Push it all back. "Okay, so we are near the ocean?" (Tap the map.) "I hate boats unless absolutely necessary."

Tatenika nods.

"The ocean is ..."

She turns and points over her shoulder.

"It is four days walking, only a little bit by going-places system. But we have going-places things that go through the air, so if you want see Larger Continent,"

She points at the larger landmass.

"You can go in air, not on water."

Ugh, AIRPORTS. SECURITY. PLANES.

"Maybe later."

What did she miss most about Earth... Fast food? The internet?

"...I want to learn whatever it is you're all speaking, too. Maybe learn your board games?" Here's a solid illusion of a chess set, pawns advancing autonomously turn by turn as a demo.

Tatenika peers at the illusion. They have games like it, but she doesn't appear to recognize this one specifically.

She leans back.

"We can learning you Smaller Continent Official Language," she agrees. "You want learning it first, or learning board games first?"

"I'm going to be tense and irritable either way so... Yes. And the, the games that are on the math machines. Those looked fun."

Tatenika nods, and turns to sign some words at the person currently standing just outside the tent.

A few minutes later, the Emergency Services personnel helping coordinate all this have procured a two-player casual strategy game with some simple SCOL dialogue, and a computer to run it on.

Like most þereminian computers that aren't phones, it's a large, boxy model with a separate screen. They run a cable from the tent for it.

The game itself is a turn-based RPG that involves defending against continuous waves of enemies. The enemies descend from the top of the screen, and you can get different resources by successfully killing them. You do this by spending resources to summon and command little minions that you can place around the battlefield.

The game doesn't require fast reflexes. Both players have their own independent turn cycle, with enemies moving in accordance with the turn cycle of the player whose side of the screen they're on, but the two players share resource pools, and can do various other things to help each other out.

Occasionally, the enemy wizard who is generating these monsters comes in to taunt the players (in Southern Continent Official Language), and — although Weiss will probably not see this unless she plays for many hours — the game ultimately ends by noticing and pointing out a cycle of monsters that produces a positive amount of the resource the wizard is trying to get from the players, and negotiating their conditional surrender in exchange for the information. Although you can also just keep playing, and see how many waves you can defeat until an enemy reaches the bottom of the screen.

Like all þereminian computer systems, the data storage is removable, and saving your game for later just involves yanking the data storage out. This particular computer has two data storage slots, so that friends can save their progress on separate media.

The controls are fairly intuitive, although without much grasp on the language, Weiss may have trouble following the logic of which enemies produce which resources. Tatenika has played this particular game before with her niece, though, and will do her best to explain in halting Noten what is going on and provide translations. By watching the resource counters, Weiss might notice that they seem to count in base six.

It doesn't need fast reflexes? Too bad, her APM would be really high. Ahh, Smash Melee, she misses you... This has the vibe of a game that has a lot of interesting and amusing little descriptions on the units.

She tries to ignore how many people are fucking CATERING to her, or at least find it fun instead of IRRITATING.

They can take brief breaks to discuss SCOL. She's bright, she takes illusory notes, but she's also distracted and flighty and not especially motivated to rapidly learn, so progress is far from optimal. Mostly she keeps talking in Notal.

"You know... It's interesting how this one is cooperative, not competitive? So, hm, I think I need to get an ice guy for the bird monster but that uses up most of the blue, are you gonna need blue?" And don't you have more important things to do than play vidya with her?

"Competitive is, the players fight each other?" Tatenika clarifies. "I don't need blue yet; I can use green."

"We have competitive games, but they are ... many people find them less fun to ... one player is good at it, one player isn't good at it, yes? So your first þereminian game, I thinking, first cooperative," she explains. 

Tatenika makes several hundred marks per hour. It turns out that getting people to reach agreements that permit additional trade and more efficient utilization of infrastructure is really economically valuable, and she has the rare skillset to make it happen. So she is paid quite well.

Her time is not the most expensive on the planet; that honor goes to a really alarmingly brilliant research mathematician on Larger Continent. Her time isn't even second or third most expensive on the planet. She is unusual in how she provides value to the world, but not unusual in that she provides value to the world.

And right now, the single most valuable thing she can be doing is absolutely putting their visitor at ease and trying to ensure she'll be willing to share knowledge about magic, rifts, and other worlds later.

