Candace had enjoyed herself all day. She's spent 4 hours in class today, learning about muscles and how to make people's blood circulation better! She'll want to make people in hospitals happier, just like her gene-mom. She thought she looked so cute in the school's official skirt, and had climbed around in trees and had fun all day! She was going to have fun in one of the escape rooms at the outskirts of town now. She was supposed to go in near-blind. She opened the door, and walked in, seeing a cute and cool bar. There's a screen showing exploding stars in the distance! This place is awesome. She looked around, hoping to find something puzzle-like so she could have fun solving the escape room. Can she find any hints or notes or anything suspiciously puzzle-like in the room?

Well, there's no shelves of glasses or bottles, or any space for a bartender to stand, behind the bar.

The exploding stars don't look like they're on a screen, if she looks from different angles.

The tables have varying levels of dampness, like someone was cleaning with a wet cleaner and did the tables in some order.

The floor has some lines of non-smooth texture, which seems promising at first, but the lines lead to areas with visible signage ('Backyard', 'Infirmary', 'Security', 'Bathroom', 'Rental Rooms'), so they're probably an accessibility feature or emulating one, not a clue.

Does Candace want to follow up on any of these, or look for more clues?

"Security" makes her curious. It's just a bar, right? Why would it need proper security? Couldn't they just call the police? She's not even sure what it would mean. Security for what? She tries finding out whatever is going on in Security.

There's a skeleton in a dressy hooded robe with flowing sleeves sitting at a desk, facing a computer of some kind.

There's a large paper sign in front of it saying "Non-urgent queries accepted via EMAIL ONLY."

She nodded, keeping in mind the skeleton with an email account. The one asking about non-urgent queries via email. Wow, this is such a cool escape room! Where might a good starting point be. Maybe try the infirmary? Bathrooms tend to be "out of order" in escape rooms, so she's sure that the next step can't be that. And "Rental Rooms" would also probably be locked to gate progression. She'll try the "Infirmary" next, probably better odds than the "Backyard".

There's some kind of hovering and rotating armillary sphere. Which talks.

"How can I help you?"

"Are you, like, responsible for hints? I've just gotten started here, and I was just trying to look for a good starting point for the escape room. I'm really not stuck on anything, I just want some help for finding a starting point or leading puzzle? Could you tell me what the first puzzle was meant to be?" She nervously rubs her hand against the fake rubber gecko coiled around her left arm, its snout looking down at her left hand.

"I'm responsible for providing medical care for injured Milliways guests. That includes you – if you get injured, come to this office and someone will heal you. If you want to leave here, you can go back the same way you came in. If you want a starting point, I'd start by talking to Bar. She could probably lend you a puzzle toy if you want? I'm not quite sure what you're asking about, here."

"I'm sorry, I don't know who Bar is. I just came in here, kind of blind. Was I supposed get an introduction? I thought escape rooms that needed that kind of knowledge tended to have appointments? You're free to go out-of-character, because I think I'm really confused."

"I'm not an actor. This is the interdimensional bar Milliways. It temporarily hijacks other doors, so people who weren't planning to go here show up here instead of where they were planning to go, but it's friendly. Time's probably paused in your home world while you're here. Bar is … the bar. She looks like furniture if you're new here, I suppose, but if you sit down at a barstool she'll greet you with a napkin."

"Wait..."

Candace is incredibly confused. She explicitly requested them being out-of-character, but they're still talking about magic and interdimensional bars? So this is an actual magic interdimensional bar? Then she'd be able to see the magic, wouldn't she? Candace chooses to check for herself, walking to the bar and sitting down at a barstool to see if she's "greeted with a napkin." She nods at the armillary sphere before walking off and checking if the bar really is magical.

There really is a suddenly appearing napkin!

"Hello and welcome to Milliways! First drink is free."

She's not sure what the first drink would even be. Maybe a cup of her favorite soup?

"I'd like to order a bone-broth chicken soup with extra fine croutons, please?"

And there appears a bowl of soup with tiny specks of crouton.

"This spectacularly convenient!" She starts lifting the bowl to her mouth, savoring the flavor. After getting a few sips, she starts looking around. Her curiosity gets the best of her, so she decides to leave the soup for a while to take a look at the bathrooms. She bets that they're not as good as the ones that were recently installed by the city council in her hometown!

