It's slightly weird, actually. It seems like hardly any time has passed – hardly any time at all, even with her cognitive upgrades, and yet she it feels like more time has passed than should, the shiny window being weird.

She feels like she's going to fall, as though the subway station has tilted sideways and is about to throw her off her seat, but both more gently than that suggests and much faster, so that it has a weird effect on her even with her cognitive upgrades—

Then the ground beneath her feet is different, and she can see trees in front of her, and she's – at least momentarily – off-balance with that feeling of vertigo.

'Stay calm', they said. 

(Did she go through a portal to the astral plane? How is she even still alive, she's mundane -- she doesn't know much about magic, there could be multiple planes, no one's ever heard from mundanes that get dropped on portals but maybe it's just really hard to get back, which means she probably can't go back -- unless --)

Well. She can do that. Maybe. 

She looks around.

In front of her: trees! It's a relatively straight border, very clearly forest on that side of her.

If she looks over to her left, she will see a small wooden hut. If she looks to her right, she will see that the border of trees extends for a while – and also she should probably look behind her, which will reveal a rather tall building.

It's quite ugly. Quite tall, too.

Above her is a blue sky. Below her is some green grass, below which is some soil.

Magic. Okay.

She approaches the hut first.

The hut seems to be surrounded by more grass, and has a nice little porch and a very convenient door should she choose to open it.

Alternatively she could go around it?

She'll approach the door and knock to see if anyone is inside!

Knock knock.

… No response!

She also can't hear anyone inside.

"Hello?" she calls. "Anyone home?"

Still nothing.

She opens the door. Sloowly. And peers inside. 

There is a flat wooden floor! Also a keyring holder near the door.

If she opens the door further, she'll be able to see a carpet in the main room, upon which are a metal table and two metal chairs. On the table are a few objects, including a book and some assorted documents, and around the room are some pieces of decoration.

There is also a bookshelf and what appears to be a mini-fridge. There is only one room attached to this one.

A bookshelf! Neat! Any books on it?

A bunch!

… They all seem to be in a foreign language. Not all the same language, either, if she looks at the patterns.

She probably wouldn't get anywhere without a Rosetta reference in English. Hrm. How about the book on the table?

There isn't anything written on the cover.

If she opens it, it seems to have some common words in her native language. About a thousand of them, ranked in order of decreasing frequency in written language. Or something like that.

They're written across multiple pages and then suddenly stop, halfway through a word.

Weird. 

... is there a pen?

There is in fact a pen! It's a nice, shiny-yet-black ballpoint pen. It is on the other side of the desk from the book.

She grabs it and underlines the word "help". 

The word is successfully underlined.

She looks up.

If this were a trid, this is where she'd find out that the house was intelligent. But so far it's been -- curiously abandoned. She doesn't know enough about languages to be able to translate any of the books; she bets she could brute force it if she tried but that's a project for weeks. Right now her first priority is finding people. Her second is finding food. Shelter seems to be taken care of.

Either way, there's nothing else for her here. She leaves and begins to make her way towards the tall building.

There are many buildings near the tall building, though they are mostly shorter than it is. It seems like she's at the back of the building, seeing as how there is quite a small door and the building does not seem particularly elegantly decorated from here.

The door seems to have a handle, though, so she should be able to get in.

She opens the door and steps inside. 

Inside is actually quite a small room. It has a filing cabinet, a desk and chair, and a rather modern computer (by Earth standards). It seems like whoever uses the office probably likes to keep things organized and clean, seeing as how there are not very many objects lying around.

There is another door on the other side of the room.

Wow, a computer! How historic! 

It takes her a bit of trial and error, but after a few minutes she successfully boots it up. Is it hooked up to some old version of the matrix?

… Perhaps it is but right now it's got some box on the screen! It looks like a login prompt.

Does she see any information around the monitor that she can type in?

Unfortunately not.

It also seems to be displaying an error of some kind.

Which says ...

Something in a foreign language?

Hmm. 

