"Is it illegal to provide these maps or are they just not the standard ones?"

"I'm... not sure if it's actually illegal as opposed to just strongly advised against."

"Is it advised against because they don't check the quality of those maps, or what?"

"I'm not sure? I think it's because there's no guarantee that they won't lead you straight into the Sideways or something."

Nod. "I mean, I've heard there's not much of a guarantee even if you're walking in places that used to be safe."

"Eh, depends. City's pretty stable if you don't go poking around the undefined edges and don't try to bump into walls, and usually if you just retrace your steps without turning around when you find yourself in the Sideways you can return just fine. It's not anywhere near as dangerous as the D.o.S. would have you believe." Pause. "My example notwithstanding."

"… Simply turning around makes pathways fail to work?"

"Not always, but sometimes."

"Do they work again if you turn back the right direction or do they just totally disappear?"

"Some do the former, some the latter."

"I'm very confused how a direction could disappear by you just turning away from it," says Rachel. "But this whole place is weird."

"Well, most entrances to the Sideways can't be accessed head-on anyway. It's just how it is," she shrugs. "I hear Earth doesn't work like that but."

"Earth is very convenient in that space is… at least mostly Euclidean and less twisty, yes. I'm not sure, I didn't do a bunch of physics, but the Euclidean-ness gets screwed with by gravity if I recall."

"Where you're from gravity is a thing between all things with mass, right?"

"… Yes? Is it not here?"

"No, here things just fall, like, down. Except when they don't. But, the City is an infinite plane, which gets sorta undefined at the edges but doesn't really have an end."

"… The infinite plane gets undefined at the edges? Do you mean, like, it gets hard to walk on if you're too far from the center, or…?"

"No, it just gets—fuzzy? Less buildings and roads and more the idea of buildings and roads, and the doors are just painted on and then it gets fuzzier and fuzzier and by then no one's come back from that point to tell what's there."

"Oh, right, so it stops making sense. I live in a place that is bounded where it can make sense."

"Yeah. I mean the edges do expand and stuff, but there isn't—we're not a sphere. Which honestly is kinda annoying, spheres are nice. I like spheres. And your gravity, I like your gravity, it makes a lot more sense. But maybe with our gravity we could fly. Some Picassos fly."

"… If the gravity here is just 'down' I'm not sure how that's functionally different with respect to flying."

"Well gravity is what the City wants it to be, I guess? That's it. It was different in the Sideways, wasn't it? You were upside down. Because that part was upside down. And when you noticed you were upside down you fell. So that should work, too. Because there's no good reason why down should be down, except everyone says so."

"… I was just assuming there was a large object beneath us and gravity was holding for that reason. And the upside down thing – yeah, I have no clue."

"There is a large object beneath us—the ground of the city."

"Yes, and I was assuming that was why gravity, not because 'arbitrary whim of this bizarrely semi-sentient place'. But this whole place is weird and does weird things at seemingly random, so."