There's one large bathroom. There's a toilet section and a shower section and some sinks, with the toilets and showers in enclosed stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors. It's very clean. The stall doors for the showers and toilets have pictures and descriptions of the relevant devices on them. While many of these may seem primitive to Candace, there is some hygiene tech she may think is advanced, such as a sonic shower and a toilet operating on similar principles.

Huh, sonic cleaning tech? That's kind of awesome. What's the backyard like, for comparison? Does it have any cool ponds with artificial corals for diving in, like a few places have back at home?

The backyard has a cobblestone patio with some metal tables and metal-and-upholstery chairs. There are umbrellas in the centers of the tables, but it's cloudy and they're closed. The ground around it is covered with a mix of lowish-growing plants, including some which are in bloom, and some which sprout up between the cobbles. Further out is a lake, partially surrounded by forest, which a cobblestone path leads into. A portion of the forest has holes blasted through it, but is healing rapidly enough that someone closely watching the holes would be able to see them shrink. Some butterflies are present. There may or may not be some waterfall sounds in the distance, it's hard to tell.

Huh. It's really nice and charming, especially the flowers between the cobbles. Is there a pier of some kind? Candace loves the water, and she can just put on a wetsuit or something whenever it gets cold. She probably expected a magical place to be awesome-er in some way, but how could it, really? Hopefully she isn't the first person to ever discover this; it wouldn't be very cool if it was just like, a kind of normal bar. She looks around the rental rooms briefly, hoping to see someone else who isn't a weird floating ball with lots of rings around it. It'd be almost sad if a magical place like this was basically just a reasonably nice bar.

There is not a pier.

The rental rooms area is very, very large. The numbers on the rooms closest to the main bar area are very long and occasionally change. The hallway goes on further than Candace's eyes can follow. Unfortunately, nobody's exiting a room within Candace's viewing range right now.

But there is someone exiting the bathroom. She must have been in a stall when Candace was there. She looks sort of like an adult shrunk to Candace's height, but with large, pointed ears, unusually large irises and pupils, and yellow-orange hair that's far too vivid to be a natural color, down to the root and fully present in her bushy eyebrows. She's also wearing what looks like some kind of historic armor, and a large backpack.

Candace waves at the mysterious individual. "You look so cool! Who are you?"

"Thanks? I'm Karasauriu, what's your name?"

"I'm Candace! I'm new here, and I'm hoping to help people in a hospital one day! What about you?"

"I've been here a bit over a day. I'm looking to follow someone else home somewhere safe, or get more prepared for facing the situation I was dealing with when I got here. I was actually recently healed at the infirmary, which is like a hospital."

"Well, you can follow me home? It's 100% safe there. They'd also probably have some way of getting you more prepared for whatever you were dealing with before you got here."

"I don't think I can count on getting another door? And … you're a human girl, right? It was a violent problem and I'm not sure if your parents would want me to share too much detail."

"Why would need to get another door? The one back to where I live is perfectly fine, right? And of course I'm a human girl, what else am I supposed to be? Also, I don't get why it matters what my parents want. There wouldn't be any point to telling me, though. I won't be able to help you with any violent problems."

"I'd need another door if I wanted to go back to my world from yours. I'm not a human, Bar's not a human, last I saw the healer and guard weren't humans. If you do things your parents don't want they might hit you, but it's no skin off my nose, or they might get mad at me, but you think people in general won't."

"My parents would NEVER hit me! They would get mad if you said something mean, though. Is there anything I can do to get a door to your world? I doubt we could help you with that..."

"Huh, okay. I could use the door to get to my world now, it's just that people who I think were trying to kill me were chasing me when I found it, so I don't really want to."

"Would the door disappear if you went into my world? My thinking is, maybe I stay here, you go back to my world and get help, and then you take the door back to your world? Does that sound like a good plan to you?"

"It seems reasonable, though if it'd be easier for me to immigrate I may be interested."

"Feel free! We'd be so happy to help someone who's totally different like you! We really like helping people in tough situations."

Karasauriu suddenly looks suspicious. "…can you tell me more about that?"

