Summer thinks she's cute?

"I-"

Celene can't really argue with this logic, technically, it does make sense, especially given that Summer lives in a city that leans more towards 'slack' than 'predictability.'

Still, she-

"...Ok. I, yeah, that makes sense."

What does Celene want to do?

Probably, if Summer can be trusted, it's a good idea to try to prove her identity. Having lots of money seems like it'd be helpful.

Well, on Earth she did say that if she had enough money it would fix most of her problems, to the point where she'd be willing to keep going for a while. But she was needed back on Earth. This place seems like it has most of its problems figured out.

She could ask Summer how to

She's not going to ask her how to go into early-cryo. Not yet. She can imagine how that would feel from Summer's perspective. 

Admittedly, it's arguably worse to do so after Summer gets closer to her. It's entirely possible, though, that the novelty-shininess thing will wear off without this happening. She doesn't actually have enough information to conclude either way.

Alright.

Well, if she's not doing that yet.

She should figure out how to talk to the officials, maybe, and get her story confirmed? She probably wants some form of legal identification, if she could qualify for 'basic income' that would be nice, or to be able to legally work. She has no idea what Nucleus's immigration/employment policy is like. Also, she possibly does not have any useful skills.

Oh yeah, and the most important thing is to get independent corroboration of what Summer is saying, because for all Celene knows she could be lying to her. Without that, she'd be entirely dependent on Summer, and she doesn't want that.

Well, technically that's not true. She...

Summer has been kind and friendly to her, so far. She would like to be able to depend on her. She just, can't. She doesn't trust her enough. It'd be pretty stupid of her to do so.

Ok, she should ask Summer to corroborate her story.

She-

She also can't do that. That'd be- she doesn't want it to seem like she doesn't trust her. She doesn't know what she could say. Or really what part of Summer's story she wants to confirm. What would she even ask?

She's feeling a little hungry. She's not going to mention that either.

She just-

Celene wants to go bury her head somewhere. But that'd make Summer concerned for her.

She doesn't know what Summer wants from her.

Oh right, she can just ask.

"What would you like me to do, then? Right now, I mean."

You call a girl cute one time and she immediately starts trying to offload all her decisions onto you.

"Well, you're welcome to just keep resting on the coach if that's all you want to do. Is there anything I could do to make you more comfortable? Want some tea or anything?"

"...Sure, thank you."

She'll begin microwaving up some tea.

"So. I guess I think what the Emergency Services people would ideally have me do is just, like, turn you over to them? And—they'd not want to treat you poorly, and they have more resources than I do, so... y'know, it'd probably be okay. You could go do that. If you really want."

She's hoping it doesn't go that way. Celene is cute and she's having fun and also if Celene leaves then probably the prank just ends even though she's now super invested in the story it's built up.

(Summer is perhaps not being entirely cognizant of the fact that Celene might be influenced by her seeming reluctant about that possibility.)

"If we're not doing that, I think the best option is that I tell them what I've seen and say they can only take actions based on the story that they're certain don't oppose our interests."

That does seem like something she should do, doesn't it?

Like it'd really be the smart, sensible thing to do.

But, on the other hand,

Ok actually why is she so reluctant to do this right now?

Well,

She doesn't really feel like interacting with new people or doing stressful things? And she and Summer have built up a rapport? And it seems like Summer doesn't really want her to leave? and called her cute?

And also she can always do that later.

Plus, letting Emergency Services know of her existence seems like the sort of thing where once you open the door it can't be closed.

She's totally rationalizing this. Oh well.

"I mean, I don't really mind either way," she says, fully aware of how insane she sounds.

Okay, the "offload all her decisions" thing was supposed to be a joke this is getting slightly concerning.

She is... going to do the thing that preserves optionality! That's usually a good default.

(Summer is, not entirely unaware, that she's probably on some level rationalizing a desire to spend more time taking care of a shiny cute girl. But it'll be fiiiiiiine.)

