Standing upright, she sees very unfamiliar buildings, visible at the edge of a relatively large park. There are children her age, climbing and playing in the trees, mostly dressed in relatively short light blue skirts worn with leggings, with a few adults looking over them.

Oh, she thinks.

Thoughts jumble in her mind — this kind of thing doesn't happen to her, what if she's swapped places with some girl from whatever school this is, what if this is how getting an invitation to a magic school works — before realizing something very important:

If all the girls over there are wearing pretty much the same skirts, clearly she has ended up at a private all-girls school. And they're not exactly going to let her in just because she showed up, because she doesn't have a uniform, or know her way around England, or anything.

She takes a deep breath.

Maybe they'll still be willing to point her at the American embassy. She knows how embassies work from reading the Mrs. Pollifax books (well, some of them), which she always liked because Mrs. Pollifax shared her name.

She marches across the park.

Looking a bit closer, she can see that it's both girls and boys wearing the clothes. She also sees some of them play a very intense game of tag on a playground full of obstructions, or simulating a battle with foam swords or foam darts, running around deftly and taking cover as they advance. A few of the kids are practicing firing on targets, and there's even a pair of teenagers fencing just like they do at the Olympics. One of the teachers takes a look at Emily. "Hi there, young miss! Were you just playing in the forest?"

... do boys wear skirts at private schools too? That's kinda cool. And it explains why the books don't really talk about boys' uniforms very much, if they're the same as girls' uniforms.

"I was reading," she explains. "But when I started reading I was in Vermont, and now I don't know where I am because I don't recognize anything."

She hesitates for a moment, before deciding that this is probably an urgent enough situation to call.

"Could you call my parent, please?"

"Parent? That means your home-parent, right? Which one of them?"

She's not sure what distinguishes a home-parent, exactly, but she does live with them, so it probably counts?

"I've only got one," she tells the teacher. "Their phone number is ..." and she rattles off a 10-digit American cellphone number.

"Oh, I think I get it! But... don't you use any of the other characters? It'd be really strange for a phone number to use just the lower ones." She dials it anyway. "Typing your number in, it doesn't connect me to anyone?"

Emily blinks.

She vaguely remembers something about there being "international numbers". Maybe if this is England you have to dial things differently?

"Maybe it's a countries thing?" she ventures. "I'm from the United States. What country are we in now?"

"Well, the country would have to be Daybrook, but I'm not sure why you'd ask that? You're on the territory of Alexandria's Creche, and the city's territory extends a fair distance from here. What's the point of asking which country you're in?"

She's never heard of Daybrook. It doesn't sound like a very country-ish name.

But geography is also not her strong suit — they're doing local geography in class this year, international is supposed to be next year — and there's tons of countries.

"I thought phones only worked in a country," she explains. "Or, they worked between them, but you had to dial them differently."

It's starting to sink in that contacting her Parent is not going to be easy. She blinks quickly to hold back tears, because she doesn't want to cry and make a bad impression on the possibly-magic-school teacher.

"Could you," her voice hitches. "Could you put me through to the American embassy, instead? They can probably ..."

Well, they can probably take her away from the only interesting thing that has happened to her outside of a book all year.

"Well, that's what you're supposed to do, in a foreign country, anyway," she mumbles, voice quiet.

"...there isn't an American embassy. I don't know how you know what America is, but it isn't anything that's here. Do you want me to hug you? You must be so scared, showing up here, where you don't know anyone. But you shouldn't be scared, because there isn't anything dangerous here."

Does she want a hug? She usually likes hugs, but she usually gets them from her parent. And she normally doesn't like teachers. But this one actually asked, instead of just prescribing how things were going to be.

"Yes," she agrees.

The teacher takes some very slow and deliberate steps towards Emily, before kneeling down and embracing her, gently and warmly. "I'll be here for as long as you need."

This isn't how anything is supposed to work. She's supposed to wake up in the other world, and be able to take charge and become a hero. Or, really, she's never supposed to end up in another world at all, except through books, because that's fictional. And she doesn't know what's happening, and she doesn't know what to do.

She starts crying into the teacher's shirt.

The teacher just ignores Emily's tears, as she keeps the hug going. She squeezes Emily ever so slightly more. "You'll be happy here, I promise."

Emily shakes her head. The teacher can't promise that. She knows that — she's read the Lioness quartet. Making yourself responsible for other people's feelings doesn't work.

But teachers making promises and not following through is nothing new.

After a few moments, she manages to collect herself. She wipes the tears out of her eyes with the heel of the hand that isn't holding her book.

"If we can't ..." she trails off. "What's next? Do I have to wear a skirt?"

"I think that's your choice, about whether you wear a skirt or not. The kids here think it's fun, and it lets everyone know they're from the school, but they don't have to. I think that what's next is signing you up for the basic income. If you follow me, I'll take you to the station, where they'll sign you up. And you can get a few minutes to think about what you'll do after that."

She thinks about the variety of places people in books have ended up. She doesn't know whether this is a mysterious castle situation or a Discipline Cottage situation or a wandering-the-world situation. Probably not that last one, if there are a lot of children gathered here.

"I think I need to know more, to know what I want to do," she says. "What's a creche?"

"It's an old-timey name for a place where all the children live together that's built with their needs in mind. It means tons of playgrounds, streets that are safer for playing on, lots of fun things to do, and places that are child-sized and good for learning." After making sure that Emily is fine with ending the hug, the teacher begins walking towards a subway entrance that blends in well with the rest of the city.

Emily is vaguely dubious of things that are designed for children.

"... and do all the children live in a creche? Or do some of them live elsewhere?" she asks, following the teacher. "... is there a library?"

"No, not all the children, a lot just live with their bioparents in a non-creche. But there aren't as many children around, and it isn't as fun for many children. Yes, there is a library! There are actually multiple, not just the big main library for the politicians and the inventors." She starts on the steps down into the station; it is incredibly close to the surface. A short train arrives just a few seconds after she's made her way down; the seats are made out of soft mesh, almost like a hammock, instead of hard plastic.

She's not sure how to feel about that answer. On the one hand: multiple libraries. On the other hand, it seems like she might still be limited to the creche if they can't contact her parent. Which ... maybe it will happen, but she can't exactly plan on it.

What she wants to ask is 'so what level of autonomy am I going to have, here, exactly', but that sounds like the kind of question that she can't figure out how to ask without making people think she's going to cause trouble.

She sits in the seat and squirms to get comfortable, book held on her lap.

"What are the ... requirements for classes and stuff like that?" she asks instead. If she knows what's expected, then she either knows what she will have to do, or at least what she'll have to silently tolerate while trying to contact the resistance. The train looks all futuristic, so that probably means there's a resistance. Unless it's like Ministry of Disturbance ...

"Well, you have to prove that you're literate, numerate, and can understand statistics, but it's very rare for anyone over 6 or 7 years old to not pass those tests? After that, it's up to you if you want more classes." The train takes maybe 10 minutes before reaching their destination, only a few blocks away from a rather inviting-looking police station. It's built as the first level of a skyscraper; this city seems to have either skyscrapers or parks *everywhere*, with nothing inbetween.

... huh.

