She knew she had a bit too much to drink last night. She wasn't being very careful, because she didn't have it in her to care. She rarely did. Though usually she was cooped up in her apartment, instead of sitting around in the park just outside Nexus.

So, the headache was not surprising. But she was... pretty sure she wouldn't've gone anywhere near the water—that's a stupid thing to do, if you're alone and not sober. So she's pretty pissed off. She doesn't like surprises.

What exactly does she see, if she looks around a bit, after collapsing on the ground?

It's a BIG park, mostly open space, a couple trees closer to the edges, lots of beautiful flowers, and even a few turkey-looking birds walking around. There are children playing, boys and girls in skirts, climbing in trees and rolling around. The weather is swelteringly hot and muggy.

Why are there... whatever kind of bird that is. Why are there so many people around, she intentionally tried to find a more secluded area.

Why is the weather like that? It only really gets this hot in peak heatwave.

She lays there confused for a few minutes. She is not thinking especially clearly today—not that she is ever thinking especially clearly. The first theory that comes to mind is that maybe she went online while drunk and switched her "level of interest in elaborate pranks" setting. That seems like something she'd do.

There's glances coming her way, here and there. But people don't seem to have noticed her too much, just giving her a curious look before going back to their business instead of doing anything like staring at her. She isn't getting many eyes looking her way.

Well she's sure not gonna go talk to anyone—is her phone still in her pocket? She tries to pull it out.

Yes it is. It has 0 signal. Or Wi-Fi connections, either.

Like, no signal? So it's displaying the warning sign that says it's lost contact with emergency services?

Well, that's... not good, but, it's not like she is off alone somewhere, so. She is just going to lay on the ground for a bit while she gathers energy to, go talk to someone, she guesses. Ugh.

Everyone is accommodating enough to leave her alone. Lying down to recover energy is important! She can see a few people enjoying some time in the ponds, swimming and floating around, and even a duo dressed in SCUBA gear diving deep into the water.

Eventually she will put on some sadedgy songs and start flipping through the ebooks she has downloaded, trying to see if there are any that she feels literally any enthusiasm about rereading again. This never actually works any better than scrolling through her chat client does, but she has the habit anyways.

Truly, there aren't ebooks worth rereading. A least that is as expected!

Part of her brain tries to tell her that she does, eventually, need to actually get up and try to figure out what is going on. Contemplating this mostly makes her feel like a failure for not having done so already. The ground is not actually that much less comfortable than her bed.

Her thoughts will go in circles for, well, at least forty minutes or so, probably. Is everyone just going to continue leaving her alone? She mostly expects everyone to just continue leaving her alone, or maybe for some dramatic staged event to occur.

Eventually, a boy takes a look at Meadow, starting to speak. "Don't you think you should find somewhere to get inside? It must feel terrible to be lying on the grass in this heat."

She looks up at the boy and sighs, as her instincts immediately start figuring out what the shortest path to maybe being left alone is.

"I'm, uh..." she pauses. "I'm fine. Thanks."

She is not fine. Her clothes are not meant for this weather. Getting her water bottle out of her backpack sounds like way too much effort, and also it is probably full of a mix of vodka and fruit juice.

Well, there's a big, rectangular building, with a curved fence in front of its two entrances? It has a bunch of water fountains placed along the curve, and the two adjacent doors in simply scream cool, clean and private.

Private? A random building in a park? She's skeptical. Even odds at best that it has a good hiding place.

Meadow has never been good at mustering the motivation to take care of herself. But... well, maybe less people will be looking at her in there. Fine. She slowly pushes herself up and starts stumbling over.

Walking through one of the two doors, reveals a bathroom. A big one, with bars on the toilet and a changing table. The rush of cool, dry, fresh air comes as a gentle gust over Meadow's skin, making the balminess of the outdoors even more apparent. Everything is bright-white and immaculately clean, and there is even a small bench for her to rest on if she wishes.

...Yeah, okay, fine, this is a little refreshing. Is the bench large enough to lay down on? She's going to lay down on the bench if she can, even if she has to scrunch up a little.

She has to scrunch up on the bench a little, yes. But it's comfortable enough; it's made of some kind of sensorily nice plastic, and it has grooves that lets air flow through them, helping her stay cool.

That sounds comfortable enough that she's probably going to just... fall asleep here. For a while. She'd been up for like thirty hours before she passed out.

(If the door locks, she locked it immediately upon entering.)

The door does indeed lock behind her, with a very reassuring click; in fact, once she's inside, it doesn't let her fully close the door without locking it, presumably to make it impossible to forget. The bench is comfy enough to let her sleep fairly well, although it's probably gonna leave her a bit sore in the neck.

Meadow eventually wakes up, after... maybe four or five hours, and pulls out her phone. The lack of internet connection is deeply frustrating, but she still ends up just laying there for a while.

The headache hasn't entirely gone away, but at least she isn't overheating anymore. Eventually she stumbles over to the toilet, washes her hands, and then... she gulps down the remaining drink in her bottle, and tries to fill it up with water.

...The sinks are weirdly shallow here (relative to what she is used to, anyways), and she can't get the water bottle under the faucet. She supposes you are meant to use the water fountains outside, but... if she goes and opens the door, and there are people there, she can't just go back and continue hiding. So opening the door is scary.

By her phone it should be late enough that the place isn't too busy, but also for all she knows she's in a different time zone.

