She answers incredibly quickly, and Minaiyu can see that there's an unanswered call from the woman's number. "Yes, hello, Iris here, what could I do for you? I did intend to call you when you arrived at the hut, but I, ahh, was unsure as to when would be appropriate to make my call and I was worried about breaking your concentration if you were doing something important. Are you perhaps hungry, or do you have questions about how things work?"

...oops. He winces when he figures out there was a previous call. (Probably it was before he got here, but still, he should have called sooner.)

"I have enough of my own food to last the rest of the day, but pretty soon we're going to have to figure out what--if anything--I can eat here. We should go ahead and get the food ready for that: I guess the thing to do here is to start with simple things, no complicated mixes of ingredients that would make it hard to figure out what I'm reacting to if I react to one of them, definitely no flavouring agents that plants originally developed to act as deterrents."

"And yeah, that is the trouble with synchronous calls, the timing can get awkward," he adds. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting: I was writing a guide to my language, trying to capture enough of the basics that your people could decode the books on my computer if something happens to me. I don't want you to lose the chance to study a new world...

...actually, is it a new world for you? Is there some catalogue or something we could check, to see if you've had any-- oh. You don't have a word for the thing where the spirits of dead people from other worlds possess the living. I guess you're not going to have any prior testimonies from Rekkans who got here that way, then."

"It's going to be sad that you can't have some properly rich and flavorful food to enjoy, but needs must! I assume that flour, rice, and beans are familiar enough as simple ingredients to test for any sensitivities, and I'll try to get some help to get a longer list to go through. Does that sound like what you'd need?"

"Also, what in the world is with your bizarre questions about spirits from other worlds, it sounds like utter madness to me. There are no Rekkans that got here by possession, that's not a thing that happens here at all!"

"Yes, that sounds good for the food. Maybe at some point I'll be able to work my way up to trying local delicacies."

Ah, she has mentally incremented her "evidence that this guy is delirious" counter. That's...uncomfortable, but there's only so long she can keep thinking that before the amount of evidence for the truth surmounts it.

(Is he delirious? He's not sure how that would work: both of these worlds seem too rich in detail to be hallucinations.

He guesses it is possible he's still on Rekka (or the fae realm) and she's lying to him about it for some reason? But even in that case, he probably doesn't have any better options but to play along.)

"I suppose it would sound that way, if it happens rarely enough here that you don't have words for it. It varies a lot between worlds how often people land there; we don't know why. There are about twenty thousand walk-ins living on Rekka at any given time, and a new one lands somewhere on the planet probably more days than not.

And...as for whether I'm really from another world, well, there's a lot of books on my computer. Given the run of an alien library, I'm sure your people can figure out some way of proving to their satisfaction that it's genuinely alien. Testable claims in the encyclopedia that they didn't already know about, that sort of thing."

"I'll try to get a quarantine-safe food delivery to you, with various kinds of non-animal ingredients, to double-check that you don't have any sensitivities. And... well, I know you're not from this planet; I just cannot find any way for spirits to make sense knowing everything I know about physics and reality, that's what I haven't seen just happen in front of me."

Okay! Progress!

"We don't really understand how it works either. And I can see how...if there aren't any spirits here that are capable of taking physical form without being housed in a biological vessel, and if there aren't any walk-ins, I can see how the remaining signs of spirits existing could just seem like curiosities? Like, drugs that seemed okay in lab mice but turned out to put monkeys into comas...or a dog acting strangely after being dropped on its head, you might end up thinking it was just in chronic pain now or having sensory problems and that was all that was making it act like that."

is this the part where it turns out that actually the local mice and/or dogs have souls

"I mean, yes, you're talking about things that don't sound like they'd be particularly spirit-related at all. I have no idea about why you'd consider those examples of signs of spirits existing, rather than the world just being complicated and unpredictable."

"There's a pattern there, in which species react to damage one way and which species another, in which minds are either stable or dead in situations where other minds are distorted..."

(--oh no, do these people think that they just cease when they die, like a soulless animal would? That's horrible! This situation is stressful enough as it is, and if she's under the impression that her very existence is at stake...