"Well, I'm definitely literate and numerate," she replies. "I don't think the school where I came from teaches statistics until you're in ... sixth grade? Unless you just mean, like, probabilities and fractions."

But if you only have to learn a few things, one class a day doesn't sound too bad. Not unless they have really long classes here.

She looks out at the skyscrapers, thinking furiously. None of this matches anything that she was expecting — not that she was really expecting this at all. But they have school uniforms, except they aren't mandatory, and you don't have to go to school. And they have skyscrapers, but she doesn't see any flying cars.

"... do you split the country up into districts, and make a boy and a girl from each district fight to the death every year to determine food allocations?" she asks. "Or anything along those lines," she adds, because she hasn't actually read that many books in that genre. She didn't really think it was that interesting, other than when Katniss was strategizing for the games.

"Well, maybe you'd need to learn statistics, too? But I think that learning it once you're literate and numerate should be easier than getting to numeracy from scratch." 

"No, no, not at all! We're very particular about food security, actually. We have a system where we try to have the food paid for as far in advance as possible, and people can volunteer to have a stash of food in their house so we can be extra-safe. But nobody's really worried, so it's a really rare thing. You can start volunteering for that if it makes you feel safer... I don't know what you could mean by 'anything along those lines', can you give me some examples?"

Entering the police station, there are a few people signing contracts, and a man sitting bored behind a counter.

"This girl needs to sign up for the basic income, could you get the process started?"

... in hindsight, actually, she probably should have been asking different questions.

Uh.

She's not sure she really wants to talk to more people, but that man is wearing a uniform, and that means this is probably official, and that means there are rules and she just has to figure out what they are really quickly.

"What do I need to do to get a basic income?" she asks, ignoring the teacher's distopia question. "And, actually, what is a basic income?"

"You need to let me scan 10 fingerprints and both eyes, and to get that put into a database. Usually, someone brings their baby in and tell us to set up a basic income account for their baby, and they don't need the prints and eyes, but for anyone else to get one we need their fingerprints and eyes. A basic income is money that every single person gets paid every month without exception, and you can spend it for anything."

... huh. Sort of like an allowance. She can't think of anything she's read where they both have money, and give it to everyone.

"How do you know where to send it? Like, if I finished learning about statistics and decided to move somewhere else?" she asks.

"It gets sent to an account number, with a passowrd, that you also get. You can use money from that account anywhere in the world."

She nods. She'll let herself be fingerprinted and retina scanned.

"How much is it?" she asks, suddenly thinking about how much time her parent has to put into their work. "In terms of ... whether I will need to get a job, or live with someone," she clarifies. "I don't know how much things cost here."

The man behind the counter gets 2 square sensors, and what looks like a camera on a stick, and asks Emily to place both hands onto the sensors and stare into the camera to get fingerprinted and scanned.

"You won't need a job or live with anyone else. I don't think things are too expensive, here; it's mostly better housing and pricy hobbies like traveling everywhere that people spend their money on."

Emily considers this.

If everybody receives this amount of money, and so nobody needs a job ... she's not sure how that works. Maybe only people who like traveling do anything?

But ... she feels more on top of things than she was a few minutes ago. Dealing with money is a real thing, a thing that she has some reference for, in a world that matches up with nothing she's familiar with.

She thinks about what she needs: to learn statistics, so that nobody will bother her; to find a place to stay; to figure out where to get food; and to figure out what happened to her, and whether she's magic, or there's a portal in the park, or anything like that.

"Alright; thank you. So what is my account number and how do I set my password?"

The man behind the counter quietly hands Emily a card. It use a special kind of effect that makes it so it can only be read when seen head-on. It has a long mixture of numbers and letters, together with another shorter string of random characters under it. The one on top looks seems like the account number, with the one below being the password.

"You set your password by first logging in, then sending a tiny bit of money to the company that handles the passwords, and then they send you a temporary link where you go in to set your password. They're called World Vault Services, or whatever. Look it up on your phone."

... right.

She mentally adds "a phone" to her list of things she needs.

She turns to the teacher. "I assume I could also look up places to live on the phone?" she asks. "If so, getting a phone and then somewhere to think for a bit sounds like a good idea."

"Yes, yes, that's almost certainly the first thing you'd want to do! Let's find a phone store, and see the options, shall we?"

The teacher looks one up on her phone, and starts leading Emily towards it. It's just a few city blocks away, so it doesn't take very long before Emily ends up outside it. It's a small store, with a wide range of models visible through the window, sorted by screen size from smaller to larger going left to right.

"Er. Probably I should have asked about actual currency amounts," she admits, peering in through the window and wondering which ones she can afford. "Do you know how much my account would have started with?"

"Phones are not particularly expensive! The first time you ever get a basic income account, you start out with 2 months' worth of income, and since you can sell shares of your basic income whenever you run out of money, you have much, much more than that available. A very nice phone costs around 40% of what your basic income earns you each month."

The prices of the phones are 4-digit numbers; some start with a 2, some start with a 4. 

... right. So 10% of one month is about 1,000, so she has 20,000 to work with. She doesn't like the sound of selling shares of her basic income — that sounds like credit cards. And the ... account officer? ... said that she would be able to live alright on her basic income, meaning that her monthly expenses for a house and food and so on are probably about 10,000. So really she has 10,000 to work with, and needs to figure out whether to spend 2,000 or 4,000 on a phone.

She wasn't expecting to need a phone, but in hindsight it's kinda obvious that something like that would be required. Moreover, she's going to need more school supplies — paper and pencil, and maybe a skirt. But she's pretty sure those cost a lot less than a phone on Earth.

And she doesn't know how much of her basic income she will be able to save each month. Either she'll be able to save a lot, and get a new phone if she wants one in a few months, or she won't be able to save much, and she should hold onto the savings she does have. So either way, she should buy a cheap phone.

She enters the store and starts looking for a phone that fits comfortably in her hand, and is on the lower end of the 2,000-to-4,000 range.

The phones are all made of different materials, coming in colors that are mostly white, black or blue. They feel very, very light, but also reassuringly durable. Thanks to the phones all coming in such a range of sizes, it doesn't take long before Emily finds one that fits her hand perfectly. It costs around 2800, being the cheapest phone in that general price range. It's basically all screen, with a very small camera on the back, but it probably just does whatever it needs to.

She hasn't really held an Earth-cellphone enough to compare their weights from memory.

She examines it, reads any information that might be written down near it, and then looks around to figure out how to make a purchase.

There's a small sheet of paper full of phone specs; it has a huge battery, a relatively high-end processor, and over 200 gigabytes of storage. Outside of that, the spec sheet has tons of unfamiliar acronyms, including information about the phone's expected lifespan and various measurements of how durable it is.

There's a man sitting behind a counter, lazily reading something on his laptop. He looks over at Emily. "Do you want to just buy your phone now, or do you want my help to find something?"

"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.

Walking into the impressively spacious square elevator, she sees 2 rows of buttons, one for each digit; typing in the number to reach her floor doesn't take much time at all, before the elevator starts racing up. It can't have been too many seconds before it opens out onto a small, round corridor built around it, leading to her apartment, with its dark purple door.

She fumbles with her phone, book, and key for a moment, until she has phone and book in one hand, and key in the other.