Eventually, she sighs. She cannot actually hide in the bathroom forever, and there isn't particularly a better time to leave. So she picks up her bag and steps outside.

It's early in the evening, and there are few people around. There are men and women enjoying a run in while wearing tight and flattering leggings, or cycling along the paths near the edges of the park. It's cool enough outside for it to be refreshing, rather than uncomfortably hot like it was earlier in the day. The fountains for refiling bottles work to refill Meadow's water bottle.

Well, time to try to figure out where she even is, she guesses. Can she find anything signage or whatever that might identify what the closest city is, or what region she's in?

There's a quite startling absence of signs, as a matter of fact. The park is placed adjacent to a row of absolutely huge skyscrapers; but looking around, she doesn't see any signs with street names, or any kind of road signs. There's a symbol of what looks like a showerhead without any water coming out placed on the narrow ends of the public bathroom she was just in, but no other sign anywhere to be seen.

...she is beginning the worry that this place is specifically designed to make it impossible to figure out where you are. But she doesn't really have anything else to do, so she's going to go wander aimlessly past the skyscrapers and see if she can find any useful evidence. She will (slightly reluctantly) keep an eye open for any libraries or other businesses that seem like they might provide information without requiring very much direct human interaction.

There's a bunch of cafes around, as well as miscellaneous stores, and a fairly large number of clothing boutiques. It takes Meadow maybe 20 minutes to find a library, judging by the amount of books clearly visible from the outside. The sliding doors just open, letting her explore freely.

Can she find any indication of where, exactly, she has ended up? The number of oddities of this place has started to pile up to a point where she is starting to suspect that she must be in some entirely different part of the world from where she lives, and she is starting to feel apprehensive about the possibility that she might have to deal with a plane flight, instead of just high-speed rail.

She can access one of the computers library's tablets! That's probably the best option. A bit of tapping, and... she finds a map showing her on a planet that looks completely different. She'd probably need to deal with more than a plane flight.

Why are the continents like that.

Does this tablet have an internet search engine? She tries to find all the biggest websites she uses—starting with social media sites, and then trying the Wiki if those don't work.

Well, there are no social media sites she's familiar with. And similarly, there is no Wiki; there are many wikis, in fact. Just not anything like those she is familiar with.

Not really pausing much to consider what the larger implications of what is happening, she starts skimming a bunch of different websites and trying to gauge how possible it would be to produce an elaborate fake internet to troll her.

Yeah, uh, the mundane hypotheses are all feeling very strained. She probably should talk to a person.

...Actually, she is going to see if she can register for some sort of internet forum or chat client or something. That sounds marginally less intimidating.

Jeez, the Internet must be infinite; there are sites on sites on sites on sites! She can casually find a site apparently putting together the THOUSANDS of things written by some popular philosopher from the last century, even down to the letters he sent his family members when he was a teen spending all day reading at the local library and starting to put together the ideas that made him so famous.

She can join a forum as an anonymous user, and ask around? It should work. Joining a chat client requires her to make an account of some kind, so that's also an option. The forums and chat is completely unfamiliar to her, of course. They seem to be quite heavily tech-focused, with many mailing lists and forums used by the contributors to one of the many aforementioned wikis.

Oh, she doesn't even need to make an account, to post on a forum? That's nice. She'll try to find something that seems relatively active, and...

so, uh, it looks like i've been transported to a new planet. i do not recognize this internet at all and the maps all look wrong. i'm not really sure if i'm having some sort of psychosis, or if this is some sort of elaborate prank using technology that shouldn't exist, or if some sort of magic happened i guess. none of those really make sense. does anyone have advice or something? my phone says it cannot contact emergency services.

Probably there are more details that she could include, but... well, people can ask questions.

Well, in either case, you'd want to try contacting somebody like the police? They can help you find a doctor and try to understand anything to do with psychosis. And, if somehow this is more than that, they'd set you up with the things you'd need like an account.

Realistically "go talk to some strangers" was always how this would end, but she doesn't have to like it.

...She should probably not expect the emergency services around here to be exactly like those in her city. For one, they probably have approximately zero data on her, and are going to by default treat her as if she had the same preferences and abilities as the average person. Ugh.

...how do i contact the police, exactly? and what sorts of accommodations do they have for incredibly dysfunctional people? i'm, uh, not... super well put together.

Well, you don't have a phone, right? So you have to walk and find a police station. And I'm not sure in what ways you're incredibly dysfunctional? You're listening and speaking now. That's functional enough for the police to be of assistance.

i mean, i have a phone, but it's not connecting to the internet.

how do i find a police station. what would it look like?

Ah, that's kind of an issue! We like to design things to blend in with the skyscrapers, so you usually can't see things from far away. But it's easy to look things up. The police station would be... kind of far away from where you are? You know what, I'm happy to pay the fare for the subway so you can get to the station.

I can summon an EMU to stop at your nearest station, and you can just step on and take it the 9 stops to the police station. Don't worry; I'm also paying the fare when I summon it.

Oh no people are offering to spend money on her. Can she just ghost them?

...she's being weird enough that they might end up hearing about her. And then immediately connecting her to the person that ghosted them. And she cannot have that happen.

uh. how do i find the nearest subway station? i'm on a tablet in the first library i was able to find. ...and what is an emu, exactly?