...but he doesn't think he'll be able to persuade her of the existence of immortal souls in an off-the-cuff phone call. It will have to wait. And if he is...no longer available to be interviewed...after that wait, they will just have to read the encyclopedia article on souls and test its claims for themselves.

He makes a mental note to translate the soul article if he gets the chance, give them a head start on deciphering it.)

"...but we can go over that later, I think: this doesn't seem like a great time or communication method for hashing that out.

Hmm, what else is more urgent...how does the laundry work? I didn't see any laundry supplies: is there some heavy-duty washing machine done off-site? I don't have any spare clothes with me."

"Yes, laundry is generally handled off-site, certainly for huts like yours. I'll get the Novel Illness experts who... know what to do, and they can handle cleaning up potential ultra-infectious laundry. I know they know far more than me, and little more!"

"Excellent.

I'm sorry I had to dump all this on you just because you happened to be closest. I'm glad you'll be able to get help."

"The food should get there... rapidly." It takes around 30 minutes after the end of the conversation for a metal robot to arrive outside of the hut, wrapped in a layer of plastic and bringing with it a food container kept in its own plastic bag. There are instructions on the plastic cover, reading: "remove plastic cover as you receive the food. do not dispose of plastic materials as waste, wait for a Novel Illness Team to arrive and remove all materials featuring this symbol:", with an illustration of the thomassian hazmat symbol, a neon red illustration of viruses and bacteria within a circle surrounded by arrows pointing in. The plastic container has quite generous portions of various kinds of rice, beans and pancakes. It's bland, but filling.

He spends the wait working on a translation of the encyclopedia article on souls. He'll do the article on walk-ins next.

He puts his respirator back on before going out to fetch the food delivery, in case the local pollen is a problem. Some people wear respirators like this specifically for pollen, if they're sensitive enough that an everyday mask isn't quite sufficient.

He steels himself to try the alien food.

It...seems fine? The rice-looking thing even tastes like rice. The pancakes taste odd, but-- oh, they're made with wheat flour, not amaranth. This must just be one of those places where wheat is the unmarked form of flour, that's all. He doesn't have celiac or anything, so that part isn't a concern.

(His nose starts to itch partway through the meal. He doesn't scratch it.)

The two hours of brisk walking have given him enough appetite to finish the container.

He doesn't feel hungry afterward. Would you still feel hungry right after eating a meal of indigestible dextro-protein food? He's not sure.

Minaiyu is not a tanyikai, as such. He can't seal himself off in that layer of cold, mechanical calm. But he is a paramedic in training, and that means learning how to set aside one's grief for a while, until the job is done.

He's running out of tasks urgent enough to qualify as "the job". It's getting harder to set aside the grief, and the alarms blaring in his mind. He can feel everything around him, the way you can feel the difference between shoes you only wear for indoor exercises and shoes you wear outside, the way you can feel the difference between a joey that's been wiped down with sanitiser to fully bring back into the home and a joey that is simply waiting in its pouch for the next outing, the way you can feel the difference between a door handle that hasn't been used by a sick person and one that has. It's something almost like proprioception. It threatens to overwhelm him.

He gets up, washes his hands again, scratches his nose.

He heads into the bathroom and figures out how to use the shower. As he scrubs off the dirt of two planets, he sings a song written by a walk-in, about the five lives she's had thus far.

He is not alone. Some things are different, but others are the same. Countless, countless people have found themselves lost in other worlds, sometimes unexpectedly, often far too young. Countless people have had alien languages in their minds. Countless people have faced the threat of plague, and countless people have faced the possibility that the threat came from within. And, one way or another, they endured, and thrived, and lived.

He is alone in this society, composed entirely of people from this world. He is alone in his head. But he is not, truly, alone.

After showering, he robes himself in a large towel that--he tells his clean-sense firmly--is his now, and curls up on the bed that is his now, and tries to take deep breaths of the air that is his now.

Eventually the shaking fades, and he feels settled enough to go and investigate the house in more detail, particularly with regard to what it has for entertainment options. Are there books? Anything recognisable as music recordings? Puzzles? Crafts? Is the phone they gave him specialised in audio transmission, or is it a general-purpose computer; if the latter, what affordances does it have?