She looks for any kind of indentation, or badge-reader, or some other obvious place to try her key.

There's a relatively familiar-looking lock recessed into the door. The key slides in easily, and the door opens incredibly smoothly to reveal the wall-sized window giving her a view of a compact park full of bushes as well as the skyscraper opposite hers, inside the living room that takes up a big portion of the apartment's space.

Oh thank goodness.

She slides the door closed and sets her phone down on the floor. She briefly checks the other rooms of the apartment, before picking a corner and curling up in it.

She opens her book, and goes somewhere else.

By the time she flips the last page, the sun has changed angles in the sky, and her stomach is rumbling. But she doesn't feel overwhelmed. She feels at peace.

She slightly regrets not figuring out food first. But it can't be that hard — none of the apartments had kitchens, so they've probably got replicators. Or maybe kitchen-bots.

She tries searching for "food" on her phone.

A quick looks reveals a quite small bedroom, with most of the room taken up by the bed and closet squezed in next to it. It looks a bit big to be a bed for one person, but it also looks nice and inviting.

The bathroom is quite nice too; even though it's small, most of it is taken up by a pool with a shower enclosure to keep the rest of the room dry. The toilet can be hidden behind a door that gives the illusion of being part of the bathroom's white walls, with one sink next to it, as well as what looks like a second sink in the shower area.

If Emily looks up food on her phone, she instantly finds a huge variety of cuisines available, ready for delivery via robot. If the food has any meat, it's almost invariably chicken, and everything offered seems to be exotic and spicy.

She scrolls through the pictures, until she finds something that looks good.

She has, inconveniently, never liked chicken, except in soup. But she does like spicy things, at least when her parent adds Iguana sauce to things.

She settles on a spicy chicken soup with accompanying vegetable rolls. She orders it without really paying attention to the price, and then immediately feels guilty and checks to see how many approximately-this-expensive meals she can afford in a month, after rent.

She does math leaning against the door, listening for the arrival of the food.

She's hungry.

After rent, she can afford around 400 meals like the chicken soup currently heading her way. In spite of her keeping her ear to the door, Emily can't hear the arrival of the robot carrying her food until it creates a chime that sounds relatively loud with her ear to the door. It only took the robot some 9 minutes to arrive; opening the door, Emily can see that it almost looks like a box on wheels, with a drawing of a pair of eyes on the front, It carries a square plastic box, with a texture that somehow reminds her of steel, with another round metal container of soup together with quite a few vegetable rolls next to inside it. There is a bowl and cutlery ready for her in a drawer in a corner of the main room; settling down and tasting the soup, it tastes utterly spectacular. The portion is quite big as well, so Emily will probably end up stuffed after finishing it.

... well, if she can afford many meals like this a day, she'll have no hesitation about digging in.

It tastes wonderful; she wolfs it down, just slightly slowly enough not to burn her mouth on the soup. She likes the way the outer shell of the egg rolls crunch.

When she finishes it, she spends a while just sitting there, enjoying the sensation of fullness. But she can't rest yet — there is one very important task that must be done today.

She washes her face and hands in the bathroom, brushing some crumbs off of herself. She stacks the dishes next to the sink, not quite sure what to do with them.

And then she takes the elevator back down to the ground floor. It's time to explore the library. How is it laid out? What kinds of books does it have?

The libraries are laid out in rings and layers: there's a ring of shelves that form a backdrop to the people sitting nearest the window, and that create corners for people sitting among the shelves. The many curved bookshelves work to create lots of isolated and private corners, with a few larger spaces near the center of the library. The thick carpet means that almost anywhere is comfortable for lying down or sitting down among the books, and there are normal chairs, as well as beanbags and thickly padded ottomans to sit on all according to what you'd find most comfortable. The library is divided into 3 major sections: Periodicals, Anthologies and Fiction. 

Periodicals are nonfiction books, generally in quite uniform sizes, that cover a relatively broad area and collect lots of research articles that all came out within some period of time; they have titles like RRF Railways 2604-155, and reading the back matter just shows a list of article names and authors. Anthologies are nonfiction books full of articles and chapters all on some relatively specific themes, or they're just compilations of "the most mind-bending papers ever". Textbooks are in the Anthologies section, and the selection is intimidatingly large. 

Finally, in the Fiction section, you have full-length novels and short story collections, and there are tons of books that are meant to put together the complete works of particularly famous and successful authors. There are also an enormous variety of short-story collections that are in their Periodicals and Anthologies subgroupings in the Fiction section.

She makes a beeline right for the Fiction section, once she has identified it. She can find an introductory statistics textbook later.

How are things organized within the Fiction section? By theme, or by something less immediately useful like author?

(In which case she will browse covers until she finds one that arbitrarily catches her interest)

The books in the Fiction section are organized by themes, as well as the main source of interest in the work: you have themes like Meaningful Relationships, Scientific Speculation, Sense of Grandeur, Terror and Relief, Intriguing Mysteri, and Cathartic Emotionality. Going deeper, the Meaningful Relationships section is divided into subgenres like Developing Romances, Nostalgic Romances, Recent Parenthood, Parenthood Nostalgia, Childhood Nostalgia, and similar starightforward descriptions of what you'll hopefully like in the book you'll be reading.

The covers often look like the super-bland yellow mathbooks from some big publisher or other, fascinatingly enough; there are books with beautifully illustrated covers once in a while, but most of them tend to have just the sterile "mass-produced" look on the shelves. The books are also very consistent in term of size; it's a bit strange that the books all seem to be relatively close in terms of page count, although the books are all quite thick.

... hmm. Emily is slightly dubious about the consistently sized books, but she'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

She tries the Intriguing Mystery section. She's read and liked mystery books before, and it seems like it might be the best place for something fantasy-esque.

She pulls a random book from the shelf, pausing to sneeze into her elbow, and then sinks down to the carpet to read the introduction.

Elizabeth Von Neumann has a huge and devoted fanbase for her stories of aliens with mysterious powers stumping detectives on their trails. In The Case of the Plutonium Bull, she tells one of her most riveting stories yet: one of the most priceless and powerful artifacts, vanishing without a trace from one of the most well-protected Atom Guard vaults! Inspector Vidocq the Second must use all his wits if he stands any chance at finding the culprit behind the daring heist, and to place the immensely powerful and valuable Plutonium Bull back into the safe hands of the Atom Guard.

This sounds like a good book to her!

She starts to flip the page, before realizing that she doesn't actually know the library's borrowing policy. It would suck to start reading it and then have the library close without being able to check it out.

Instead, she tucks the book under her arm, and goes in search of a librarian. Or, failing that, a poster with library rules on it.

She can't find any posters with rules for the library, unfortunately, although there are many posters full of information about books and famous authors. It doesn't look like there's a real librarian, either. Presumably, she needs to look it up on her phone or something?

Emily is not yet used to the idea of having a phone, or treating it as an authority on anything, but after failing to find a librarian it seems like the obvious choice.

She finds one of the reading nooks, and settles down on it. Does searching on her phone help?