She was able to find the address online, which she includes.

The nearest subway station is just across the street; a lot of skyscrapers actually come with basements that lead to subway stations, and the one next to yours is one of them. Just walk in through the lobby, take the stairs down, and you end up in a tunnel that takes you directly to the station. It's called "Sanitation Square", even though it's not a square, don't think bout it. And I can get an Electric Multiple Unit, that's a railway carriage that comes with its own engine, to show up in... 15 minutes. Or more than that, if you worry that it isn't enough time. Or you can ask one of the people waiting to pay for a fare because you don't have a phone on you and need to get to the police station.

uh, sure. 15 minutes is fine if it's just the next building over. i'll pay you back, sometime, if i ever have the money.

will it be easy to find the police station once i get off?

Yes, they try to blend in, but they don't take it too far. There'll be a symbol of a gavel visible on the station's front door; just walk in through there. It looks just like a normal skyscraper, but it's not. Again, we really care about the blending-in thing and quite possibly take it too far.

okay. i'm gonna head down to the police subway. thanks for the help, i really appreciate it.

She's vaguely terrified of something going wrong, but... eh. She doesn't feel like bothering this person any longer.

She takes a picture of the conversation using her phone, in case she needs to reference it, and makes her way over to the skyscraper across the street.

Walking in through the lobby, there is one stairwell that is very obvious. It leads into a well-lit white tunnel, that very quickly ends at a subway station incredibly close to the surface. It's an extremely short wait before a single subway car arrives. It's nearly empty of passengers at the moment; Meadow nearly has it for herself, outside of a couple children again dressed in the skirts they all wear, who glance at her curiously. The chairs almost feel like hammocks, and they're covered in a breathable mesh that's soft, supportive, and helps keep Meadow cool.

She tries her very best (which isn't very hard) to ignore the curious glances, and carefully counts out nine stops, then gets off the carriage and looks for a building with a gable icon.

Meadow only needs a few seconds to find it; the door itself looks like it'd lead into the skyscraper's lobby, although she can see what looks like a waiting room behind the door. There is someone waiting behind a counter, but Meadow can't see anyone else there.

Her insides are screaming at her to run away. She takes a benzodiazepine pill from her bag and walks in anyways: ignoring the situation she's in is not particularly an option. She doesn't actually have anywhere else to go, she'd end up...

Okay actually wandering the streets and occasionally stealing food almost seems like a tempting alternative but she's already inside anyways she can't just leave at this point. And also even if it weren't too late, stealing is wrong so she shouldn't do that.

Does it look like she has to get in a line? If she's going to have to get in a line she might actually just go back out the door and... she doesn't even know what she'd do then. But she really hates lines.

Not at all! It seems like there isn't anyone other than someone waiting behind a counter inside the police station at the moment. The man has a strange ability to not seem to be giving Meadow any attention, even as he sneaks a glance at her once in a while? It's a strange effect.

The effect is not entirely lost on Meadow, but she'd still be pretty on edge even if he was deeply engrossed in something and was obviously completely ignoring her.

...What is she even going to say. There's not much point in bringing up the Epic Prank hypothesis, it's either incorrect or the guy will be in on it. Her brain has decided that she cannot share the Weird Magic hypothesis because she'd sound crazy. So she supposes that leaves:

"...hi. I think I've probably become entirely detached from reality. Or something."

"...uhh, what happened? Are you scared? Do you want to see a psychologist, and... be isolated for a bit, so you can see if you're starting to feel like you're coming back to your senses? Don't worry, we'll still care for you."

Ughhh okay fine she needs to give an actual explanation doesn't she.

"I woke up in the park, pretty hungover. I do not recognize this city at all, my phone cannot connect to the internet, and also. Uh. I remember a whole lot of websites that seem not to exist anymore, and world maps don't match my memory. None of the continents are shaped how they should be."

"So uh. Yeah maybe isolation sounds nice. And I guess I can see a psychologist if I have to."

"... do you feel comfortable showing me your phone? I think... you have a perfect grip, on a very, very bizarre reality."

That would be a massive privacy violation??? What the hell?

Okay fine Meadow supposes this is the kind of scenario that sorta calls for that.

"...if there are other options I'd rather not."

"Yes, there are absolutely other options! You can just spend some time in isolation, and see if that makes you feel better. What were you thinking when you said isolation? Do you... just want someplace to stay by yourself, where you can get your bearings, and maybe feel safer, more... attached to reality?"

"...Yes. That sounds nice."

Probably like a device that can connect to the internet would be helpful but she does not like asking for things so she's probably just gonna go along with whatever they suggest.

"...well, we'd have to set you up with an apartment, first of all. I'm happy to advance you enough money to start, I'm sure you have enough in basic to pay me back, once you're back in the system. Do you... want somewhere far away from people, maybe on the outskirts of town?"

Okay, that's a pretty good read on her. She'd be relieved, except that now she's spiraling about how if anyone understands her too well they'll start judging her even more than they already do.

"...Yeah. Sure. Let's do that."

(Wait—do the police here pay for things out of their own pockets? Are they just expecting police officers to hope that random clients can pay them back? She'd really rather not be personally responsible for making sure this guy is reimbursed.)