There is a very limited selection of books placed on a bookshelf in the main bedroom on the first floor, but not really anything else. Checking in on the phone, it's a fully featured smartphone that can do a vast range of things: fiddling around in it eventually reveals its ability to read books, watch film and listen to music, and play games; quite a few of them simulate doing some kind of craft or another, or simulate historical battles.

Presumably you're expected to bring your own entertainment to the quarantine facility. Reasonable.

He will spend the rest of the evening alternating between "exploring the alien media on the alien joey" and "reading comfortingly familiar books of his own", depending on whether his curiosity is outweighing his stress at any given time. He thinks he's missing too much cultural context to actually understand much of the fiction he tries: he's not even sure if the vast, hive-like town depicted in the movie is a science-fiction conceit or if it's real. He likes the cloth-making game.

At one point, he sets his own joey (now sanitised) to speaker mode and the new joey to audio-recording mode and listens to an album. One is none.

His sleep is somewhat fitful, and he would rather not have had the nightmare about a forest fire, but overall he manages a decent amount of rest.

(While the psychosomatic stress responses mean he's not quite as confident as he would like, his digestive system does not in fact seem to be objecting to the meal it was given.)

The portal--small mercies--turns out to have landed him in a place without much in the way of jetlag relative to eastern Tashay. He wakes early in the morning.

He has a message on his phone, this one coming from a completely new number. "We wish to hear from you how you're adapting to the situation! Are all your physical needs met, and do you additionally feel safe and cared for? We intend to send in some so-called sniffers, to see whether you carry any pathogens familiar to us, or whether they sense any novel kind of pathogen. You only need to place them within the same room as you, and we will sterilize them thoroughly. Is it acceptable to you that we send them to you?"

He texts back:

"The sniffers sound like a good measure. They can tell if my gut flora is novel or known-pathogenic to you from across the room?

I think I am probably about as safe and cared for as can reasonably be managed, under the circumstances? Thank you."

he could do with a hug he doesn't really want a hug from a stranger in a hazmat suit, and that is the only option that is even theoretically available

"Though I should double-check with you: what form and level of monitoring does this facility have, security cameras and periodic check-ins and the like? If I were to become incapacitated and unable to call for help, how long would it take someone to notice? I am not sure of your cultural customs regarding privacy, but I think the situation calls for substantially more monitoring than I would have in my everyday life.

I seem to be adapting well to the local food and water so far, though it's too soon to be sure. (Would it help to take a sample of one of my Rekkan ration bars for analysis?) I haven't yet attempted to breathe unfiltered outdoor air, but the indoor air, at least, seems to be well suited to my biology.

I would like some clean clothes, if that's practical. I know how to take basic rectangles of cloth and wrap them into robes, but I do prefer trousers. I'm not sure how to take the necessary measurements to get clothes of the right size.

I would also like to upload copies of the contents of my Rekkan computer, for safekeeping and for your anthropological study. I expect we should use measures that are as non-invasive as possible, at least until we've gotten the information to safety: it seems extremely risky to tinker with an irreplaceable alien artifact.

Possibly if we start by uploading pictures of encyclopedia articles regarding computers and network protocols, you might be able to build something compatible on your end without needing to tinker with the alien computer directly? Uploading the entire library via taking pictures would take a dangerously long time. I'll help as much as I can with translation, of course."

He pauses for a moment, thinking over whether the message is ready to send, then adds:

"A keyboard that isn't constrained by the need to fit in a handheld form factor would help with writing translations, and probably also with writing these messages. Though I'm sure a lot of my slowness is simply from lack of skill with Singleton Literate Language keyboards."

"The sniffers work better in more cramped rooms; they're not necessarily sensitive enough to detect anything across a particularly large room. And I'm glad to hear that you're pleased with what we're doing for you. The facility has monitoring in the form of emergency buttons in the main room, and maybe the nursery as well? We don't do anything proactively unless it's a special request from a resident, but we can install a camera monitoring system and do checkups if that's what you want to have happen? You can also use the phone you're sending messages from as a camera, if you find some way of propping it up. If you became incapacitated... it'd probably take at least 4 or 5 days before we would feel the need to investigate; this isn't driven by privacy, we merely dislike receiving or giving help that's unnecessary, and we're happy to increase the level of monitoring if that's to your taste."