She wants to stay and tinker with it -- she'd be able to find some menu access after only a few hours if it was in her native language. 

Oh well. She looks through the filing cabinet. Anything in a language she recognizes? 

Nope!

One of the documents is curiously blurry though.

She notes where it's from. Wow her new memory is nice. 

And opens the door that will lead her -- presumably -- deeper into the building. 

She comes into a relatively big room! It's about twelve feet tall, seems to have some sort of opaque glass or plastic around the edge, has a few other rooms dotted around the edge like the one she just came out of, and has a big set of glass and metal stairs in the middle.

She checks the other rooms. Any people or writing in her language?

Nope, just a few more mostly-empty offices and then a janitor's closet.

She goes up the stairs. 

There are more offices! They all seem to have (transparent) glass walls between them, and are quite regular and… pretty much identical to one another.

Each desk has a single sheet of paper to the left of the computer monitor, which has cables leading under the desk. Near each desk is a wastepaper bin. In the middle of the left and right walls of each office is a door.

There are approximately fifty of them.

And none of them are occupied. This is creeepy.

Naomi exits the building.

Outside, she can see the forest again. Nothing seems to have moved since she was last here.

She might notice there is no sun, though. Just a blue sky.

She notices and speculates idly on where the light's coming from on her way back to the hut. 

She's starting to feel hungry.

The hut is not particularly far from the building. The door remains as she left it.

Is that mini fridge still there?

It is! She can open it just fine and inside are a few canned beverages, a packet of chips, some bread and what is presumably water in a bottle.

She grabs a beverage and a packet of chips and goes back to looking through those books -- she had left some out on the table. 

Maybe there's another book with a list of common words ...

The list of common words in her native tongue is still present. The other books do not appear to be lists of common words, for they are, variously: filled with dots across each and every page, seemingly in some sort of pattern but it isn't clear what; lots of curly letters, circles and loops and a couple of straight lines, written vertically and joined up fancily, perhaps some sort of poetry… or something; and what might be a dictionary or perhaps a thesaurus. In yet another foreign language.

Well, she has food. And she may as well stay in one place.

She works on memorizing one of the books for lack of anything better to do. It is both relatively easy -- easier than it had been before the surgery, anyway -- and strangely calming. 

About ten minutes in, she might hear a noise.

She probably does hear a noise about a second after that. It's something along the lines of, "Ow!"

There appears to be someone on the floor near the door. He has quite blue hair.

"A person! Hello! my name is --" she points to herself and deliberately pronounces "Nay-oh-mi. Yours?" She turns her hands outwards.

He blinks at her, then gets up from the floor. Pointing at himself, he says, "Itaruko?"

He seems really rather confused about his new surroundings.

She shows him around! These are the books with various languages -- oh, this is the word "book", this is the word "chair", "Naomi sits" (she demonstrates) "on the chair".

That is the food. She offers him some. 

He looks at it curiously and then gestures to suggest he's not hungry right now. Says a few words in his own language, inquisitively, perhaps asking if she understands anything he's saying.

She shakes her head.

He raises an eyebrow – a blue eyebrow – and then points at the book, says, "Book," and nods, questioningly.

"Book!" she agrees.

Then he points at the table, says, "Book," and shakes his head. Also questioningly.

"Not book," she shakes her head. "Table," she nods. 

He nods, says a word in his own language, then shakes his head and says a word. Presumably yes and no.

Neat! She repeats them. <yes? no?>

They are correct!

He pauses, then seems to hesitate slightly, then points to his upper arms, shoulders, ears, eyes and hair. Then tilts his head, looking at her.

She says the words for those things, in order.

He points at his blue hair. Then at her not-blue hair. Then his eyes and her eyes – which are similar, actually, his are within human variation, blue irises – and then at his ears, which are rounded like hers, and then at his upper arm. Which again looks like regular human skin.

Then he points at her, questioningly.

"Your blue hair." Point. "My blonde hair." Point.  "Your blue eyes." