... huh.

When Emily was younger, she dressed up as a knight for Halloween, and her parent made her a wooden sword — painted bright pink, more to appease the other parents than because she particularly cared about the color — that she keeps tucked into the gap in the covering on the bottom of the stairs. Her parent taught her some basic blocks and strikes, although their training swords didn't have crossguards like hers. It was fun. On Halloween, though, it was hard to have sword-fights against a horde of superheroes and zombies and princesses, none of whom could really do anything about being gently tapped with a wooden sword, except try to grab it by the blade.

In any case, Emily has opinions about swords. Are they well-balanced, despite being foam? Or are they more pool-noodle-esque? Do people have scabbards and swords made for their size, or are they standardized? Are they short-swords, hand-and-a-half swords, or two-handed swords? And perhaps most importantly: are they being wielded with any skill, or being used more like thematic bludgeons?

They're quite poorly balanced, and there are only a few sword sizes. The people swinging the swords don't swing them around too precisely, due to them being so soft and floppy, but many of the people using them very clearly know swordfighting techinques and use proper guards and strikes.

Hmm.

Emily squints. That's a weird mix of characteristics. Normally people would either be totally incompetently flailing, or would have, you know, non-floppy swords.

She takes a second look at the swordfighters — do they have a common uniform, or anything like that, that explains what activity they're doing? Or is this just the sort of city where swordfights break out for no particular reason?

In which case she might have to get herself a sword.

The swordfighters are all dressed in everyday street clothes; it's clear that it's considered a bit of casual summer fun.

She adds "sword" to her list, but decides she's been sidetracked long enough. She continues heading for the park.

When she gets there, she surveys it systematically. How large is the park? What borders it on each side? Are there any areas off the beaten path enough that they could hide important secrets?

The park is rectangular, stretching out around 800 meters away from the city. The park is surrounded by tall buildings, almost forming a sort of wall around it, before it reaches the place where she arrived. There are quite a few trees that are perfect for climbing on, but none of them seem like particularly good places for hiding secrets, with the exception of the pond that she can see a few people SCUBA diving in.

Underwater villain lairs are traditional, but she'll leave that for last because she doesn't have a swimsuit and doesn't know how to SCUBA dive.

Instead, she heads down to the trees, and tries to track down the specific spot where she appeared. It's hard to pick out, since the trees look fairly similar, but eventually she thinks she has it pinned down.

She lies down in the hollow.

She sits back up again.

The city is still visible in the distance.

Maybe she needs to be reading. She tries lying down and reading her book, but she can't get comfortable. She sits up again, and it hits her that she's probably not going to be able to figure out the mystery. Not in the real world.

She inspects the area around the hollow anyway, out of a sense of dilligence, but doesn't particularly expect to find anything.

It just looks like they are normal trees in a normal hollow, although they are ever so slightly different rom the kinds of trees she's used to seeing.

She sighs.

She's no longer really in the mood for an adventure, or for a swordfight.

She starts making her way back to her apartment. But she may as well use the time somewhat productively, so she also takes out her phone and starts looking things up.

Walking while reading without bumping into anything is a well-practiced skill.

She looks up the educational requirements for children. Is what the teacher told her true? How can she schedule and take exams? When is that required by? And what kinds of things are on the tests?

What the teacher told Emily is true; it is mandatory for children to learn basic literacy, numeracy and statistics if they are able to, before they're allowed to live without a teacher or parent, although most children keep living with them well after learning the 3 mandatory skills. The law doesn't acknowledge anything to do with Emily's case.

Scheduling the mandatory exams is done through a website; there are enough children that there's actually a new exam that gets made every day. There are lots of officially approved exam centers, for all sorts of exams, and they ask questions like keeping track of the plot and characters in a fictional text, maths questions like asking how many uranium atoms you'd need to fission to take a 20-minute bath, and statistics questions like how you can know how often a test will be able to catch a disease if you know how many of the test results are false-positives and how common the disease is.

Hmm. She's sure she has literacy down, but the math and statistics both sound a little bit beyond what she's studied. But she's never had a hard time with math, really, so it's possible she'll be able to study up on the normal subjects of their word problems and then muddle through.

What happens if she fails a test?

If she fails a test, she has to wait at least 2 months before taking another, spending that time with parents or in a boarding school.

... right. And she's somehow managed to arrange a situation where she's neither with parents nor in a boarding school, at least so far. But if she fails, they might notice that, and then she would have to relocate again, and live with someone else.

So there's only one acceptable solution. She cracks her knuckles. She can't fail.

When she gets to her apartment building, she checks out the reference section of the library. What kinds of study materials do they have? Can she find copies of example tests or other ways to judge her progress by their standards? She keeps an eye out for introductory statistics books especially.