"Well, we have something called basic income. Basically, everyone gets enough so that they never need to work, because lots of people do helpful things that have negative side-effects, and they pay everyone else for the negative side-effects they're doing, and we're rich enough that you can live well of the money they have to pay for doing those. And we really like being able to care for people and make them feel safe and happy, like by hugging and massaging people in hospitals. And we think letting immigrants move in and be well-cared for produces that same nice feeling."

This does not make Karasauriu look all that much less suspicious. "How stable would you say things are?"

"Things seemed pretty perfectly stable to me? Like, we spend tons of money to pay people who have kids, because we want to make it so there aren't any problems with too many old people and too few young people? Can you give me some examples of things that might not be stable?"

"Volcanoes. The liquids in lakes being water and not anything more reactive. Plants with lacework patterns growing the best. Whether healing magic looks like the same kind of magic as zombies use or the same type temple water uses. I could go on."

She doesn't mention mental states, that's offering too easy an answer.

"Well, volcanoes haven't caused big damage for over a century now! Also, we could probably handle volcanoes making everything cooler, even if it would be a terrible thing to happen. We only have water in lakes, and plants don't have lacework patterns. Also, I'm pretty sure we don't have healing magic, and I have no idea what zombies or temple water have to do with anything. Although maybe I should really read more about how we do medicine? I feel like I should know about healing magic if that's a thing."

She fiddles with the fake gecko slightly above her wrist.

"If you're going to learn book magic your teacher will explain about the kinds of magic, and temple water and zombies are different kinds. Healing comes from the gods, and it usually works about the same sort of way, but the type of magic it is varies."

Candace's fidgeting draws Karasauriu's attention to the gecko, which looks strange and very calm, if it's alive. Asking if a familiar is an item is rude, the counterpart less so. She gestures to it. "Is that your familiar?"

Candace looks on in confusion to hearing the explanation of magic. Nothing she's hearing makes any sense.

"What's a familiar? This thing is my continuous glucose monitor. It chirps to let me know if something's going wrong and constantly sends a signal to my phone, so I can constantly check my levels."

"Some book magic people have animals they have special bonds with, a familiar is one of those. What's glucose?"

"Well, this is a fake gecko, it isn't even alive. Glucose is kind of like, the kind of sugar that ends up in you blood? I have an illness where it doesn't change in a healthy and slow way, but in a much more sudden an dangerous way, so I kind of need to use a special anti-sugar when there's too much of it."

"Huh. You have anti-sugar? What happens when it touches sugar?"

"It makes the sugar move into my body and out of my blood? I don't think it does anything special to the actual sugar."

"Oh, okay. So it's not like anti-feldspar."

"Not remotely. I think... Anyway, you said you wanted to immigrate? I think there could be some worries about illness, either you getting sick or us getting sick. But at the same time, we think it's almost fun to handle worries like that, so I'm sure we can handle it."

"If you're telling the truth, sure. I like the idea of stuff like volcanoes not being my problem, haha."

"It sounds pretty impossible to deal with volcanoes being your problem! And yeah, I know it's pointless to say it, but I am telling the truth. I really want to make life better for you and help you, even though I've only met you just now. Actually, I think that this magic door could be a really good chance for us to be able to help people, and for them to help us. Like, we'd be really happy to have people who like raising children or working on farms more. Those are things we have to do, even though we don't like them too much."

Ah, so they want servants and serfs. Well, better doing that than dying of starvation in Milliways or swords outside it. "That's an interesting idea. I'd like to talk to Bar about it, if you're not in a rush."

"Feel free! This isn't an impulse decision, not even slightly. You should probably talk to tons of people before making your decision. I was planning on spending a lot of time here anyway."

"Room and board aren't free, but it's reasonably worth spending savings on if you have them."

And Karasauriu will head over to Bar. What are published works by and about farmers and childcare workers in Thomassia like? How often do they publish works or have works published about them, compared to, say, weavers or bakers or mayors of cities or such?

Bar, when responding to these queries, would also like to see if she's got any intuitions about Thomassian food preferences that suggest a significant portion of the population suffers from malnutrition, because she can model what Karasauriu is interested in here.