"Yeah. Ranked play can get toxic, but a little competition can be fun. When I have more words for it I want to figure out what things cost. Oh!" She produces one of the gold coins. "For the museum, like the other two. You can pay me by weight of gold, but if you want to pay more because it's alien, I won't say no."

"Thank you," Tatenika responds, taking the coin and setting it aside to be picked up. "I will ask what the museum will pay."

"I can say how much some things cost," she offers. "This math machine — computer — cost about 2,0000 marks. A good muffin costs about 4 marks. The amount it pays to live for a year — Universal Basic Income — in this city is about 1,1000 marks. But the cost it takes to live in the city is more than 13,0000 in a year. Outside the city, it is about 4,3000."

She casts around for other examples.

"A robe cost about 530 marks, a meal cost about 30. You can learn it fast. Careful of lightning monster!"

.......And a silver Ecu was worth one??????

"I want to buy raw silver and copper."

Tatenika blinks.

"... yes," she agrees. "How much? For just you, or selling with the rift?"

"I don't know, it's just- One silver ecu got me one mark and that's twenty copper centimes- 32-" Base six, base six... "Which is... You can eat bread and stew for three days."

"Uh."

Tatenika does some quick mental math of her own.

"This is learning me some things of Tirra," she says. "The people there ... mostly they farm? And they do not have machines for digging?"

"Machines are good for digging — they can dig good amounts of down, not many humans need to dig. Machines are good for farming, also, but ... farming is more ... there are lots of bits that are not the same, they need a human to look at them. Also, food must be eaten now, rocks can wait to go the slow boat way. Also, machines can be turning silver rocks into silver better than fires ..."

She does not have the vocabulary to explain modern ore washing.

"Lots of small things, all together is a big difference in price. Years ago, silver costs more. Years ago food costs more. But getting less costs are not the same."

"Tirra mostly does not have machines. More than half of people farm. It is getting better, slowly. There is better magic, there are better roads, there are more boats, there is more metal. A person came through a rift with a hand computer and from it showed people how to make good metal." Behold, a Bessemer converter. "Other people came through rifts sometimes but rifts are always only sometimes so far. A long time ago there was... How much are you telling everyone on the planet? There are things it's not good to tell everyone."

"We are telling everyone ... things about Tirra, and about plans, and about meeting-neighbors process, but not about ... your things that are private things," she explains. "We are telling everyone about monsters, so they can be safe. If there is a thing that is not good to know, we don't have to tell everyone."

Tatenika bites her lip and looks worried.

"There are stories about ... things where it is the knowing of the things that is bad, not the doing with the knowing. Is this a like-that thing? Or is it like knowing how to make a weapon, and if everyone knows there is more fighting?"

She thinks.

"More like the second thing. Maybe a little bit first thing."

Tatenika sets down her controller and looks serious.

"We will not telling everyone, then," she promises. "Is it safe for the Emergency Services people —"

She gestures to the tent.

"— to know? Or should you tell only me?"

"It's probably okay to tell people who are careful and serious. I have to think about how to say it probably."

Tatenika waits patiently.

"People are reading parables of the light gods? The light gods are people who are ... made of magic. 'Praying' is thinking about them in a way that tells them things and maybe also feeds them. They are good people, who want to help. They are not just stories. They are called the light gods, a category of a more general thing that is just called 'gods'."

... oh. She can see where this is going. That explains how a world could have, apparently, occasional visitors with knowledge of advanced metallurgy, and still have a problem with monsters that are vulnerable to guns.

Frankly, it sounds like it might explain what's going on with magic, even, if there's a more advanced alien species that uses it. And Weiss's magic already works here, so they're already contaminated. Fuck.

"Can you ... tell whether praying works? Does it feel different than thinking normally?"

If there's a noticeable difference, they might be able to tell whether the whole planet is affected yet, or whether it's time to make very fast very serious decisions about nukes, depending on how bad the non-light gods are.

"Priestesses, people who are favored by a god, can do god-specific magic. They can definitely tell if they are praying, because the god-specific magic, divine magic, works or doesn't work. Ordinary people can't, unless the god answers them. The next part maybe I say to just you and you choose what to say to other people."

None of Tatenika's panic shows on her face, by dint of long practice. She cuts the hardware switch on her earpiece, and sets it on the table, and then leans in to listen to what Weiss has to say.