Yes, as a matter of fact. The way that it works is that you can loan books for a minimum period of 2 weeks or until someone else wants to check out the book, whichever is longer, and you only need to register the loan in the library's app. Emily is free to just take the book back to her apartment without doing a library loan or anything, as long as she ensures that it gets returned within 2 weeks of someone else making a loan request. It only takes a few clicks to set up a notification to be notified whenever she'll have to return the book to the library, and then she just needs to say that she currently has the book on loan in the library's app. It doesn't seem like it gets lent out very often, so she'll probably get lots of time to read it.

She can't imagine any book that takes two weeks to get through, so she's pretty much fine.

In that case, she will just stay in the reading nook, and read. This renders her more-or-less oblivious to anything going on around her, although she will keep an eye out for any sign the library is closing, so she can relocate to her apartment.

Nothing does, indeed, happen. The library is perfectly quiet, and Emily is perfectly undisturbed. The library doesn't close, either; it's part of the building's common areas, so she can go there anytime she wants.

Then she will read until the sun has set, and she notices the change in the light. At which point she figures she should probably go to bed, so she makes her way back up to her apartment.

She peels out of her clothes, leaves them on the floor, gets into bed, and is immediately bothered because the sheets are wrong.

She tosses and turns for a while, before getting up and taking a shower. When the feel of the water has replaced the feel of the sheets, she tries again.

Whether it's because they are no longer so unfamiliar, or because she is simply tired after an unexpected day, she manages to fall asleep on the second try.

The next morning, she figures out how to take notes on her phone, and prepares a list:

Clothing

Toothbrushes

Statistics

Exams

Dishes

Investigate the park

Backpack

Breakfast

She thinks for a moment, but can't come up with anything else to add to it. She mentally sorts it by urgency, and starts trying to figure out where she should go shopping.

Remembering the food and the library, she tries her phone first this time. Can she order a backpack, toothbrush, and maybe clothes via the phone? Or does she need to travel somewhere?

A backpack, toothbrush and clothes are all available through the phone, shipped via cargo robot. However, Emily gets quite the impression that having clothes ordered and sent to you is considered quite unusual, as opposed to trying clothes in person to ensure they fit better.

She has never been particularly bothered about clothes, so she starts to just order some, before remembering that some of the clothing she's seen is pretty strange. People seem to wear tight shirts, which probably doesn't fit with her habitual choice of loose-fitting t-shirts. Also, she's seen relatively few pants, considering.

She drums her fingers on her book, before deciding that the proper order of operations is probably ordering a backpack, so that she has something to carry purchases in, and then going out to a clothes store.

She finds a forest green backpack of a reasonable size and price, sends off her order, and settles in to read more of the mystery book until it arrives.

It takes about 2 hours before the backpack arrives, somewhat clumsily carried on top of a similar robot to the one that brought her the food. It's uncannily light, and comes with some kind of plate that looks like it's made of carbon-fiber that fits on the inside of the backpack. The backpacks were basically all sold in standardized rectangular sizes, designed to fit into luggage bins; the most reasonable size is a tiny bit too large for Emily.

She startles when the robot arrives, but pulls the backpack in after a moment. She puts her books, phone, and key into different pockets, and then sets out.

She stops in the library to pick out an introductory statistics textbook, and ends up leaving with two more books that looked interesting, even though there will be no time to read them on the train at all because it's too fast.

And she follows her phone's directions to a nearby clothing store.

The phone suggest a clothing store just 2 stops away, marketing itself to parents and children and proudly advertising the many schools that they've sold uniforms to. The store sells all kinds of everyday clothes in a wide range of pretty colors: skirts, pants, shirts, jackets and dresses, never really anything out of the ordinary.

She examines the items carefully, running the cloth between her fingers to test how it feels. The first few things she tries are not acceptable, so she keeps going until she finds some that feel alright.

She ends up getting a small selection of shirts, pants, underwear, and socks, split between blue, green, and white. She looks around for a teller or other checkout option — is this place more like the phone store, or like the library?

There's a friendly woman standing around ready to answer any of Emily's questions, waiting behind a counter as she realized that her customer probably won't ask her for anything and ready to accept Emily's payment.

... she's not sure what it says about this place's priorities, that they have people to help in shops, but not in libraries. Who does the restocking, anyway? Robots?

She's struck by the urge to capture a library robot and keep it like a pet that could organize her books, but she smothers the impulse and pays for her clothes instead.

It does make her realize that she might need more than just statistics classes, just so that she has some idea of how things work around here, though.

The clothes are very, very cheap, so that's reassuring. And they're made of a fabric that feels incredibly nice against Emily's skin while keeping her cool, as well.

She makes her purchases, and bundles them back into her backpack. She steps out on the street, and consults her list. She's handled a lot of what she planned on, and honestly the thing she probably should do next is work out when she needs to take her exams and what's included on them, but she's loose in a strange city, and she feels like having an adventure.

She consults her phone — she thinks it's not too far to her original arrival point. Can she walk to the park from here?

It'd be a bit of a walk, yes, but she can absolutely get to the park she arrived in from where she is now.

Excellent!

She sets off in the right direction. And, since she is now Investigating, she takes the time to look for clues. Except she's not sure what she should be looking for exactly, so she ends up just watching the people as she walks. What kinds of people are between her and the park?

Lots of kids in skirts with teachers looking like they're on school trips, lots of parents pushing baby carriages with 4 or more babies, lots of people in dresses or skirts that end above the knee, a few people enjoying riding on their bikes in the sunny weather, and a few kids as well as adults running around and swordfighting with foam swords.

... 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.

Oh. Well, alright. 1556 is less than 1557, so she settles in to be sick in bed.

She orders herself a big bowl of soup and a container of juice that looks tasty.

... she should stay up to eat, even though she's should maybe sleep after that. But she has finished her books, and she doesn't have a mask to go down to the library.

Does the library deliver, too?

The library does deliver; Emily can ask to have one of the library's books sent up to her apartment, and someone will volunteer to just walk up with it and hand it over to her.

She accepts the book with a blanket wrapped across her face, in lieu of a mask, and settles down to read, rest, recuperate, and sip her soup.

By mid-morning, she finds herself re-reading the same page for the third time, and leans back against her pillow with a sigh.

She dozes for a few minutes — or it feels like a few minutes at least — before she's woken once again by chills. She checks her temperature again. It's crept up to 1559.

She frowns. She doesn't want to leave her blanket nest again. But the advice on her phone was to seek medical care ... She should try to get Tylenol, at least, but she doesn't know what they call it.

She pages back through the search results. What should she do, now that her fever has worsened?

"Fevers in excess of 1557 are acceptably sensitive as indicators of an illness that can and should receive medical treatment. Initially, a sniffer box and an antipyretic are recommended, and if they indicate a worrisome condition, contacting a diagnostician and preparing for a course of at-home treatment is highly recommended as the next steps."

... ugh. That sounds like more steps that she doesn't want to have to do when she's sick.

But (after checking the definition of 'antipyretic'), it makes sense. She orders whatever the recommended child-safe antipyretic is, as well as a sniffer and some more soup. She likes sipping the soup as she reads.

There are several brands of child-safe antipyretics; the standard is sending over a bottle with several different types, in fact, so people can try out which one works best for them instead of sticking to the first one that they tried. They're different colors, but it only says which color is which antipyretic on the inside of the pill bottle's lid, so Emily won't be biased by whichever antipyretic has the nicest name or seems like it should work the best.