"The Optimal Size of Farms: Grains and Fruits, Annual Edition No. 208" is perhaps 200 pages. After a brief introduction, there are dozens of pages that are just tables with information about the sizes of farms dedicated to all sorts of plants in all sorts of soils and geographies. There are then a few different quite nice-looking infographics, comparing the sizes of different kinds of farms and explaining the constraints that keep them their current size. Finally, the bulk of the book is a brief and summarized explanation of how to work many different kinds of crops, how to keep schedules and follow harvesting calendars, how to handle natural features that leave the farm looking different than the ideal featureless flat plane, and finally some advice on how to reshape farm plots in order to use awkwardly shaped areas more effectively.

The book helps Karasauriu learn that labor-intensive crops like strawberries, require the use of significantly more, extra-complicated machines that move slowly, with higher maintenance needs, such that a farmer can keep up with a much smaller farm. When it comes to wheat/rice/soybeans, the book claims that the money is better, and present-day robots and tractors, together with hyper-intensive cultivation, have meant that optimal sizes are hovering around the 2000-acre mark. The days are long and the work mind-numbing, but it's a fantastic way of making money if you can accept the isolation of living in a farmhouse surrounded by so much farmland.

"Caring for Under-5s: Nurturing the Next Generation, Annual Edition No. 63" is a slightly slimmer book. It spends more time on babies under 2 than children from 3-5, and it has information about reward schedules for children to help reinforce positive habits, how to comfort crying babies, advice for when to summon a reserve babysitter, the importance of using touch in order to have children feel relaxed and safe, how to set positive examples as a method of instruction, the importance of integration into adult society at a young age, usage of GPS trackers to let children enjoy playing in total freedom, controlling screen time and teaching children ethics and manners.

The book about caring for children does have some information about when it's OK to use milk from a milk bank instead of milk produced by the caregiving mother without harming child outcomes, but beyond that, neither book mentions nutrition or what people eat at all.

It generally seems like farmers and childcare workers, write relatively less and have less written about them. There are a nigh-endless amount of writings from weavers, bakers, and mayors, consisting of things like clothing designs and fashion manifestos, subtly different recipes for a huge range of pastries and breads, and a near-endless amount of different attempts by mayors to build ideal cities, unless they chose to publish some interesting sci-fi about radically different societies instead.

Bar can share these with Karasauriu, along with the information that there doesn't seem to be a systemic malnutrition problem from what she can tell, including among farmers and childcare workers.

There must be an error. A single isolated household is farming how many acres of wheat fields? For what yields per acre? Is this for real? Do all the publications agree?

All the recent ones agree! Also, there's a history of increased mechanization of agriculture and improved calorie-per-acre yields!

Jaidi's radiant crook.

Industrialization of agriculture is not even an especially rare phenomenon.

Anyway. It does actually look like the farmers are not having a terrible time, right?

There are things Bar might miss, but yeah, literacy and adequate nutrition and such seem pretty universal.

And Karasauriu will go back to Candace. "I'm tentatively interested."

Eventually, Candace walks up to Karasuriu. "Well? Do you think you're interested enough to walk through the door and see everything for yourself?"

"You'll hold the door?"

"Ahh, yes. I'm thinking of staying here kind of as a doorstop, because it seems like an awesome opportunity to meet people! You go on ahead." Candace leads Karasauriu to the way she came into thomassia, and gingerly holds the door open.

And Karasauriu heads through. What's on the other side?

Many, many tall buildings, surrounding a fairly small park. There are occasionally a few people walking around. Looking around reveals that it's near the outskirts of town. It's maybe an hour or so before noon.

Wow.

Aaaalso this excursion seems under-discussed.

Karasauriu heads back in. "How long do you feel up to holding the door for, and would you be willing to write me some useful phrases so I can make a phrasebook?"

"Well, I'd be fine to spend a night here? Just tell my mom that I've decided to sleep over at a friend's house."

Candace returns to the bar, asking it for a phrasebook that's useful for Karasuriu. "I am from another dimension, I am unfamiliar with this language, I wish to have you communicate via pictograms, I wish to be employed" and about as many other phrases as she manages to brainstorm. Including "your daughter is currently sleeping at someone else's house and you don't need to worry about her safety." Hopefully, this is enough to let Karasauriu get into a proper language education program, after asking around and getting oriented.

