits down.

Rosy nods enthusiastically! And is somewhat uncomfortable about other people's curiosity, but, well, there are no spare pants on this train.

Conveniently, typing everything back and forth also solves the possibility of being overheard.

Are there things you need on the scale of the next few hours that I don't seem to know about? Are there people you want to contact?

people I want to contact I can not contact. don't know about you can contact. seem to you can not contact.

There are people you want to contact but you can't and you don't think I can either? That sounds unpleasant; my sympathies. Are you unable to contact them because you don't have their information without your handcomp or because you have memory trouble or because they're generally inaccessible or for some other reason?

inaccessible I think

Do you know where you want to go once you've had some time to recover?

I don't know where to go. where I want to go I think inaccessible

Are you willing/able to say where that is or why you can't get there?

unable. don't have words

when we get where we go, I can do things to say because

I don't think I'm parsing that last part correctly but I'm fine waiting until we get to my apartment and you do the thing and then I'll know what the thing is, if you prefer that to trying to explain it to me now.

I'm fine waiting

It's not that much farther to Anda(A)'s stop* anyway. A does the tap card ritual again to exit the fare control zone, leads A's companion up an escalator, and walks along a tunnel of shared basements to get to the basement of A's own hometower with its elevator up. A has to tap a different card to get the elevator to cooperate.

*Convergentlanguage orders words such that this is stop[possessive-particle] Anda-[pronoun-declaration]", which avoids this particular case of heinous modifier stacking.

Anda's companion trots along behind A, looking around curiously a little but mostly focusing on keeping up.

A lives on the fourth floor a few doors down from the elevator, in a spacious and cozily furnished apartment. Most of the furniture and all of the rugs and curtains are various shades of blue, and there are several framed embroidery pieces on the walls. Anda leads Rosy into a room containing a collection of sectional sofa (grey, haphazardly piled with quilts), basket chair (royal blue), and armchair (teal) and says, "I'll be back with some clothes in a minute or two", then disappears through a door.

Under the circumstances it would be impolite to sit down. Rosy stands by the sectional sofa and admires the quilts.

Pants and underwear and socks (and Anda) will appear momentarily! Anda looks elsewhere while Rosy gets dressed, saying cheerfully "My parent Vanse made the quilts."

Rosy is the most grateful for underwear that a person has ever been. Okay, that's probably false. Rosy is very very grateful for underwear.

As soon as the clothing is all on the Rosy, the Rosy sits on the sectional and pets a quilt admiringly and then makes a yearning gesture toward the Handcomp of Facilitated Communication.

Handcomp is provided!

I need a word

the word for trouble information
the word for inaccessible information
the word for information not to say

If you used to know something and now you don't, you forgot. If you know something but don't want other people to know, it's a secret. If you want other people to know but can't find the right words, that's information you have aphasia about. Is any of those what you wanted?

secret!

I want to do a thing that is a secret. I want the thing I do to be a secret.

Secret from me, or secret from everyone except me? What level of confidentiality oath do you want and are there any reasons I might prefer not to know?

Secret from everyone except you. I don't know your levels of confidentiality oath. I have aphasia about reasons you might prefer not to know but I think they are generally inaccessible. The secret thing is to explain my trouble.

Okay. Is "I promise not to tell anyone unless something about as bad as somebody dying* could be prevented by my telling" strong enough?

*"Dying" without any affixes means heartdying, not truedying. Also Anda didn't type that asterisk; it's nondiegetic.

That is strong enough. Do you promise?

Copy, paste, edit:

I promise not to tell anyone the secret you tell me unless something about as bad as somebody dying could be prevented by my telling.

Rosy nods again, and puts the handcomp down, and cups her hands in front of her.

Light glows between her closed fingers.

When she opens them, the source of the light is revealed to be—something like a blazing white diamond, glowing from within in a way diamonds are not generally known to do. It cracks apart in her hands, separating into pieces which take on different vibrant hues as they break off the main mass—red and green and blue and yellow and orange and purple, and then those divide further into shades in between, and the individual shards of light are floating up out of her hands to whirl around her in a dazzling cloud, crumbling into lighter and darker shades as they go. Whatever she's doing to produce this effect seems to require a lot of concentration; she has her brows furrowed and is staring intently down at her empty hands.

?!?!?!?!

Anda stares, or possibly boggles, in silence until Rosy appears to be done hyperfocusing.

Rosy takes a deep breath, and smiles slightly, and reaches out and passes R's fingers through the glimmers of light, and attempts to gesture that Anda could do the same, if A liked.

Very tentative hand-swoosh. A unconsciously expects it to feel like mist or falling snow.

The drifting fragments of coloured light are insubstantial and slightly warm, and stay the same amount of slightly warm regardless of how they are intersecting one's body. It's kind of neat. Not really an experience you could get any other way.

Rosy maintains concentration so Anda can play with the weird phenomenon some more.

That is sooooo weird, both as a sensation and as something totally out of model, and Anda will spend quite a while sticking A's hand in the sparkles, holding the reflective surface of A's inactive handcomp up to the sparkles to see their reflections, resisting the desire to take a picture of the sparkles, etc. 

