The two suits exchange a look then look at her. "What's wrong?"

"She– he– uh, they looked very male yesterday and when I met them, but today they look very female. And they claim to be the same person. I'm pretty sure it's not just makeup – it's a ridiculous change."

"Uh huh," says #1 in a tone that says 'we deal with traumatized imports all the time and it's really starting to lose its charm.' "Do you have a picture of them from yesterday to compare with today?"

"I'm afraid not," she says. "I mean, I'm not seriously worried, if you want I can just wait until tomorrow or something, but I just thought you might want to know." Pointed look. "You know, on account of cubism and stuff? I hear people get worried about this stuff a lot."

"Yes, it's very worrying," nods #2 in a tone that says 'new imports who have just learned about the existence of cubism and start seeing it everywhere are a large part of the reason why this job is starting to lose its charm.' "Could you give me their name?"

"Sadde," she says. "I don't think I got their surname."

"Oh, I remember her. We'll keep an eye on her," says #1.

"… Okay," she says.

Back to her room then, since there's like a half hour before the meeting.

Her room is exactly as she left it.

Then in about twenty minutes she'll leave her room to go to the meeting. Presumably there's a room stated on her schedule thing?

Yup! There is! It's a cleared out storage room. Hollister and Jayden are there already.

"Hey," she says, walking in.

"Hello! We were just waiting for you and Matt. I, uh, think Sarah won't be joining us."

"Yeah. I guessed that might be the case."

Matt arrives about twenty seconds later, looking a little bit tired but like he's… probably coping. "Hey."

"Hello! So, is everyone ready?"

Jayden shrugs.

Matt shrugs likewise.

"Yeah, think so," says Rachel.

So they start the course! The way Hollister does it is way outside the norm, probably, given by how he complements, corrects, or has opinion on information from their binders. He skips some parts because "you can just read that later it's not that important" and belabors some other parts because "they put the bare minimum of info about this there so people won't pay attention. Like location, it's really not very useful to know a lot about where you live because that changes all the time, buildings get shuffled around or appear out of thin air. The important thing is who you know, so you can have the best up-to-date maps and know whenever anything's different. The Dep of Reez maps just aren't on the ball."

Wonderful. No neat standardized system that's kept up to date, though she supposes that's par for the course for governments.

Ugh.

The lesson continues in that same vein, and Sarah never shows up, and then it's over.

And Rachel is, once again, at a bit of a loss for what to do.

So she decides she'll ask Hollister what to do about her phone! "Hi! Uh, I was wondering what to do about my phone – is there some sort of cell service here, or…?"

"Oh, right! Um, so a group of scavengers found this repeater phone—that means it just appears and appears and appears whenever it's picked up—so everyone has it, it's as cheap as dirt, I could get you all a copy?"

"I mean, I've got a phone, not that I'm against getting a new one, but can I connect into a network, if there is one?"

"Hmm... I wouldn't know, I was born here and have a cracker myself." He shows said 'cracker,' a smartphone with a crack on the upper-left corner of the screen.