It takes another 20 minutes or so before the antipyretic sampler, soup and sniffer arrive at Emily's apartment, with the robot waiting outside again. Bringing the sniffer inside doesn't result in it producing any kind of response... which means that Emily has a Rare or Novel Illness, going by what she's read about sniffers online.

Well, she's never heard of a sniffer before coming here, so maybe this one is faulty?

In any case, she'll start with a random antipyretic — blue, because she likes blue — and then go sit and have a Rare or Novel Illness in bed.

About ten minutes later, she suddenly starts feeling hot, sets aside her soup, and casts off her blankets. She chugs some water from the bathroom as well. But as she sits and cools down for a minute, she really does start feeling significantly better.

... the sniffer probably isn't broken. She doesn't think she's seen a broken piece of technology since she got here. She checks to make sure it isn't obviously banged up or anything like that, and then looks up what you're supposed to do if you have a Rare or Novel Illness.

The sniffer looks like it's in utterly pristine condition; sniffers can be tested by using a piece of soap, which they're universally designed to be able to sense, and sniffers always have manuals where you can look up the illnesses they're designed to detect. People with Rare or Novel Illnesses are expected to use second-line sniffers and see if they find anything, and if those can't make a diagnosis, they're expected to send in samples of spit to a local testing lab; they're considered so important that people with such illnesses get paid a pretty penny for sending them in, in fact.

After the lab test, they're expected to be vigilant in case their illness worsens, and to be ready to get more medicine and equipment to facilitate at-home medical care, just in case. But first of all, those with Rare or Novel Illnesses are to use second-line sniffers to guarantee that their illness is just rare, not novel.

Alright, that makes sense. Although she does wonder whether the payment pays for ordering the sniffers, if people mostly don't have novel illnesses. That sounds a little too much like a homework problem for her to want to spend time on, though.

So she tests it with soap, orders a second-line sniffer, and spends her little bit of antipyretic-boosted energy dealing with dirty dishes and the like.

And then she returns to bed, pulls the blanket just over her feet, and rests with a book.

Bringing soap within a few meters of the sniffer (it's deliberately less sensitive to soap, to ensure that it provides a clear signal) results in it making the special test signal, letting her know that everything works in the sniffer. A second-line sniffer appears after giving Emily a bit more time to enjoy her reading in bed. It manages to sense the soap just as well as the first. And reveals that whatever she has is, indeed, not Rare, but Novel.

They don't show this part, in the books.

She knows that different places have different diseases, and it only stands to reason that different worlds will too. But it's not heroic, is it, bringing a new disease with you.

She spits in a sample jar and hands it back to the delivery robot.

And she sits near the window, no longer feeling chilled, but still with the general malaise she's learned to associate with sickness, and watches the tiny figures walking down the street below.

She wants to go home.

After a while she sighs, and goes to drink some more soup.

If she wants to go home, she'll have to figure out the means herself. And the first step must be getting over her illness. She doesn't know what the next step is, but she'll figure it out from there. Maybe it's a Narnia sort of situation, and she has to become Queen.

She dozes. Time slips away like it does when one is sick, and soon enough it is nighttime. She takes another dose of antipyretic before bed, and sleeps.

When she wakes, she doesn't feel much better. In fact, she wakes with a particularly phlegmatic and unpleasant cough.

She doesn't want to get up, so she doesn't. But after a while she feels so grungy, sleeping in uncleaned sheets, that she drags herself to the shower. After her shower, she hangs off the bed upsidedown and beats her chest, like her parent taught her, to try and get the stuff out of her lungs. She coughs it up into the bathroom sink.

Afterwards, she's feeling much more comfortable. She orders more soup, because she sees no particular reason to eat anything else. She likes soup, and it's important to have fluids when you're sick. She also, belatedly, remembers that she needs to cancel her tests, and tries to figure out how to do so. They must let you reschedule tests if you're sick, right?

That's entirely correct; rescheduling is essentially as simple as ordering an exam, and you only pay a fee for canceling if you ended up taking an exam slot which someone else might have taken, which Emily thankfully didn't. Also, while she was asleep, someone had her spit sample tested. She got a phone from the lab that did the testing. "We have confirmed that you have been infected with a NOVEL pathogen. Be careful and proactive in terms of treatment, and reduce the strain on your body to its absolute minimum. We're here to support and care for you; please accept this payment as a reward for informing us about the novel pathogen." Checking, a respectable amount of money has been added to Emily's account.

... being paid to be sick is honestly so weird. But it does mean that she doesn't worry too much about lounging around the house, ordering in large quantities of soup and library books. It would be enjoyable, if she weren't still too cold and too hot at turns, and coughing up unmentionable substances with some regularity.

She spends a lot of time napping. She's never really liked napping during the day — it's hard to rest when it's bright out — but being sick greatly increases her tolerance.

In between the napping, she orders more books, and frets about whether anyone else would have caught what she is pretty sure is the flu from her.

She looks it up ­— what do the people here do when they detect a novel pathogen? Because surely they must do something about it, to make reporting one worth a payment.

Novel pathogens lead to starting races to create tests, and ideally sniffers, for detecting it, followed by highly-publicized races to invent theoretically-useful treatments for it. It's treated as almost a sporting event, where everyone is excited to see what kinds of treatments and tests that all the scientists manage to come up with.

... huh.

She's not a doctor, but she's pretty sure this is the flu? It seems like flu, anyway. But she doesn't know how to treat the flu, exactly, other than bed rest and fluids, which was already their default advice, so she probably can't contribute much to the races.

Actually, does anyone want to see pictures of her phlegm?

Reading up on what little has been done in the "race" so far, it seems like there are people interested in trying to talk to whoever got the Novel Illness to try learning as much as possible through getting more info about what symptoms you get from it. So they'd probably also want to get a look at Emily's phlegm, if she felt like talking to the people working on tests and treatments for it? They're offering rewards for whoever sent in the sample to talk about their illness on a video call.

Um.

She's not very sure about a video call — she is currently a mess. Because she has a fever.

Instead she writes up a detailed textual description of how she feels, what her temperature was at various points, and some vaguely remembered facts about Flu from her world: more common in the winter, often not serious, unless someone's lungs fill up or they're already not healthy.

She sends it off to the researchers, and indicates that she can answer questions, she just doesn't want to video call.

And then she hides her phone under her pillow because she doesn't want to look in case responding like that was rude, and tries to read a book instead, for about 30 seconds, before checking her messages. There are no new messages. Because it has been 30 seconds.

She puts her phone down again, focuses on her book, and drinks more of her soup.

The researchers are happy to ask questions about Emily's Novel Illness via text. They ask about what the symptoms are like, what kinds of treatments she's tried, her theories about how the treatment is going to progress, and what might be some possible ways of improving her quality of life.

Right.

Well, she hasn't had anything other than soup and antipyretics. And she doesn't feel great, but that seems basically fine? It's what she would expect the treatment for something like this to be, unless she got worse, and then there are antibiotics and stuff?