"Well. Uh. How about I go send a message to Emergency Services and tell them what's up? They'll probably, like, have a brief meeting and talk about things they'd like to do, and then send us some proposals for actions they'd like to take based on our information, which we are free to accept or reject."

"...Alright, that sounds good."

She gets on her laptop and types up a quick message giving the rough details. Someone shows up on her doorstep, she takes them in, they claim they just experienced dying and appear to know how to speak a language they call 'English' and they gave this description of an alternate version of their civilization with... various differences. It didn't seem like it had treated Celene very well. She's probably gonna go get her DNA tested later or something to see if she has really unusual genetics?

She marks it as a seemingly low probability situation where there is potential for massive upside, but not much urgent risk. And also she marks that she thinks it's probably a prank.

If you're doing a prank where you think Emergency Services might end up getting contacted, you let them know ahead of time. The important reason to do this is that it avoids wasting government resources. Those are paid for by your taxes, you do not want to waste them unnecessarily.

But the actual reason most people do it consistently is that Emergency Services will let you pretend to be them. As long as you're careful not to do anything that might cause an actual issue. They will be watching you.

They find no matches. If this is a prank, it wasn't preregistered. Emergency Services will not, of course, be telling Summer that fact, unless it actually seems to be of importance.

...The priors are low enough that they mostly think Summer is lying to them or deeply confused or maybe someone just forgot to register their prank or something. But they keep enough unnecessary extra hands around (in fear of the day that they might very suddenly stop being so unnecessary) that someone decides it'd be fun to go dig through some of the hypothetical planning for this category of scenario.

Emergency Services will offer Summer six bits if she wants to run an experiment where Emergency Services provides several paragraphs of text, and then immediately upon receipt they record and send back a video of Celene translating it into English. If there is in fact someone in Summer's apartment who is fluent in some completely unattested language, that at least eliminates the "Summer is deeply confused" line of possibilities. And it's a cheap test to run.

...Sure why not.

"Hey Celene, d'you think you could translate something into English, and then I send over the video? There's six bits in it for us."

"Oh, wow. Sure, that sounds fun!"

Hopefully she does not lose all knowledge of how to speak Eifweni immediately afterwards.

That sure would leave her kinda helpless for a while if it happened!

Hi yes we would like our free six bits please

They send out a few paragraphs from their massive collection of unpublished text that they keep around in case they need it for these sorts of things, and a minute or two later get a response back.

...Emergency Services is going to have a linguistics team spend a dozen or two minutes scrutinizing that, but as a first pass it does seem to be what it claims it is.

They're also going to see if they can track down the identity of Celene easily, though they aren't gonna bother trying too hard about it. If they still thought psychosis was very likely, they'd pay Summer and Celene to go get Celene's fingerprints scanned as soon as possible to make sure no one elsewhere is wasting resources tracking down a missing person, but they don't expect anyone's doing that.

How much would Summer like to bet that this situation is worth Emergency Services spending more time on, conditional on the situation not being a prank on Summer?

Gooood question.

...I mean, probably she's pretty confident in that, right? Even if it's a really weird psychotic episode, someone's gotta go track down what's up with Celene.

I dunno, my 1080 to your 216? I might be willing to give you more favorable odds if you explained "worth spending more time on" in more detail.

Yeah okay that's pretty strong evidence that either Summer isn't in on it or is willing to pay an appreciable amount of money just to waste Emergency Services's time. They don't actually particularly benefit from taking the bet at this point, but if they predictably won't take the bet then people can just offer them odds they aren't actually willing to pay. They agree with the point about how someone needs to figure out what's up with Celene, is that enough to get them 11:1 odds instead of 5:1?

Suuuure fine.

After brief back-and-forth on how much money is reasonable to spend on this one, they pick a uniform random number between 54 and 108, and then send Summer 91 bits, to be taken back if it turns out she was being pranked, and with an agreement that they may take a total of 1092 bits from her bank account if it turns out she was wasting their time.