“Can always go for something else later, right? Seems like a thing that should be.

“I still want to, like, walk down the futuristic sidewalk and see some miscellaneous life, not just start parkouring down mountainsides or whatever's popular these days, but upgrades seem like a place to start.”

"We can take the scenic route to the vertical village. This place is set up to do buffing, you don't strictly have to be asleep for it but it's recommended."

“I'm tempted to say that going back to sleep before I've gone anywhere sounds like a terrible idea! But actually a more sensible order of operations assuming I don't have to, like, calm down and get to sleep normally.”

"Oh no, that would be really irritating, just say when."

He takes a leap and successfully lands mostly on the bed, rolls over, and grins at her.

She giggles. "See you in a bit!"

And there is a slipping away of consciousness and then he resumes, subtly more perfectly embodied. He can see the last few of a swarm of robots flying out the door.

Somebody could be really super creeped out about all this but that won't be him.

He briskly exits the bed — takes a moment to appreciate the landscape out the window again — and turns to Tarinda. “I believe there was a plan to go places and see things?”

"Yup! This way."

Out the door and down an elevator platform, with guardrails but no walls, open to an atrium covered in mosaic tile and plants and inhabited by little colorful birds. They descend twelve stories.

Ooh. Are the birds friendly?

Tarinda catches him looking and holds out her hand for one and gets a hummingbird on her finger. She picks up a little nectar dispenser from where it's hung from the guardrail and feeds the bird. Offers him the dispenser.

He takes it. Can he offer the bird a finger-perch?

Now he has a hummingbird!

Aw. He refrains from trying to pet the hummingbird.

It flies from his hand when the elevator settles to the floor.

Tarinda trots doorward.

Outside is the green campus he saw earlier. "You wanna walk for an hour or zoom into the city?"

“Zoom being? And is there anything to see along the way?”

"Wilderness, little cottages, a nice lake. Zoomers are flying motorcycles pretty much."

“—are bicycles still a thing, flying or otherwise?”

"Yeah, you wanna bike it? We might have to wait a few minutes for bikes if there aren't any handy but there might be some handy."

“Yeah, faster than walking but not too much to miss out on anything.”

It turns out there are bikes handy. They are moon-grey with rainbow ribbons trailing from the handlebars and sized just so. Tarinda hops on one.

He will too! Not that one, the other one.

And she pedals off into the prettily sculpted countryside. There are deer.

Okay this is maybe a little more bland than he was expecting but hey they're going somewhere fast. Smell the Martian wind.

Some of the deer have wings and interesting color schemes.

Lake! There are stones such that if one wished one could hop them to the island in the middle.

A zoomer flies overhead, silent.

He watches it, as much as one can while also looking where one is going on a bike.

“I suppose the Singleton invented straight-up antigravity?”