"I'd like to buy this, please," Emily asserts. She's assuming it comes with a charging cord.

The man nods at her. "Well, I have a payment sensor on the counter. Just put your phone or card on it, and it'll ask to be allowed to send the money over. And then you say yes to that." He points at a part on the counter with a decal of a weighing scale on it.

Emily frowns. "I just got my basic income, so I haven't logged in or anything," she explains. "Do I need to do that first?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, you need to do that. You know what, why don't you just log in on that phone and pay me by using it? It makes more sense, don't you think?"

Emily nods, and tries to pick her way through the phone's interface, with the account-card as a reference.

It only takes a minute or so before she manages to open the payment app, and put in her password to get access to the money in her account. Putting the phone over the payment sensor, she gets a request to send the money for buying the phone to the man, which she can simply pay just by clicking "yes" in the app.

Well, that seems straightforward! She's never had a phone before, so she's not really sure how different the interface is.

Alright. Step 1 of her master plan (such as it is) complete.

She turns to the teacher, realizes she missed a step, turns back to the shopkeeper, says "Thank you", and then turns back to the teacher.

"Could I have somewhere to think and look at places to live now?" she requests.

"Well, I'm not sure where a good place to think would be? Parks tend to be quiet enough, I'd say."

It doesn't seem to be raining, so a park is fine with her. She had been imagining, like, a conference room, but she supposes they might not really have one of those reserved for random protagonists.

"Sure, that sounds fine," she agrees.

"Do you want to know my phone number, in case you need to ask me anything more? Or do you think you won't need my help with anything going forwards? It seems like you're handling things well by yourself, so I'm thinking of going back to the other kids I care for."

Emily is momentarily flabbergasted. She was not expecting an adult to be willing to just leave her alone in the middle of the city. She was already expecting to have her house choices nitpicked, and not be able to get a moment to herself until she was ensconced somewhere teacher-approved.

"... okay," she agrees. "Would you show me how to place a call, just in case?"

She remembers another Mrs. Pollifax fact. "And is there an emergency number I should know?"

"Happily! My phone number is as follows:" She recites a series of both digits and numbers, creating a relatively short phone number. Then she gets her phone. "It's common for phones to let you call someone without having to turn the screen on; you put your thumb in one corner, and you wait until you feel slight vibration." She does that, and her phone goes from being turned off to showing some of her contacts in a ring floating around her thumb. She taps again, and goes to a menu where she can write in a phone number instead of using her contacts. "You just type in a number here, and then you call someone on the other end. Want to try that?"

"The emergency number is 555, for police, fire and medical emergencies. You can learn more about how to be a good emergency number caller in one of the likeliest-to-save-a-life classes, if you want, but those are optional."

Emily is not sure what kind of society would A) have "likeliest-to-save-a-life" classes, and then B) make them optional. But she's also rapidly reaching her limit, and she just wants to have some time to think.

She dutifully ensures that she will be able to call the teacher if necessary, thanks them, and then begins trying to find her way to the nearest park. There are so many in the city that this doesn't seem as though it should be hard.

There's one only a few blocks away, as a matter of fact. There are a fair few children playing in it, and mothers going on walks with babies in strollers, but still not so many that Emily can't find a quiet place to collect her thoughts and find a place to live. There are quite a few options or places in her budget. They seem to universally be in very tall buildings (skyscrapers are *everywhere*), and perhaps 50% of them are either targeted at large families with multiple parents and many children, or spots in boarding schools with lots of other children.

A lot of the boarding schools, even those meant for very young children, say "entry at headmaster's discretion", but it seems like most of them don't have particularly high standards? Also, there are tons of boarding schools teaching kids to be police officers, or boarding schools focusing on fun subjects like sports or inventing or writing novels or singing and music.

She's still not entirely sold on boarding schools — dresscode and possible magic powers aside, it seems likely to come with a lot more rules than the teacher she spoke to implied was the minimum. It's possible that the teacher only let her go because she wasn't a student.

She thinks for a few minutes about what she wants from an apartment.

She tries to figure out how to filter her search to small, single-person apartments that are close to a library. Are there any of those available?

After filtering down to single-person apartments near a library, or with a library as part of the building, she narrows her options down quite a bit. The apartments are 600 or so square feet, and the floorplans tend to have one very large living room, with significantly less space devoted to a bedroom and bathroom. They all have windows that basically take up the entire wall, and don't come with a kitchen, dishwasher or in-unit laundy, so everything looks incredibly nice and open.

Emily is precocious, and thoughtful, and still very nearly eleven. 

She has no particular homebuying experience, and she isn't really thinking about doing dishes at this point, so much as having a base of operations where she can stop being in public. She's too distracted by trying to figure out her adventure to really be paying attention to how hungry she is (although she is getting hungry, having missed lunch).

Since they all look pretty nice. She identifies the cheapest apartment that shares a building with a library, carefully checks that it represents a reasonable fraction of her basic income, and then tries to figure out what the necessary steps are to rent it.

The cheapest apartment in a building with a library costs 40% of her basic income; renting it out requires pledging that she'll pay for any damage out of her basic income, then she'll receive the passcode needed to open the locker with the key to her apartment. It's a few stops away on the train, but it's still within comfortable walking distance from the park.

She hesitates, for a moment, trying to decide whether to risk the train system again or walk. The teacher didn't look like they had to do anything special to take the train, and she thinks she remembers there being a subway map.

She decides to try it.

She heads for the station, dodging the occasional other pedestrian. She carefully studies the subway map, and then waits for the right train.

The train arrives less than a minute after she gets down; it's notably shorter and wider than a train on earth, and it accelerates quite quickly. Children need to be able to move around the city just as much as adults, so it's decided to have the trains here be free, to make it accessible even for children that don't have money on them.

Emily's train is noticeably different inside compared to a "standard" train; it has less sitting spaces and more wheelchair-accessible spaces, but those are currently used by a few moms bringing their babies with them on strollers. Emily can still easily find a place to sit.

She's never actually been on a train before, being from the non-metropolitan US, but she's seen them in movies and so on. So the differences are quite apparent. She selects a seat far enough away from other people that they aren't going to try to talk to her.

She carefully counts the stops, and hops out in what she hopes is the right place. She heads up the stairs and compares the address on her phone with the surrounding buildings. Where is her lockbox?

Everyone stays quiet on the ride over, and Emily finds herself at the right stop; the address, written on the inside of the subway entrance, tells her as much. Her lockbox is placed in front of an anonymous looking object, looking a bit like a mix between a mailbox and a vending machine; it has many tiny lockboxes with glowing electronic indicator locks on them. Typing in the code sent to her by the landlord, she sees one of the doors open, revealing a cylindrical key about as wide as a seal that feels almost uncannily smooth in her hands.

She runs her hands along it, for a moment, feeling the texture. It doesn't really look like a key; she's not sure how it should be used to open a door. But it can't be that hard, really.

And she's very nearly finished with her first real goal.

She looks around for stairs, remembers how tall the buildings are, reconsiders, and looks for an elevator. She's almost there.

The first floor of the building is taken up by a very nice library; there's a ring of beanbag chairs and thick, soft carpets on the floor with a view out the windows, together with normal desks and chairs, and with a few people sitting there enjoying their books. There's a thick pillar near the centre of the library, directly in front of the entrance, where the elevator is obviously visible.

That is an excellent place for the library to be located, and she will absolutely come down and investigate it later.

But right now, she needs to not be where people can see her.

She makes for the elevator and selects her floor.