"No one that's ever gone far beyond the Undefined Edges came back, and there are also the Endless Roads in the Outlands..."

"… Which, what, disappear people?"

"The Endless Roads never end. Really difficult to get out of one, basically impossible without outside help."

"Do you just go in and then there's no route back out? Or do they branch and you get lost, or…?"

"They literally never end. They loop around and around and going back the way you came doesn't work."

"This place," she sighs.

"But it's fine, all you gotta do is follow the maps and not drive until you know your way around."

"And then hope the city doesn't change on you and cause you to run through into something you didn't expect."

"Yeah. City proper—the Zag, for instance—doesn't change all that often, and even when it does it's usually just a building being inserted here and there. The Suburbs are pretty stable, and the Outlands are stablest of them all."

"But then the outskirts of the city are dangerous and the Sideways are really bad?"

"Yyyyes, more or less. The outskirts of the city aren't dangerous, exactly, they're just—undefined. But the Sideways are—bad, yeah."

"I'm not clear how being undefined is safe – what happens if you go into them, do you become undefined or do you just get hurt by things, or is it just, y'know, not as buildings are expected to look…?"

"It's not safe, it's just not—like, you guys have oceans where you're from, right? On Earth? And it's pretty safe near the beaches but if you swim too far you can get lost or drown?"

"… Oh, I hadn't thought about that." Pause. "That you probably don't have beaches, I mean."

"Well, near lakes, but that's not the point. Point is, the Undefined Edges are as dangerous as the ocean."

"Okay," she says. "Increased risk of death if you go too far. Sounds… like I will not be doing that."

"Yeah. And we got derailed, I was talking about all the things you could do here in the City."

Matt frowns a little, then seems to perk up. "Is there anything I could do to, like… help people? As in, like, a bunch of people got copied into this place." Pause. "So there's the Resources thing, right, like, do they have areas they need people in?"

"Yeah! ...not the most glamorous of jobs, though, being a FART—I mean, first action responder."

"… Do people seriously pronounce it like that, ugh."

"– Just not glamorous in the typical sort of, like, first responder-type way? Or is it worse?"

"It's the first steps of Orientation or Resources or Safety. Anyone who wants to be someone there starts there. And, uh, pretty much everyone who's there wants to be someone and not a FART, so people are not super... cool about it."

Matt bites his lip.

"I don't think I'd be much good at field work anyway."

"Someone who genuinely cared about the people they're helping, though—that's exactly what the team needs," he says, looking at Matt.