She's not sure if the Flu is bacterial or viral, though. She's not entirely clear on whether you can even tell that without a microscope. Anyway, generalized antibiotics or antivirals are a thing if someone actually gets very sick, she thinks.

The symptoms are just the normal disease stuff — generally feeling bad, coughing, sneezing, a bit of nausea, fever. Personally, she thinks the fever is the worst, because it makes her feel bad. Also she has had less energy, but that's normal for any sickness. When she's gotten sick like this in the past, things have been pretty steady, and then all of a sudden her fever breaks and she feels fine, basically. A little weaker than normal for a while, maybe?

But maybe that steadiness is just because her parent gave her medicine. Tylenol, which they don't have here, and which is normally a painkiller but she's pretty sure it's an antipyretic too, now that she knows that word.

As for her quality of life, she actually can't think of much? Being sick sucks, but she's getting spicy soup and books on demand, and not being made to take tests or go anywhere, and that is pretty much all you need when you're sick.

She isn't really thinking about whether the researchers know she's from another world. Normally, she might realize that they probably don't, but it takes enough concentration just to put her reply together that she doesn't really think of it.

...they're quite confused by the advantages of "not being made to take tests or go anywhere", which seems a bit unlikely for someone who's literate and would presumably have passed the relevant exams? They feel a bit confused by how she doesn't seem to have mentioned anything about trying to use a humidifier so she can have moist air that often feels better or try one of the inhalational medicines that usually ease the coughing and sneezing; most people feel like it makes things really just to try it, and renting the equipment for just a few days is cheap enough anyway.

Oh. She had no idea that they made humidifiers or medicine for that. She's pretty sure that they didn't have those in Vermont? Or, they had humidifiers, but people didn't use them when they were sick.

Also she's not sure whether she would really want things to be more humid. She's been inhaling the steam off the soups, and ordering spicy soups because they help clear her sinuses, and that seems fine? Her eyes do get dry and scratchy when she has a fever, so maybe a humidifier would be helpful. She'll try one and let them know.

She sends a response off to the researchers, and then looks at what it would cost to rent a humidifier.

The cost to rent a humidifier is indeed a very small number! The researchers also ask her about if she's ever properly participated in a Pandemic Awareness Week, and what kind of mask she has, if any, just in case she feels like going outside and wants to not have to worry about making anyone else sick.

She'll order in a humidifier.

It has occurred to her, by now, that the researchers definitely don't know she's from another world. Which ... she feels like she should have been more on top of that? Should she have not let that slip? On the other hand, it's not like it would be hard for a shadowy antagonist to figure things out from what she has said.

She spends a little while trying to figure out if this is the kind of story where being from another world gets her locked up in a lab, or the kind of story where the moral is about learning to trust other people. She watches clouds scuttle across the sky.

The truth is this isn't any kind of story at all.

She hugs her knees, trying to figure out how to respond. Finally, she remembers something that her older cousin Peter told her once, at a different cousin's wedding, when she found him sitting on the dock with a mug, his feet dangling in the water: "tell the cops nothing, and doctors everything".

Disease researchers are probably relevantly doctors, she decides.

No, she tells them. She's never participated in a Pandemic Awareness Week, because she's from another world. And she doesn't have a mask, because she just came here with a book and her clothes and didn't realize masks were standard.

As soon as she's sent it, she realizes that she probably sounds delusional.

She tells them that they can check, maybe, with the teacher who found her when she arrived. She has their phone number.

She looks up masks on her phone, her eyes drooping closed for long stretches. She should probably nap again, but she wants to see what the masks are like. Something about the idea of wearing one in public really appeals to her.

The researchers respond quite fast. They think Emily is weird enough that it seems quite likely that she did come from another world, as opposed to somehow hallucinating an entire life that left her with such extremely limited familiarity with thomassia. When it comes to the masks, they are commonly custom-made, just like thomassian clothing; the most common design is a form-fitting mask of transparent fabric, to be worn in ordinary situations.

To be safer, and especially if you're working long hours in hospitals, positive-pressure masks that constantly push air away to keep any viruses away from your mouth and nose are incredibly common; they're seen as more breathable and helps prevent people that are around sick people all day from getting infected, but they have batteries that need to be changed and keep track of, so they're a bit less convenient. There are also "formal" masks, which for some reason involve hiding a bunch of fans and filters inside an anthropomorphic animal head with disproportionately large eyes.

She scrolls through the formal masks with increasingly wide eyes herself.

The idea that these count as formal wear — and, therefore, are presumably okay to wear anytime she wants, even if people think she's being oddly formal — is amazing. The idea of walking down the street, knowing that nobody can see her, and she doesn't need to think about her face ...

She needs a mask. But if they're custom fit, she can't just order them — it's a chicken and egg problem, at least until she's not sick.

She contents herself with scrolling through designs. She doesn't know if she needs a mask that has too much assisted breathing hardware — what if it breaks while she's wearing it? — and it's probably best to get one that is as light as possible, so that it's comfortable to wear for a long time.

She likes the ones with feathers.

She saves a few images of pretty blue formal masks to her phone, and slips into sleep dreaming about anthropomorphic animals.

When she wakes, she feels ... not much better and not much worse. Which isn't great — she thinks that's a long time to be sick? But there's not much she can do about it.

The humidifier maybe makes her eyes feel a little better, but she isn't really sure.

She checks where nearby she can get a mask made, and spoons disconsolately at her breakfast soup. ... maybe she should try some of their other foods, actually. She likes the soup, but she might have had enough for now. She finishes it anyway, but resolves to order something else for dinner.

About half-way through the afternoon, she suddenly starts feeling hot and breaks out in a sweat. She throws off her blankets and fans herself to cool down. Checking with the thermometer a few minutes later, she sees that she no longer counts as having a fever.

She alerts the researchers, so they have an idea of how long it was, lowers the temperature on the apartment, and takes a long shower. Then she fumbles all of the sheets off of the bed, and new ones on, and crawls in to sleep again.

Her sleep is much better, now that she is not bouncing between being over- and under- heated. She sleeps for longer than is entirely reasonable, but still wakes with the sun, feeling better than she has in days.

And maybe the sensible thing to do is rest. But she has been resting for days, and she feels better, even if she doesn't know whether she can get anyone sick still. She wants to go out and commission a mask.

She asks the researchers whether they think she can still get people sick, and if she should stay in for a while. And then she realizes that they probably don't need to fit all the masks, and maybe she could order a temporary one.

A standard-size transparent everyday mask can easily be bought; it's not the default option, but ready-to-wear clothes like that still have tons of options.

Okay, cool. She will order in a temporary mask, pick out a shirt, realize she really should shower, shower, get distracted in the shower wondering about whether the choice of animal means anything, get dressed, and head out.

Even the transparent temporary mask is kind of nice, although it feels a little awkward on her face.

She makes her way to the mask place, and then stands in front of it for a moment, admiring the displays.

There are a bunch of photos of fursuits, as well. And photos of their complicated internal wiring and cool electronics. But the big highlight is the display of "formal masks", in all kinds of colors and designs. Entering, there's a button that you press to let the mask maker know that there's a customer waiting; the button starts glowing, and after a few minutes, a woman walks out wearing what looks like a gym outfit, with a few pieces of fluff stuck to her clothes. "Hello! What can I do for you?"

