Fortunately it was neither of those, appearing to be a rather nice bedroom with a rather nice bed and a rather metallic side table.

The window has its curtains closed. How convenient.

Itaruko stays researching for a bit.

Naomi picks the left side, shuts the light, and sleeps.

When she wakes up, the other side of the bed seems untouched.

He's actually lying on a small sleeping bag, near the table in the main room.

"Morning. Any more progress on the books?"

He rolls over a bit and looks up at her. "Found another fairytale and then a phone book, but lacking any phones…" Shrug. "Plus a children's atlas. Seems to be aimed at humans."

"What's a phone?"

"Oh –" He gets up, pulls the black translation pen out of his pocket, and writes (at the back of the book of common words) as he says, "Handheld communication device, used with signal towers and connected up to a network so you can speak to people or send them text-based messages, more recently have had extra features added so they're more like small, general-purpose computers?"

"Oh, like a commlink. Okay. Do you know how they work?"

"Enough to use one, probably, enough to make one from scratch, no, enough to give you a few extra technical details, sure."

They talk shop! Turns out that Naomi does know how to build a commlink from scratch. She's very interested in the technological convergent evolution of hand-held communication devices with extra features. 

Itaruko is also interested!

… He's a bit hungry, though, he didn't get all that much fruit from the tree and they only tested it on her at first so he had to go do that separately, so if they could go back there and get some more or look around a bit, that'd be nice.

Is all the food from the fridge gone?

There is still a bit left, but Itaruko was trying not to eat it – it might be important for if they get to the point of starving instead of being… inconvenienced.

Then going to the tree sounds like a great idea. But Naomi's coming along for backup, just in case he gets poisoned or something. 

That sounds like a good idea.

They can keep discussing different bits of technology en route, if she'd like – his world is a few years advanced of a regular modern Earth, with a few deviations; they developed light-producing devices (lightbulbs, projectors, similar things) later and much more closely than normal.

Her world is way more advanced; although it seems to have gotten to certain things much later -- wireless devices, for one -- it has most of the more advanced things that Itaruko names, except they're often commonplace in daily life. Paper money and paper in general are defunct and no longer used. Even the poorest people in the poorest countries have access to commlinks if they want them and don't mind being barraged constantly by augmented-reality advertisements. (Naomi knows enough to be able to turn those off.) Self-driving cars are the norm. 

They had their preliminary live-tests of self-driving cars a couple of years ago, and they're now available for consumers (at a price). The norm is mostly public transport, though – it's quite good for most purposes, and helps to reduce pollution in the cities.

They have small amounts of augmented-reality things, but advertisements are not hugely intrusive for them? Sure, there are some bad sites and apps and things, but the major advertising company provides recommendations when people request them based off various pieces of data, and they then gather feedback and sell that onto companies. It sounds like a more convenient system than being barraged by ads.

Consumers in the Sixth World tend to have less ability to ignore the ads because they often come in the form of, say, legitimate recommendations by friends, or a news article that is informative but just happens to be lambasting a competitor's products. It's hard to find free media except in the shadows -- Jackpoint is the most notable such host, but it's not easily accessible unless you know something about how decks and commlinks and the matrix work, enough to jailbreak one of your devices and then hide the fact that you've done so. It's a huge pain in the ass and most people don't bother. 

Itaruko continues to be thankful for his world being less… vaguely awful.

They are almost to the tree when they come across a long, small-ish furry creature. It looks sort of like a ferret – or actually, more like a stoat.

"Huh," says Itaruko.

"Oh, it's cute! Do you think it's magic?"

"It might be?" he says. "I mean, I don't think they are usually but this place is weird."

"I've never seen one before," she says. "I didn't know whether it was a fantasy creature. Biodiversity in my world isn't so hot either."

"Uh, it's a keriol. Mostly herbivorous, often lives in trees in parks in and around cities… Usually pretty friendly?"

The word doesn't translate when he writes it down, anyway.

And confirms Naomi's suspicion that they don't exist where she's from. Well, that makes sense. 

"Well, we may as well collect some fruit. Oh, we could give it some!"

"Yeah? They're sometimes a bit skittish but it's not going to bite you if it's anything like the ones I've seen, just run away."