"I can... find you someplace? You don't seem like the type to enjoy surprises, so I'd be happy to show you a few ads and to get you a few looks at your options." They univerally have one very big living room with a window that's essentially an entire wall, a bedroom that's not much bigger than the (king-size) bed, and a bathroom that comes with a very nice looking and large shower cabinet built on top of a generously spacious tub. None of the units are available in anything smaller than maybe 400 or so square feet.

Heights make her anxious. And she needs blackout curtains. She'd like a kitchen, even if she usually ends up just getting food delivered.

She's not going to be very picky though. She will look at like three or four options to get a sense of the distribution, and then go for one that looks fine.

The lowest currently available apartment is in the 4th floor; it's just under 600 square feet. They all come with LCD glass that can work as blackout curtains if she wants; they can block a huge %age of the light. The big issue is a kitchen; actual kitchens are incredibly rare. But this unit has a microwave and tons of accessories, so she can do a lot of cooking using those, actually.

She waffles a little and decides that, even if the fourth floor is high enough to bother her, probably it's still meaningfully better than something even higher.

That basically looks like a normal kitchen to her, for a one-person apartment, as long as there's a fridge and some sort of burner that it looks like she could make scrambled eggs on.

...there's a microwave with an accessory that works for making scrambled eggs on top of the fridge! She can have the eggs sent to her apartment like how she can have food delivered.

Yeah, she'll take that one. How does she get there?

It'd be another subway ride. The fare is tiny enough; the officer is happy to advance that, too. Once she's gotten some time to relax and settle in, the basic income will cover the advances many times over.

(It's not lacking the money that she's worried about. She's worried she will end up procrastinating the process of sending the money forever. She is not going to actually mention this.)

Is that all, then?

Yes! Meadow can get some space and some time by herself, so she can - destress, do some self-care, and ease into her... extremely shocking situation.

She is going to barely manage to not break down crying on the subway ride by staring at her phone. How does she get her key, exactly?

There's a code - she got it on a plastic card - and it opens one of the lockers at har arrival station. The key is quite small, but it's cylindrical and fits very comfortably between Meadow's fingers. And it seems like a very, very safe key.

...as opposed to a dangerous key? Are they scared of sharp edges, or something? She's gonna assume the shape of the key is just like, an aesthetic thing. If the key looks electronic rather than mechanical, she might worry a little about how keys really seem like the kinda thing you want to still work in power outages, but she doesn't have the energy to actually care very much about this.

As she enters the front door leading into the massive building, she quicky finds the elevator taking her to her apartment. Entering it reveals that it is utterly huge, with lots of open space around her. It's near-perfectly quiet, and heads up the 4 floors at an incredible rate.

She is not used to elevators being that quiet. (It's normally not that big a deal because she has ear buds in with music on, but she's currently vaguely worried that she will never find a charger for her electronic devices again. Even though this is a kind of silly thing to worry about—if they are in fact artifacts from another world there's obviously going to be someone willing to make a charger in return for the chance to look at how they work. But, that sounds like such a hassle to deal with, so the thought does not actually cheer her up at all about it.)

Upon entering the apartment, she will immediately drop her backpack and dive onto the bed.

In principle, she ought to spend some time figuring out what to actually do about. Any of her problems. But actually she's going to lay there feeling pathetic and freaking out about the fact that she's being forced to actually give up on the hope that someday all her relationships that ended due to her patheticness would somehow magically fix themselves and being terrified of the idea that she's probably going to just girlrot in this apartment for the rest of her natural life.

She will do this for quite a while.

Eventually, she is forced to actually acknowledge the fact that she hasn't eaten anything in like a full day and that she should probably do something about this. Is there any food in the apartment, or... what else would she even do, if there isn't?

There isn't any food in the apartment, unfortunately. She would have to... well, find someplace to eat. There's probably a cafe or a restaurant reasonably close.

Is there any option other than just, like, going outside and looking for something? No directories of nearby businesses or anything? In any part of the apartment? She'd look pretty thoroughly.

Looking thoroughly, again reveals that Meadow has nothing to prepare and nothing to eat at the moment.

Alright. Knowing she has a safe place to go hide in is a little reassuring, and she's had some time to rest. She can probably manage to briefly talk to someone. Was there a help desk in the apartment building lobby, or anything like that?

There wasn't a help desk in the lobby. There are quite a few cafes around, though, probably a few of them open. She could find someone in one of them, if she needed a help desk to answer her questions.

Okay, okay, fine, she'll actually go find a cafe instead of trying to see if anyone can deliver her food. Hopefully it will not be one of those cafes where there try to chat with you a lot.

Here's one that's vaguely sci-fi themed! Here's one that's more old-school, with lots of nice armchairs and wood and rugs! There's quite a few different cafes, with really different and nice interiors, for Meadow to choose from.

She is going to go for the most minimalist cafe she can find—she's used to that indicating that the place won't be trying to be overly familiar.

If there's nothing especially basic, she'll go for old-school over sci-fi, probably.

There's a hyper-minimalist cafe, all white tables and white chairs and sofas, with a few people talking and enjoying some fantastic-smelling food, together with a barista standing behind the counter.

Seems good enough. What's on the menu?

There's a bunch of teas, coffees and pastries made in the cafe itself, and they also have a menu with food from some nearby ghost kitchens, with the food being delivered to the cafe and eaten on site. There's pizza, thai, indian, really a near-endless variety for Meadow to enjoy.

She'll have a black coffee, and... probably a pizza? What pizza options are there?