"Hello!" Emily responds. "I was hoping to commission a formal mask. Only — I'm from another world, and so I'm not very familiar with what the different, like, kinds of mask mean. And I might have some unusual requirements."

She taps her fingers together, and then puts her hands in her pockets.

"So I was hoping that you could make me a custom one," she explains.

"Custom how? Do you have ideas for features in it, or are you thinking about how it looks?"

"Well, sort of ideas for features to take out? But also looks," she replies. "I don't really see why they need to have fans in them, or anything. It seems like it would make them more prone to breaking down, and then you would need to take them off to breathe anyway. But I would like it if the air could still be filtered, for when I get sick."

"As for looks — I really liked some of the fancier ones. And I like blue: the sort of deep, vibrant blue that you get on peacocks. But that seems like a ... more normal sort of thing to ask for. And I want it to fit my face, of course."

She glances down at her feet for a moment.

"I ... want to wear it a lot. Like all day whenever I need to be outside. So it has to be comfy."

"Hmm... I worry about getting you all 3? So, the thing that makes most sense is to have a system that's unfiltered and unpowered, and a system that's both. The first ones get used on most days, with the other one reserved for when you're sick, which shouldn't be all that often, should it? So... I think the best place to start is with the powered and filtered system, it's the bulkiest, and then the all-day, no battery system. And before that, you'll need to get a face scan! I currently have a job putting together a mask for someone else, but I can afford a break right now, just to get you scanned and to try out support skeletons at the very start. Sound good?" She gets ready to walk off and find her face scanner.

That sort of assumes some amount of background knowledge, but it's an expert in a hurry saying it and it sounds reasonable.

"Sure, sounds good!"

She nods at Emily, walking out and quickly coming back with what looks like a laser pointer. "Ideally, you should sit down, and try keeping your head as still as possible." There's a chair that looks like a combination of an office chair and a hammock in the lobby.

"... I should have thought ahead. I was sick until recently, and I don't know if I'm still infectious."

She gestures at her face. "Hence the mask. Do I need to take it off for the scan, and is that okay?"

"Well, yes to both! I'll get my own mask to be safe; don't worry about it too much." She runs off, coming back dressed in a purple fursuit head with two large, cute eyes. "You can take off your mask now, I'm safe behind mine!" she says, her voice only slightly muffled.

She pulls it off and does her best to hold still.

She points the face scanner at Emily for a few seconds, then walks around and uses it to scan her entire head. "That was the scan done, and now I'll be running the support skeleton through the 3D printer. I'll come back when we're both ready to start testing how it fits."

Emily pulls her mask back up.

"Okay, thank you."

And then she will just wait, she supposes. She starts off looking around at some of the things on display, but after a few minutes she pulls out a book to read while she waits.

It's probably 45 minutes before she comes back. She still has her "formal mask" on. "I'm basically done until the client comes over. Now, let's try out this support skeleton." She brings out a plastic bit of scaffolding that fits around Emily's head. The plastic is very thin, and it digs into her slightly in a few places, but it mostly sits on her collarbone and it feels like it weighs nearly nothing. "The first drafts are always too tight; can you point to me where you feel it dig into your skin? It's supposed to be comfortable all day, after all, so the fit has to be very precise. It can't be too loose either, or you won't get the right weight distribution."

"That makes sense," Emily agrees. She points out the spots that are most uncomfortable, and then starts making some faces to feel how that changes things, before realizing that she's making faces in front of the mask-maker and looking away in embarrassment.

She nods at Emily. "I'll expand the skeleton a bit, around the spots you indicated; it's probably just three more rounds of fit-testing, max. I'll get the printer started." She walks off, coming with the bright red tiger fursuit head she was working on. She hands it over to a boy Emily's age, who had walked into her store. He is not wearing a blue skirt, unlike many of the other boys that Emily has seen, instead he's wearing what looks like a pair of bike shorts. "I hope you're happy with the design changes!" she says, and he walks off gently smiling at her.

She wasn't expecting so many rounds of fitting — but, then again, she didn't really come into this with any particular expectations. And she doesn't have anything to do today, so she's content to wait.

She returns to her book.

The woman comes back with a different support skeleton; this one fits basically perfectly around Emily's head. "So, that's the skeleton that supports the formal mask seemingly done, unless you feel any pressure points. What kind of creature do you want your mask to be of? You said you liked the fancier ones; can you show me images on your phone, for example?"

Emily nods, feeling how the skeleton sits against her skin.

She shows some pictures she saved while looking through masks earlier. She has primarily been drawn to birds, although the occasional fox or dog is also included. It may become clear after a few examples that Emily's definition of "fancy" means "blue" and possibly also "detailed". She likes when there is some additional ornamentation besides the fur or feathers.

The woman strokes her chin. "I think I see what you're aiming for. I'll grab my tablet, and try finding a design you'd like." She grabs a tablet from another room, quickly scrolling through it to find some images of fursuit heads with a bird design, mostly in blue, including a few that are reminiscet of a peacock. "Are you thinking you want something like one of these?" she asks. "I'm thinking of using one of these as a base, and coming up with some designs on top, and then you pick the one you like best. Sound good?"

Emily smiles.

"Yeah!" she agrees. "That looks perfect."

"That's fantastic! Now, I'll be working on putting on the head around the skeleton, and I'll send you a message when the furry parts are done and it's just the comfort features that are next. You'll probably have to wait until tomorrow before I'm done putting it together, though."

"Alright," she agrees. Waiting a while for custom mask makes sense; honestly, tomorrow is pretty fast.

"Thank you," she adds. "How much money will it cost? I mean, just for my budgeting."

The number Emily gets back is roughly one-eight her rent. "It's mostly paying me, just to be clear, and I really want everyone to be able to have cute and beautiful formalwear like this; I'm charging less than the usual."

Emily blushes. "... oh."

She's not sure how to feel about that; it's different when it's not a purely business transaction. She falls back on an old standby: "Thank you."

"You're welcome! I love being able to do this for people, and make the world a more fun place, so I'm grateful myself."

That is — at least in Emily's limited experience — not how jobs work. But ... it does sound nice, to be able to do things you're really interested in, even if they don't pay well, because everyone has their rent and food covered.

She could be a librarian.

The lack of librarian in her apartment's library had thrown her off (as had the standardized book sizes). But if it's just a matter of there not being anybody living there who is passionate enough about librarianing ...

She realizes she's been silent a moment to long, and gives a jerky nod, to cover it.

"Alright — well, in that case I will wait for your message and come pick it up," she agrees.

Emily gets a reply, the afternoon of the following day, from the woman making the fursuit head. "I'm as far along in terms of its final appearance as I can be, at this stage. Now I'll need you to show up, so I can get the ventilation and cooling systems tailored to your head."

She occupies her time between then and now with studying, so the fursuit artisan's reply is a welcome break.

"I'm on my way," she replies, and waits impatiently for the elevator.

A short time later, she pushes open the door of the shop, containing her excitement.