After a minute, Rosy can multitask well enough to watch this and smile endearedly!

A few more minutes after that, Rosy closes R's eyes and holds out R's hands and all the little sparkles come whooshing back in, briefly glowing with unprecedented vibrancy as they absorb into R's skin in a scatter of speckles up and down R's arms. (A few stray sparkles hit R's face instead, and behave similarly there.) Then, letting out a breath and relaxing into the absence of cognitive load, R gestures for the handcomp.

That was so amazingly cool! Here's the handcomp. Anda does a happy little side-to-side bouncewiggle of A's head and shoulders while handing it over.

I need a word for the secret thing.
The secret thing is not just this. There are things and things and things like the thing I do just now. The things are secret and do things.
My trouble is because of those secret things. I do a secret thing and had a trouble. Then I be there. The thing I do to be there was not what you know, like the thing I do just now was not what you know.

I don't know what the name for the category your thing is in is, if it's not "secret things"/"things almost nobody knows are possible", because I don't know what else is in the category. If you want a word for "things you can do that nobody else can do or knows about", maybe "superpowers"?

"superpowers" is a good word. Okay.

I have aphasia about this but I say it as good as I can:

In the not now time, the used to be time, I am where is inaccessible to you. I am doing superpowers with my people. The superpowers had a trouble. People do a trouble to the superpowers. The superpowers do a trouble to me. Then I am where you contact me. Now my people are inaccessible to me; I am not where they are. They are there and I am not there. There is inaccessible.

Thank you for explaining, I think I understand. I think the word you want for "the not now time, the used to be time" is "the past". Do you think the place where you were and which is now inaccessible is more like another planet or another universe or another timeline or the distant past (like you traveled forward in time a long way all at once) or your past but my future (like you traveled back in time) or some other thing? 

"the past" is the word.

I think it is more like another timeline. The place was like this place but not this place.

what is the word for, not a word for a place. a place of a place. it is on this. i think it is like another timeline because of the place of a place on this, when we go from there to here. you, what is the word for a thing like telling but not telling and not explaining, you [a thing like telling] me the place of a place on this, when we go from there to here, and i think because of it that this is like another timeline or another universe but more like another timeline than another universe. I don't know if the secret superpowers from the other timeline are in this timeline or not. If they are that is more like another timeline and if not it is more like another universe.

Anda furrows A's brow for a moment and then triumphantly types:

I think "you [a thing like telling] me the place of a place on this"="I showed you a map (of the planet) on my handcomp". Are there things we could do to find out whether any people in this timeline have superpowers, or would they be too well-hidden to tell?

you showed me the map! and the map showed me that this planet is like my planet but the words are different. on my planet this place has different words.

I don't know how to find out whether any people in this timeline have superpowers. In my timeline if I want to know whether people have superpowers I know how to find out. In this timeline I don't. If I know more things maybe I can.

If you explain how you'd do it in your timeline I can think about how to adapt the process to this one?

Also I should check if this is actually your priority. If it's not, what do you want to accomplish today and how can I best help with that?

I want to find out if superpowers are in this timeline and secret. If superpowers are not secret in this timeline then I can [a thing like telling and showing but more] some superpowers to you and people. If I do that, and more time more time more superpowers more time, I could could go home.

In my timeline I know how to say things to people who could have superpowers. In this timeline I don't know what things to say. The things could be different.

Anda responds to the two paragraphs separately, this time.

[a thing like telling and showing but more] is maybe demonstrate? Or teach?

(Potentially teachable superpowers? Silent probabilistic squeeing!)

Things to say like persuasive arguments or like secret code phrases or like reassurances about known potential problems or like a different thing?

teach!

more like secret code phrases

I would really love to learn to have superpowers if that turns out to be allowed! So would lots of people. Unfortunately I don't know how to find secret magic people if they do exist. Maybe you could do something that might be magic and might be special effects and put a video online claiming it's special effects and see if anyone messages you? Or is that not allowed if magic is secret?

In my timeline I would know the persuasive arguments and reassurances to do that and be okay. In this timeline I don't know those.

Okay. Maybe the best option is for you to get more oriented to this timeline and see if you can deduce where the powered people would be hiding if there were any. Am I understanding correctly that if superpowers secretly exist here, it would be disallowed for you to teach it, but if you're the only person who has them you can do whatever you want?

In my timeline, teaching superpowers is disallowed because it is secret. If I'm the only person with superpowers in this timeline I can do whatever I want and I want to teach superpowers.

I want to get more oriented to this timeline!

Let's move to the big computer; it's harder to switch who's typing back and forth but it has a better interface for language practice software and reading the encyclopedia. We can keep using the handcomp for conversation if you have questions while you read.

Enthusiastic nodding!

Big computer! Perhaps more relevantly, the monitor is also quite large. Anda pulls up a vocabulary-learning program and sets it to include a broad range of word difficulty levels and to use both text and picture definitions, then opens an encyclopedia website on the other half of the screen and goes to the article on the city-state of Bridgecity, which Rosy can tell from the map in the infobox is their current location.

Rosy pays some attention to the encyclopedia, but her main focus is on voraciously devouring that vocabulary program. Yes please give her ALL the words.