Karasauriu jots translations down for once the phrasebook isn't in the translation effect.

"So, how do I go about finding your mom? That sounds difficult, it seems like there are a lot of people in this city."

"Well, I'll call her and she'll be waiting for you on the other side? I think that'd work." Candace grabs her phone from her waistband, tapping the buttons so she can call her mom over. "Mom? I'm at that escape-room place. I met someone who could really use help from you. Can you drive over and get her? She can sleep in my room for tonight; I'll be staying with someone else, for now. Love you like always!"

"She should be headed over! Just wait, and you'll see her car show up."

"What does her car look like?"

"It's a big, three-row minivan! It seats 9 with lots of cargo space even with all seats up! It's huge!"

It takes around 10 minutes for the vehicle to show up. It really is as large as Candace said, and flat in the front, making it very boxy. A woman walks out of it. "Who might you be?", she asks Karasauriu.

"I'm Karasauriu. Your daughter said your area was taking immigrants, and I'm interested."

"Well, we're happy to have you here! I can take you to Candace's home. What are your thoughts on work?"

She opens the sliding doors to the second row of seats, revealing a spacious row of seats with a very large amount of legroom. They're covered in an incredibly soft and breathable material, that almost feels like a fleece blanket.

"I'm happy to work at a reasonably safe task I know or can be taught how to do. What's your name?"

"You're flexible, aren't you? My name is Brenda." 

"There are a lot of possible improvements over my current situation."

Karasauriu leaves Bar, waving to Candace who's still at the door. She gets in the … car, and sits in a seat. If there's anything more complicated to do than that she doesn't know how to do it.

Brenda quietly opens the doors from her front, before starting her drive home. It doesn't take particularly long before finding the apartment building where Brenda, Candace and the others live. It takes up essentially the entire city block, with a relatively narrow street in front of it, leading into the underground parking garage. Brenda opens the wide, glass sliding door at the entrance, walking towards one of the many elevators in the first floor lobby.

"We'll be taking you up soon. I'll just have to park the car first."

The elevator is square, and fairly large. The door waits open for Karasauriu, until Brenda returns and walks her in.

She can't actually parse that speech in realtime and isn't going to try transcribing it if Brenda doesn't seem to think it's important.

From a slight distance, this looked like a lot of building.

From closer, it really looks like a lot of building.

She follows Brenda.

The elevator starts moving up fairly quickly; it doesn't take long before Brenda uses a key to open a door right in front of the elevator, and the two of them enter what looks like a classroom, with children running around. There isn't any studying happening at the moment, just play. There are several corridors leading off from the classroom; Brenda walks down one of them, taking Karasauriu to Candace's room. "You sleep here", Brenda says, slowly opening the door. It looks like a dorm, with a king-size bed against the opposite wall. "But you learn, so you can work." she then says. She points to the phrasebook.

Karasauriu will pull out the phrasebook and check some things.

"I sleep here." She gestures at the bed.

"I learn." She gestures at the phrasebook.

"I can work." She mimes spinning thread, looks momentarily frustrated, then mimes holding a baby.

Brenda nods. "Not many people like doing that! So they'll let you." Brenda takes Candace's tablet, placed onto a desk, and puts it into Karasuriu's hands. "That teaches you language!" Cynthia taps a few buttons, before ending up on a children's language learning course. An enthusiastic woman explains the names of animals, family members, and colors! "Especially with book."

She'll watch the screen and try to cross-reference things with the book. How fast is the woman talking?

The woman in the videos is mostly talking at thomassian speed, which is to say incredibly fast. But she does take the care to say the keywords of sentences extra slowly, wanting to guarantee that any listeners can hear at least one word.

…well, she can try to keep up with doing whatever combination of using the phrasebook and using the illusion screen she's supposed to be doing, but she doesn't have that much dictionary and this is going pretty fast. She may look somewhat confused.

"Well, kids talk to moms! Use the main words. Repeat what's said." Brenda taps the pause button, and turns on the subtitles, pointing at them. Then she rewinds the video a few sentences, using the bar under the video player. "Read what's under. Find in phrasebook!"