Also, she's beginning to realize she might need to add yet another person to the list of people she needs to remember to pay back. She did not think that far ahead. But it's not like not eating is an option, so.

She can get a black coffee, and a pizza! In terms of pizzas, there's pepperoni, multiple cheese, with and without pineapple, extra spicy... and it keeps going on. It looks like people are using their phones to pay. So... Meadow is in a rather awkward spot, what with not having a phone from this world. She's not sure how the debt would work, here.

She has, at this point, caught onto the fact that a surprising number of people here are just totally okay with her paying them back later. Though this does mean she'll need to explain her situation. Yay.

Is sausage an option? She'll do that if it's there, and otherwise pepperoni.

She inhales deeply.

"Hey. Uh. My phone... isn't working... and I don't have access to basic income yet, and I haven't eaten in like a day. Would it be possible to just, pay you back, once I have... figured any of that out?"

Sausage pizza is, in fact one of the options! The barista smiles gently as she listens to Meadow. "Yes, miss. Nobody should have to go hungry just because they've bumped into some technical issues. I'll keep a tab for you, to be repaid once you get access to your basic income. Now, what do you want to have?"

"Thanks, I appreciate it. I'll have a black coffee and a sausage pizza."

"Let me just tap away on my phone, and have the pizza here in no time!" She taps a few times, before walking over to a machine that prepares a black coffee at lightning speed, walking back to give it to Meadow. She can see that there's a robot rolling around, with multiple shelves carrying food around and dishes back towards the barista.

She is going to sit down and take a big sip of the coffee under the assumption that no one would ever serve a customer a drink so hot that this would be especially unpleasant. How bad does this go?

Well, it's just a tiny bit hotter than Meadow would ideally want; she should probably let it cool off a bit more. The good news is that the coffee is... fantastic. Rich, complex, all the compliments you can think of. And it gives her a rush of energy; it seems to have something that makes the caffeine work even better.

She would be very glad that didn't go even worse, if she knew how coffee is often served on Earth. Which she doesn't. As is, she's mildly annoyed.

The taste and rush of energy are appreciated, but she was sort of expecting just a basic uninteresting coffee and is now mildly concerned about what drugs she's on, if it seems to not just be caffeine. But she doesn't actually decide to ask.

After 25 or so minutes of waiting, the sausage pizza rolls over on the waiter-robot, carried on the top shelf. She can easily take it off on its plate and place it in front of her. The pizza is also quite great, too. It's almost hot enough to burn her mouth, but not quite.

She would've liked to have Precisely The Brand Of Pizza She's Used To, but this pizza is good enough that she doesn't mind too much.

Are there easily accessible containers for leftovers? She will (with some difficulty convincing herself) try to save some if that is possible.

The barista can give her a bag to store some in, if that is what Meadow wishes to do.

Is she up for actually asking for something, if there aren't just bags sitting around for her to grab? The food is making her feel a bit better, and the coffee doesn't hurt. She can probably manage it.

She bags whatever amount of pizza she didn't eat, thanks the barista once again, and makes her way back to her apartment.

This particular outing did not actually leave her feeling exhausted and overwhelmed or anything. She's always had at least like fifty-fifty odds of having a good time when she leaves her apartment, plus or minus that tightening in her chest. This fact has never been enough to actually make her stop being scared of going outside—and even if that part of the problem were resolved, she'd probably still have motivational problems about it.

So she actually has the energy to confront the fact that she does not particularly have an Internet to ameliorate her boredom, while she sits around her apartment.

And also probably that's the easiest way to make a bank account. Which she needs to do.

Meadow really really dislikes adding items to her todo list. She always procrastinates them and it makes her feel terrible. But she does actually need to have a way to communicate with institutions.

This train of thought is what leads to her actually collapsing in bed. She does not want to deal with any of that.

Turns out she can actually sit around panicking and doing nothing else for several hours, if she doesn't have any way to access the Internet. She moves around the room a few times, lays on the floor, probably punches her bed.

Meadow's parents were somewhat below average, but "do not bring your socially anxious child to a social event while you think they're too young to have a phone and then give them nothing to do" is not a piece of advice that it is easy to ignore, in Eifwen. So she has not, actually, ever ended up having to hide in a room with literally nothing to do. It's not the worst thing she's had to put up with, but it isn't fun.

Eventually she reheats some more of the pizza and eats it. Part of her says she should space it out more, to avoid having to go get more food, but... well, the food seems really appealing, and she lets that part of her win because actually she's not going to be any better off if she's able to procrastinate leaving the apartment for longer.

She finds that she is invigorated by the pizza enough to actually spend some time trying to plan out a strategy for dealing with any of her problems. She has, at this point, had the thought "I should remember, when I am feeling terrible, that food might help" enough times that she has moved on to mostly just feeling kinda pathetic about how she hasn't managed to do it by now.

Anyways. The getting a phone thing. She has to do that. She is probably not going to end up feeling more up for leaving the apartment than she does right now, given that she no longer has any food, so she should probably go do that.

She should probably go do that...

But what if, instead, she did it first thing in the morning? First thing in the morning Meadow is sometimes able to do things.

Oh no. She's having that chain of thought again. In the abstract, she knows it's nonsense and that's never actually a good idea. But it feels true enough that she cannot actually get herself to ignore it. She never learned the critical skill of actually, on the emotional level, rejecting thoughts that say she should put things off.