She's wearing the same fursuit head that she briefly showed off to Emily yesterday when greeting her. Then she shows off the head that she started work on yesterday; it has a lot of the fur applied already, but it's still missing most of the nose and mouth and a large patch near the back. "So, I tend to start on the active pack first; it takes up more space, you see. If you put on the head, I can get the current 3D print and electronics kits I've put together, and you can see how comfortable it ends up being?"

"Sure," Emily agrees, realizing immediately that she is not entirely sure how to put it on, now that there's fur on it. After a moment, she realizes it goes on in the same way as the furless frame she tried, and she slips it over her head.

She walks out, revealing a small transparent plastic mask with a big fan behind it, and a long, thin battery under that fan. "So, the way that it's supposed to work is that this fits inside the snout, and it blow a stream of cool air across your face and exhales the air down and through a filter." She clips it onto the plastic frame of the fursuit head, the mask fitting loosely around Emily's nose and mouth, without significant pressure on her face. "I'm testing it to be sure that it doesn't blow any air not through the filter." After pushing gently against the fan, it starts whirring and creating a stream of air over Emily's face.

She blinks, adjusting to the new sensation. Does the stream of air blow in her eyes? And how loud is the fan?

A few gusts blow into her eyes, once in a while. The fan is relatively quiet, making a slight background hum.

She blinks when the air touches her eyes.

"Sorry, I'm not sure — is the air supposed to stay in the part that goes over my nose here?" she asks, pointing. "Or is it supposed to circulate everywhere?"

"It's supposed to circulate everywhere, but it's more important that it goes over your mouth and nose."

"Is there a way to not have little puffs going into my eyes?" she asks. "Just ... sometimes when I shift like this, there's a little puff, and I don't like the sensation."

"I can try a redesign? Ideally, the airstreams should work so they never send any puffs over your eyes like that... but I think that expanding the mask so it also covers your eyes would be the best way to protect you from that while still cooling off the rest of your face. And then you could get better, more powerful cooling without worrying about the stream getting in your eyes. You know what, I'll get the battery-free ventilation option, and you can try out how well that fits your head while I try printing out the new mask design for the active ventilation, and we can go from there."

Emily has no real idea of what any of these options entail. And she was dubious on having a forced-air system anyway.

"... sure," she agrees. "I mean, I guess it's not a big problem, but I would like it if it didn't."

"I'm getting the passive system, now." She comes back with a small block of plastic; there's a pair of plastic tubes on top of it. "The way that these tend to work is that you have these tubes that let you breathe through your nose, that are meant to go along the snout of the mask so you're breathing air directly." It also clips to the plastic frame, and the tubes end up just barely in front of Emily's nose. It feels a bit awkward and strange, certainly less stuffy than not having anything in front of her face.

She wiggles her nose, and tries taking a few breaths.

It is more stuffy, but on the other hand seems less liable to dry out her eyes.

"This is alright," she agrees. "Will this work for being sick in, though, or does that require a fan?"

"It doesn't work for being sick in, no. Designs that are battery-free and wearable when ill do exist, but they tend to become so uncomfortable and unbreathable that you basically have to take them off before the battery wears out on the ones with batteries. Also, I'm glad that you liked the passive option; there's also a version where it's designed to basically plug into your nostrils, and those work very well, but a lot of people don't like how they feel. Do you think that it might be interesting to try one like that?"

She shudders at the idea of putting something inside her nostrils.

"No, I think that would be worse than occasionally getting a blast of air in the eye," she replies.

"Ahh, I see. So... we've got the passive system covered, and now it's just to wait to try out the new active part? Printing is fast, but there's a limit to how fast it can be done. So... it'll be another 30 minutes, I think? And then I'll come back with it, and then I'll be ready to just mail you the finished design, so you can get that nice surprise factor, if you like it like that."

"A wait is fine," Emily agrees, patting her book. "And so is mailing it to me."

If it's mailed to her, that means she doesn't need to leave the apartment without a mask on possibly ever again, unless she feels like it.

She smiles.

"Sounds great to me. Just wait for the print to be done, double-check that you like how it fits, and then I'm ready to mail you the whole thing once it's done."

"Thank you," she says.

She pulls out her book, but she doesn't stop smiling.

The 30 minutes go by, and Emily gets a new mask with mini-goggles that cover her eyes and stop any puffs of air from flowing over them. She can also adjust the fan to make the flow more powerful, to cool her face down even further without worrying about any streams of air going into her eyes.

Oh. She wasn't expecting the goggles. This is perfect!

She experiments with settings, and rolls her neck and moves around, and everything feels comfortable.

She twirls in place for a moment.

"This is perfect," she tells the mask-maker. "Thank you so much!"

"And it's not even fully finished, don't forget! You're going to be so happy when this shows up at your door and you can start wearing it all day!" She smiles back at Emily.

She nods. "It's true," she agrees.

She pulls off the partially completed mask with a happy sigh, and hands it over.

After another day of waiting, a bright blue fursuit head, with colors reminiscent of a peacock, waits within a black package left outside of Emily's door. It even comes with a pair of plastic packages that fit flawlessly within the snout, letting Emily breathe easily enough that she won't have to worry about needing to take it off, or even cooling her face and stopping her from catching or spreading any potential illnesses if she were to ever get sick.

She unpacks it reverently, running her fingers along the material.

It's just in time — her rescheduled examinations are tomorrow — but she has to try it out before that.

She slips it over her head, settling it into place, and grabs her backpack from its place by the door. The elevator is fast, but it's speed is no match for her impatience as she heads down to the ground floor.

She's hung around in the library a few times now. But when she steps out of the elevator this time, there's an important difference: nobody can see her.

Or, well, they can see her, obviously. But nobody can see her face. Which means she doesn't need to think about how to hold it, or how people are going to interpret where she chooses to look. It means she can open her mouth and wiggle her tongue side-to-side, just to see how it feels, and nobody will look at her weirdly. It means that when she smiles, it's just because she wants to, and not because anyone expects her to. It's wonderful.

She has a mask and done enough studying. She wants to take a second stab at adventure. What's going on in the nearest park?

There are children climbing in trees, running on the paths, swimming in small ponds, diving in small ponds, swordfighting with foam swords, and what looks like a few teenage furries taking pictures in front of a beautiful patch of flowers.

She was already interested in the swordfighting. But on the other hand, it might be novel to have her photograph taken ...

She makes her way over to the swordfighters, and checks to see whether they seem to have any spare swords, this being a deciding factor in whether it's worth asking to participate.

There's a few foam swords sitting around on the ground. The swordfighters, a few more boys than girls, take a moment and look over at Emily as she approaches them. "Just take one", one of the boys say.

Well that's straightforward. She picks up a sword and tests its weight, stepping through the few basic stances her parent has shown her.

It feels nice in the hand, and seeing the boys instinctively move their own toy swords to block any potential strikes as they keep their eyes on Emily is exciting.

She grins — and doesn't even have to worry about what they will think about that.

She launches herself into combat with enthusiasm and sword skills that are, on the whole, pretty basic. But she does her best, and takes her lumps with grace.

And afterward, lying panting on the grass, surrounded by people who share at least one of her interests, the sun beating down on them ... she feels good. As though it doesn't really matter that she doesn't know what will happen from here — whether she'll pass her tests, or find a way home — that things might be okay regardless.