"Travel is a big one - you need a legal identity to drive a car, or get on a plane, or cross international borders. You also need a legal identity for money - to open a bank account, or get a credit or debit card, or for most jobs. Your own housing requires both an identity and a lot of money, whether you're renting or buying. Health insurance in case you get injured also needs an identity. If you didn't want to travel under your own power, you could live with someone else as a guest, and only take jobs that pay cash, and mostly just hope you don't get injured badly. It's definitely possible to manage like that, just - often hard."

“I think,” he says tentatively, “I want to get my identity soon.”

"Well, I can help. I haven't heard citizenization is hard for weapons here..."

“— feeling like ‘let's get that done now’ but also like we just got here.” He looks at the contents of the table (not to be confused with tables of contents). Does Lianne seem also occupied with books, or more just waiting around for him?

Lianne seems to have gotten a lot of books and then gotten bored with them fairly quickly.

“But we can take these back—.” (“Back home” is an idiom, says the knowledge of English he started with, but it doesn't feel right to put it that way.)

“What do you think?”

"Yeah, I can check them out." Though that'll mean being near Marian sooner. "Let's do that, how about?"

“Okay!” He picks up the books. And has a thought about the new things he has learned about society. “Is this a weekday, will the office be open?”

"It's a weekday, so they should be."

And then they set to selecting which books they want to check out, which they want to re-shelve. Does Jonathan want to check anything out?

Yes, he will take all of this pile and jog back to the shelves for another. It seems plausible he will have time to read them at some point.

The library does have only a two-week lending period, but you can renew each book up to twice. Still, if he hasn't read them in six weeks, he will have to return them.

Six weeks! That's a really long time!

They laugh. "It doesn't seem so long to me, but I'm a slow reader."

(The narration would like to note that he's existed for not even one entire day.)

Anyway, they can now go check out these four books and however many Lianne has, yes?

Yes. (Lianne puts all the books on their own card, since Jonathan doesn't have a legal identity with which to get a card and you can only get two books on a new card anyways.)

He was sitting and reading and that was okay because he learned things now he is WALKING and then they can go back to the CAR and GO PLACES.

To the social security office! It is very boring but fortunately there is a separate, decently quick queue for new weapons. (Lianne explains everything that's going on.)

Queueing okay but look at all these people doing people things! Boring ones, apparently!

There are people reading on their phones, or texting, or watching videos or listening to music or playing games with their headphones in. One person has a sketchbook. One person appears to be asleep with his eyes open. Two people have normal books, and one's complaining about not bringing anything to do.

He will watch the people doing things!

There seem to be different lines. How long each queue is is entirely unclear. There's no real correspondence between numbers and order. They're E987 - line E, number 987 - but 36 goes and then 1065 goes and then 467 goes...

(Lianne politely tells him not to stare at people.)

Eventually they'll get called, though!

(“Uh okay,” in the tone of someone who doesn't quite get what that means exactly.)

Then they should go up to the counter where their number is, presumably? He doesn't, like, have a form to hand in like some of the other people have been doing so he will look to Lianne for leading the interaction.

They appear to be one of the broader receptionist buckets, so will get their forms here! There's a few bored questions to determine what forms they'll even need.

And then they can go back to waiting.

Waiting! He tries to (quietly) get clarification from Lianne about what constitutes staring and when, because obviously people don't just avert their eyes from all other people all the time.