There is a lower-level technique that she occasionally manages to implement successfully. Let's compromise. We can put off leaving the house until tomorrow, but... only if we go take a bath, now?

Okay maybe that was a stretch. She manages to take a shower, though, which is pretty good for her actually. And then she climbs into bed.

It's a warm, fluffy, thick, and soothing blanket that weights her down as she sleeps.

"Get a weighted blanket" was one of the things she had procrastinated long enough that she just gave up on it. It's really nice, actually.

When she wakes up, she stares at her phone for a while (once again finding absolutely nothing worth doing on it) before getting out of bed... and then starts feeling very ticked off at her past self for making her go deal with things. Actually her past self handled things unusually well but she's mad anyways.

She manages to force herself out the door. Out of spite.

Is she going to have to resort to asking someone for directions to a store where she can get a new Thomassia-compatible phone? She is probably going to spend at least an hour hoping she can somehow luck into one without having to do that.

Well, the hour goes by without a phone magically appearing for her to use. Asking for directions becomes really the only step that's left.

Fine. Has she seen a police station or any other institution that seems like it might provide directions, or is she just going to have to flag down a random person on the street?

She hasn't seen a police station, no. She didn't see much on the subway ride over, or the trip to the local cafe. There are a fair few people enjoying a walk through the cityscape right outside her apartment, though.

Drat. After some internal anguish over the decision of who to approach, she walks up to someone.

"Hey, could you point me towards the nearest place I can buy a new phone? I'm, uh, new around here, and my old one isn't working."

"Well, it's not far! It's 8 blocks", she holds up a thumb and three fingers on her right hand, "straight down there, and then another 3" she just holds up three fingers on her right hand, pointing it to the left, "blocks to the left. It has a poster of an old-school phone in front of an ancient computer in front of it, you won't miss it."

"Great, thanks!"

She is not familiar with this finger counting system, but she does know what the words "eight" and "three" mean. She is desperately hoping that "an old-school phone in front of an ancient computer" is at all recognizable to her, because she sure isn't going to ask for more elaboration about that. That is the sort of question that will make you stand out a bit.

She heads off in that direction. What does the poster look like, will she be able to identify it?

The poster shows a huge brick of a phone, in front of what looks like a typewriter with a huge ream of paper flowing out from it, reaching out into a spool placed behind the typewriter. There's what looks like computer code written on the typewriter paper, with a new line of uncompleted code currently at the bottom of the page.

She... does not quite understand how that is a computer. How does it compute? But it's a near enough match that she will at least try glancing in the window, if she can. Or take a look inside if she has to.

There's a huge wall of phones along the glass window; the selection is just about endless. The main difference seems to be in terms of size: there are smaller phones visible on Meadow's right, getting slowly bigger as they get to Meadow's left. She can see that the phones next to the door have size that's somewhere in between, being around 5 inches diagonal in size, with next to no bezels.

She will spend a little time picking out one that looks good and that can rest comfortably in her fingers. She wants something with a longish battery life, but she's not gonna be especially picky.

Can she just like, grab it and take it to do self-check out somewhere... actually, she's going to need to explain the thing where she doesn't know how to pay for anything yet, isn't she. Ugh. She goes to find an employee.

The phones are made of all sorts of materials, designed to have nice sensory feelings. You can have silk-feel, velvet-feel, or several kinds of stone on the phone's back. Meadow can easily find one in her size, and the battery life of the phones is universally claimed to be 18 hours or more. There's a man standing behind the counter, clearly excited to talk about how awesome today's phones are. 

I mean. Yeah they're cool, she guesses, but like, it's a phone. She can access the internet with it. The extra details are sort of whatever to her.

(Okay maybe they're a little nice. But she'll get used to them quickly, she always does.)

"Hey. I, uh, don't have access to basic income or anything. I was hoping I could, uh, get a phone and figure out how to access that, and then pay for the phone using it?" She holds out the phone she picked out. "Would that be okay?"

"I'm okay with you paying for it like that, yes. I'll just make a quick note, and I'll get my money once you're receiving basic, no need to worry. Getting basic is just a quick trip to the police station, so I'll even front you the tiny sum needed for the fare to get there. Give them your biometrics, and you're put into the system instantly, no worries."

She'd normally be kinda fussy about the biometrics but it's objectively entirely reasonable and she's too tired to care. And it's not like she's gonna go figure out a way to avoid it. So fine. She wishes the man a nice day and makes her way over to the police station.

What is actually using the phone like? Can she go right ahead and start scrolling through wikis, while on her way to the police station?

Yes! The phone starts with an extremely stripped-down OS, but it already has the ability to download files from the internet. Finding one of the MANY wikis, loaded with fascinating information, is as simple as typing a command and waiting for it to download to her phone (it happens near-instantly.) Eventually, Meadow would probably want to download a proper web browser, which is as simple writing another terminal command on her phone, letting her fly through wikis.

She has, like, ever used a terminal, but she tends to find them frustrating to deal with. If she types "help" or something is she going to find simple instructions for downloading a web browser? She'll probably get started on that right away, if she notices it's an option.

Typing help lets her get a few URLs to download a web browser, app store, and some other very essential programs. Just typing those in gets Meadow a non-terminal UI almost immediately.

Ah, great. 