"We want to get that ration bar you mentioned for science purposes! And there's not much advantage to you breathing outdoor air, it'd be unnecessary risk on both our ends. Please stay inside for as long as is tolerable; we'd probably send in a volunteer before we'd want you to risk being exposed to the outside."

"We'll give you a measuring tape so you can get your measurements, and we're happy to get you some basic clothes once we know what to send."

"If your patience lets you, we think that uploading pictures of articles from your encyclopedia would be incredibly valuable; translation is similarly valuable and strongly appreciated."

"Finally, we're happy to send you a keyboard! You might be faster and more comfortable using voice dictation, however."

Four or five days??

He is so glad he thought to check what the aliens' default assumptions were!! Even after being largely baffled by their media, he still needs to make fewer assumptions about what the aliens are thinking. He'd figured it would take at most one day for them to get worried if he dropped abruptly out of contact, even if the quarantine facility was taking no special measures to that effect: after all, there's no food stored in this building, except the ration bars they didn't know he had until just now.

(...how sure is he that the local human-analogues eat every day? They're warm-blooded, so-- are they warm-blooded? He hasn't seen any heat lamps or anything in here, probably they're warm-blooded, and he thinks it's generically true that warm-blooded creatures need to eat fairly often...

It's also possible that-- no, the days on this planet can't be that short, he would have noticed by now.)

...right, okay, the bed is sized for multiple people and there are three bedrooms in total, that suggests this facility is normally for quarantining most or all of a household together, and it's unlikely that the entire group will be incapacitated at the same time so whoever's still conscious/lucid/etc can call for help for the rest...

That might still be making too many assumptions. And they don't even have walk-ins, let alone aliens who weren't filtered for brain-compatibility, they won't have pre-established systems for helping otherworlders integrate into a new civilisation...

"I think the cultural gap here is even larger than I expected. We will need to be very careful about defaults, subtext, etc."

(Now that he's been prompted to look for it, he's found the voice-dictation mode and is trying it out. It's remarkably good at what it does--much better than Rekkan dictation software--but still kind of annoying to use, in the way voice activation always is. Maybe Thomassians don't find voice activation inherently annoying: maybe that's led to a virtuous cycle where dictation software is more widely used, which means more effort gets put into improving it, which makes it even more widely used.)

"If the plan is for me to stay in this particular building for the medium term, and not as a stopgap measure while you arrange for a facility that is already designed around lone individuals (with no housemates around to keep an eye on whether they've become comatose or delirious), then yes, I would like cameras. I'm not asking to be moved to another facility, to be clear, I know moving carries a lot of risk in itself, but I'm not sure what your plans are for me going forward.

I think that on balance there probably shouldn't be cameras in the bathroom, but definitely in the living room. I will try to check in with you or someone you designate...maybe three times a day? I still need to get the hang of local timekeeping.

How can I contact relevant emergency responders in as few seconds and movements as possible, in case--for example--I've picked up a novel-relative-to-me pathogen despite our efforts and wake up in the middle of the night struggling to breathe?

As for other retrofits, I think exercise equipment would help with staying inside? At home, I" have "had a stationary tricycle, some dumbbells, and a pull-up bar, but I'm not sure what would be most practical here.

I think dictating my translations will be easier on day one, but that a keyboard will surpass it once I gain more skill. I'd like to get the keyboard so I can start practising with it.

Should I still be contacting Iris regarding food deliveries, or is that role being handed off to someone else now that she's had a chance to call in specialists to handle my case?"

Hmm, what else...

"Also, do you have any recommendations for nonfiction aimed at children or other people not expected to have much background context, something that will let me start getting a better grasp on your world and your culture? (...I guess I don't actually know for sure that your children aren't expected to have much background context: I can't yet rule out that they inherit memories from their ancestors or something. We look like the same species, but that doesn't necessarily mean we work the same.)"