There's a veritable ocean of study materials: there's books that are just example tests for different kinds of exams, there are books that are full of picture-based explanations of important ideas, there's books that are printed with invisible ink that lets her instantly check if she got the right answer to a question by using UV light so she can read the answers, and books that are supposed to be used with calendars (sold separately) that let her keep helpful summaries of all the material all over her room.

She eyes the selection, trying to figure out where it's best to start.

Ultimately, she decides to just try one of each test, to see where she is. She's expecting to pass literacy and fail statistics, but she's not as sure about math as she was. She collects the appropriate books, heads up to her room, orders some food, and begins seeing where she is.

Emily manages to pass literacy trivially, math with a bit more difficulty, especially keeping in mind the many steps of unit conversions occasionally needed, and manages to pass statistics, as well. Most of the statistics questions are actually her being challenged to notice statistical pitfalls in a few sentences of statistical reasoning, with a few questions asking her to build a whole matrix of sensitivity/specificity/odds ratios/PPV/prevalence using all the other statistics. It's tricky, but not very difficult as long as she does it slowly and thinks clearly.

... oh! Well, that's a pleasant surprise.

In that case, she should look at scheduling tests as soon as possible, in case anybody notices her weird living situation.

Which, of course, means at least two days from now, so that she can study the statistics problems that gave her the most trouble and get a good nights sleep so that she tests well. Her parent always insists that she sleep and eat well before exams, so that she can do her best.

She looks to see whether she can book all three tests in the same day.

Yes, taking all three tests in the same day is in fact the default. There's an exam center only a few blocks away, as well.

Then with that sorted, she starts in on studying — with breaks for food, and finishing the mystery book she checked out. By the time the sun sets, she's feeling pretty good, both about her academic progress and her situation generally. It isn't like she was imagining, going to another world. But it's ... nice, to be able to study at her own pace, and to feel like she's making good progress on her self assigned goals.

She tucks herself into bed.

And wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, feeling cold and nauseous, even with all her blankets pulled around her.

She fumbles in the dark for the light, before trying to figure out if there's a way to make her apartment warmer. Her stomach rolls when she gets out of bed. She fiddles with the environmental controls, and shivers on the bed waiting for the room to heat.

Did her apartment happen to come equipped with a thermometer?

There's a thermostat, with a design that blends into the wall when nobody wants it set, but Emily doesn't have any way to check her temperature in the small selection of cutlery and household items that the apartment came with.

Curses.

She makes a blanket nest on the bed, and orders a thermometer on her phone. The deliveries have been pretty fast, so probably she won't have to wait long.

She'll just rest her eyes for a moment ...

It takes 3 hours or so before another robot just like the one that carries food deliveries arrives to her door, with a somewhat uncannily light infrared thermometer with the same strange, "perfect" texture as the key to Emily's apartment.

She sleeps fitfully, and wakes to sweat-covered sheets.

She squints against the morning sun, and checks outside her door.

Infrared thermometers are not exactly what she's used to, but it's not like they're difficult to use. She points it at her forehead like the diagram indicates and pushes the button.

... her temperature is 1556, apparently. She takes a moment to wonder if she's holding it wrong, before realizing that they must use a different temperature scale here. The 'fever' light on the thermometer does light up, but that doesn't tell her if this is a 'bedrest and tea' fever or a 'go to the hospital' fever. She only knows those numbers in Fahrenheit.

She retreats to her blanket nest, because it's too early, and she's tired and sick, and if she has to do math, she can at least do it while wrapped in blankets.

Their temperature scale is weird, and it's not like they have references available. But by comparing the temperature that water freezes and boils at, she eventually figures out that their zero is at -459 degrees, and that there are 0.36 degrees for each of their units. She does her math twice, because her head is fuzzy, and she's tired. She gets the same answer both times — 100.5 degrees.

She stops, at loose ends for a moment now that she's sure she has a high enough fever. This is where Parent would tell her to stay home from school, and give her some Tylenol, but they're not here, and it's not fair, and she has to figure out how to reschedule her exams.

She can't think of how to phrase the question for what should happen next, and she doesn't think 100.5°F is an emergency, so she just searches "I have a fever" on her phone.

She gets a big block of informative text on the search engine, giving her advice: "1552 is definitionally the start of a fever, with 1557 indicating with 5% sensitivity an illness requiring a medical regimen. The advice for fevers below 1557 is as follows: stay home or wear a mask if you have a cough or runny nose, hydrate sufficiently, eat nutritiously, avoid temperatures or exertion that puts strain on your body, have scrupulous hygiene standards." Scrolling down reveals a huge number of links with information about treating fevers; they mostly tell the same information, together with advice about medicines that relieve symptoms, and some info about using nebulizers to clear stuffy noses in order to breathe more easily.