So, uh, what in the world do you even read about, if you now have access to another civilization's internet? Can she find like, an article about Thomassia itself?

More than one, as a matter of fact. She can find articles trying to explain thomassia to aliens, debating the history of thomassia, how well today's political systems work and how they might have ended up different, and a huge amount of geeking about skyscrapers and the new mobile ICU railcars that some cities are starting to roll out. Thomassians seem to have quite a few people interested in daycare and hospital design, Meadow notices.

I mean, daycares and hospitals aren't her special interest, but sure those are important things to get right.

She's totally gonna read the article trying to explain it to aliens in depth, given that she is at least kind of an alien.

This planet lives under such a bizarre ideology, it seems to be nothing but contradiction on contradiction: live close together, yet have plenty of space for yourself, stay cool and warm, yet live in the blistering heat or freezing cold, stay comfortable, yet wear heels and thongs. Its every goal claims to be luxury and prosperity, yet these creatures appear to take every opportunity to thwart themselves. 

Above all is the system of parent-cities, an adaptation that tries to marry huge cities of closely-packed people, with play areas and room enough to raise a family. The system must be said to work, they achieve a fertility rate far greater than such high population densities would naturally permit, but the question remains: why do they seem to take every chance to add a roadblock towards constructing the world that they consider ideal? Thomassians are such bizarre and confusing creatures: they cannot merely achieve something, they must try and fail to thwart themselves in getting it done as well.

She... supposes, that there might be some aliens somewhere, who might be confused about stuff like "if you want space why wouldn't you simply not live in dense cities?" She is not one of them. She's similar enough to Thomassians to have a model of their behavior which is detailed enough to figure out why they'd do it like this. Listing some specific hypothetical confusions aliens might have isn't how she'd introduce Eifwen—how would she predict which things aliens would be confused about? Though in retrospect it's probably really hard to cross the inferential distance without two-way communication, so it was kind of a doomed task from the start.

She doesn't quite understand why you need particular cities for parenting? Like, yeah, some cities will have laws and institutions that are slightly more favorable to parents, there's gonna be some feedback loops there and stuff, but—why a binary distinction, rather than a spectrum? 

Q: Why do thomassians have entire cities dedicated to the convenience of parents?

A: They try to always start from scratch, and have everything put together in order to make sense. The ability to have every part of a city's layout and design aimed at a goal not only makes the city a better place for its residents, but city planners love the sense of optimization, perfectionism, and coherence that it results in. There are never any awkward interfaces between competing needs, and many people get to enjoy a city that's perfect for them, which is better than one that's only good for them and everyone else, too.

Yeah no she gets that, but like. Choosing one specific things to optimize a city for isn't quite the way to maximize the number of people that have a good place for them? You wanna like, space cities out along the pareto surface of different priorities.

Is there maybe like, a pretty bimodal distribution in the number of kids a family has, here? Like, Eifwen's governments do try to get a lot of families to have more children than there are parents so as to stay above replacement rate even though there are childless people, but it's nonetheless not at all uncommon for there to be a couple with one child or whatever.

That is a big difference! Thomassians families are big, consisting of groups of 4 or more parents caring for a relatively large group of children, often unrelated ones, and there is extensive use of surrogacy as well.

Ah, yeah, that'd do it. Families like that certainly exist, on Eifwen, but they aren't ubiquitous.

Does she stumble upon any other interesting Thomassia facts to consider, before she gets to the police station?

Cryonics being universal might or might not be interesting to Meadow. Or how they have a week where everyone pretends it's a pandemic, and people wear masks and try out and show off pandemic mitigation strategies.

If she'd learned cryonics wasn't universal, she'd've... well, probably mostly been unable to actually grasp that fact, it's too big and abstract to deeply disturb her unless she actually makes an effort to internalize it. (Which she would probably end up deciding to do when she was already having a bad day, because sometimes she is dumb and just decides to make things worse.) But learning that it is universal? Yeah, that's just expected.

She's familiar with the "drill for possible civilizational challenges" concept but she usually hid at home and didn't engage with them much. Which is actually fine for a pandemic but it might've bitten her a little if some sort of severe natural disaster had hit Nexus and required an evacuation. But that was, y'know, pretty unlikely, and they do make an effort to make the instructions easy to follow even if you haven't practiced them, so whatever.

There's quite a few other things for Meadow to learn, but then she reaches her station and has to walk out to get the biometrics scan.

It's fine, it's fine, biometrics are really gonna just be about her physical body and won't say anything about her as a person, she should just stop freaking out.

"Hi. I was told I need, uh, a biometrics scan, to access basic income?"

The man working behind the counter nods at Meadow. He points towards a machine with a pair of flat, square sensors that work to take the fingerprint of several fingers at once, together with a wide-angle camera that can take an iris scan. A biometrics scan is as simple as putting both hands on the handprint sensors, and letting the camera get a good iris scan, and then Meadow will receive her very first basic income payment, just like that.

Oh, nice. She has money now. That's pretty useful.

Okay. She's been walking around for like at least two hours now, and did not have any breakfast. She is very hungry.

She could probably find somewhere to eat close by, but instead she's going to go back to the exact cafe she stopped at last time. She can starve on the way, whatever, that's easier to deal with than trying somewhere new right now. And also she'll be able to pay off her tab.