(And if there were species that inherited memories from their ancestors, their brains presumably wouldn't be compatible, and he wouldn't have heard about them. For all he knows, that's why this world doesn't have walk-ins.)

After sending the text (but before receiving a response), he realises one of the nebulous bits of confusion that was bothering him, and some of the weirdnesses snap into place.

It's a positive pressure room. This particular facility is designed to keep germs out, not in. Which is why it's not set up under the assumption that you're especially likely to wake up mid-suffocation in the middle of the night, why they assume you're capable of handling yourself for days on end and it's not a sign that you're departed or dying--

--we, the contact person on the other end of the link said, we don't do anything proactively unless it's a special request from a resident--

"...sorry, I think I may have noticed another subtextual gap," he texts. "I was assuming that you were from the Novel Illness team Iris mentioned, but some of the things you've said suggest that you're from whoever normally runs the positive-pressure facilities? Could you please clarify who you are and who I will be working with?"

"Well, I'm Circe, and yes, I am from the Novel Illness team. You'll be working with me and some other people also from that team; eventually, you'd almost certainly need to get access to money and a way to spend it. And regarding your other concerns: we're planning on sending you a camera that works for the living room; it feels like a bit of an odd request, but if it puts you at ease we're happy to do it. It's now our turn to handle food deliveries until you feel like you can do that yourself; then, we'll get you a spending account so you can buy food and other supplies yourself.

You can turn your phone into a tool that asks for emergency help from our end at just the push of a button, but we can get an emergency help pager for you that you can wear in bed instead? There are several different form factors; I'm not sure which one makes the most sense. That's sort of the case with the exercise equipment, too; getting the bike and the strength training equipment sounds good to me, but I'm not very familiar with your preferences. I'll send in a kind of keyboard I like, and find you some non-fiction that helps children understand what quarantine's like? Those are the things that I could help you with right now, I think."

Okay, he's back to being confused about why the Novel Illness team would be happy to leave the guy who may or may not have some kind of horrible alien disease alone for five days.

...hmm, to be fair, he was wearing a respirator and he has barely touched anything other than the contents of the house, he probably doesn't have some kind of horrible alien-relative-to-him disease right now he hopes; and if his gut flora or something turns out to be pathogenic to locals, that's not a sign that he is particularly at risk of suffocating in the middle of the night or losing himself in feverish delirium. Maybe they think the risk-reward checks out? And it sounds like they're accustomed to most people they work with being able to source their food deliveries themselves (and, for that matter, it's possible that most people they work with are in facilities with stocked pantries), which would mean they're not accustomed to thinking of it as a warning sign if he'd stopped asking for food...

He still kind of feels like he's missing something (or maybe several somethings) and going around in circles without it. He hopes he figures out what it is before it goes to pleurisy blows up in his face.

"Maybe a bracelet for the pager?

That sounds like a good start, thank you. I think the exercise equipment can wait a bit until I'm more familiar with how to research available options over your Internet, if that helps.

I know this isn't really your purview, sorry, but if you know of a basic guide to Internet usage I could read, I would greatly appreciate that. I've been able to figure out the basics of operating this phone's local functions, but I know that there's more that can go wrong when you're trying to navigate a vast network, and I'm not sure how much of my knowledge of how to use my world's internet carries over."

(It sounds like Thomassians do not inherit memories from their ancestors.)

"Yes, let's get going; here's a few links to some nonfiction articles for kids about what to do when quarantined, and I'll start sending over a bracelet that you can use for calling for emergency assistance (they'll be informed about you being strictly quarantined, don't worry about that). And another link about how to better use the Internet. Do you also want to agree to getting a schedule for your check-ins before we sign off?"

It occurs to him that there was an alarm clock in the "phone's" list of software. He experiments with the alarm-setting interface a bit until he has a decent sense of how this society measures the course of a day.

Equipped with that information, they can figure out a reasonable schedule, running from late morning (late enough that an ordinary amount of oversleeping won't trigger alarms) to late evening.

He will also ask for instructions on how and where to upload the encyclopedia pictures and translations.

He reads the articles and checks if there are any surprises.