The barista happily accepts the payment for Meadow's previous meal, smiling and congratulating her on receiving basic income and starting to live in thomassia as a citizen. He's excited to hear about that Meadow's thinking of eating.

If you're a he then wouldn't you be a baristo

She'll have another coffee (and this reminds her that she should try to use her new phone to figure out precisely what drugs are in the coffee), and... is there anything sandwichesque that sounds good, on the menu? She'll settle for something pretty basic unless she stumbles upon something that's a super close match for a favorite from home.

The coffee here comes with another mild stimulant, meant to make the energy come somewhat less suddenly; coffees tend to have somewhat less caffeine, with this new, stimulant here in thomassia doing some of the work instead. Meadow can order food from nearly any cuisine, because the cafe permits outside food, and there's an enormous selection of places accepting delivery. Some pita rolls seem particularly tempting, if she likes the carbohydras coming from someting made of bread.

She doesn't normally experience coffee as giving sudden energy? Really, this coffee felt more sudden... this is probably because she has a big caffeine dependency.

Sure, pita rolls seem good.

The food comes to Meadow, riding on the waiter-bot, 20 or so minutes later.

The food's pretty good. After eating, she heads back to her apartment and collapses in bed and stares at her shiny new phone. About how much disposable income does she have?

After the apartment and buying food, she has around 20% of the basic income sum remaining. She's meant to have a fairly generous buffer, to permit her to afford things like clothing or to get start capital for a business without needing to take a loan.

Okay. She does not actually have any purchases in mind yet but might try to get like, a laptop eventually.

She's tempted by the siren call of doomscrolling but she doesn't like, have a set of things she's in the habit of looking at any more, so she does actually need to make an active decision.

Can she find any videos that look like they might tell her interesting things about Thomassia? It's all still new enough to her that she's gonna be interested in whatever, but her attention might be particularly grabbed by anything about video games (or interactive media in general). She's also gonna be interested in questions like "what musical scales do they use most often" and "does their approach to mathematics differ from Eifwen's" and "biology is mostly just the same as on her home planet as far as she can tell, right" even though she's not exactly an expert in any of those fields.

Thomassian video games have tons of abstract rhythm games (think Osu), and a huge number of history-inspired visual novels and RPGs. In terms of musical scales, they seem to like the D minor pentatonic scale more than any other, but not by a huge margin. Math uses postfox operators, but otherwise is largely similar. In terms ofbiology, they've bred a couple of decorative animals: pretty fish species, and turkey-like birds with bright plumages to decorate parks.

Okay she thinks the decorative animals are really neat. She's ever heard of stuff like that being done but it's usually, like, weird science experiments, not en masse.

By postfix operators, you mean they write functions like (x)f or similar, where the function comes after the input according to the standard direction-of-writing? She thinks that's one of the things they began doing a few decades ago in one of the grand math notation refactorings, it won't be super notable to her.

...She is tempted to see if she can play an osu!-like on her phone but manages to convince herself to try some history-based visual novel, which will probably be more informative.

It's a very WW1-esque visual novel, about a soldier who had to travel across an exotic continent as part of his mission to prevent the infiltration of the local government. He comes from a colonizer country, so it's a bit morally ambiguous, but he has to both prevent foreign agents and revolutionary groups from getting the country to declare independence and refuse to support its colonial overlord.

Meadow's feelings on colonization are similar to her feelings on lots of things that governments might do: yeah, if it's gonna raise quality of life for people enough then you gotta do it, but be careful about it. Motivated reasoning mistakes are super common here.

How upset exactly she gets at the idea of war is going to depend a lot on how much dying she sees. Eifwen certainly had violent conflicts in its past, but... none at a grand scale, not past the industrial revolution. So she's gonna be a tad horrified if there's a whole lot of death—especially if it seems like the death is historically accurate and not just for drama.

There isn't any dying depicted, only mentioned, next to the Cool Spy Adventures and escapes. You never really get a chance to have any say in how things go one way or the other; either you manage to finish your mission, or you get fired and vanish into obscurity.

She's seen enough fucked up art that she wouldn't care much about direct depiction vs indirect mention, except insofar as the primary reason it's only ever mentioned is that it's super rare. It's the implications about history, that might unsettle her here.

Anyways, she does enjoy spy adventures. She'll play this for like, an hour or so probably—her attention span isn't the greatest, she usually gets bored of things eventually instead of focusing on them for several hours. (She might go for longer if there's enough gameplay variety to keep her engaged.)

Well, it's a visual novel. The variety in gameplay is quite limited, in the end, so Meadow might very well lose interest after seeing a few scenes.

Eifweni has any games that are basically just dialogue, but most of their visual novels intersperse puzzle mechanics or other minigames.

She'll last a little while and then... maybe she'll come back to it later. Probably she won't actually do that, but she doesn't like admitting to herself when she's giving up on something.

...You know, in retrospect (she tells herself) maybe rhythm games aren't any less productive than narrative-based games. She'll get to listen to a lot of Thomassian music, right? She's gonna try one.

Thomassian rhythm games are all abstract, challenging Meadow to press the buttons on the screen as they appear as opposed to giving the illusion of playing any kind of instrument. The muic isn't too different, outside of the songs with lyrics being triumphant, vaguely inspiring power ballads about victory, courage and heroism. Meadow can choose any level of difficulty she wants for any song, using a very impressive algorithm to generate levels of the appropriate difficulty.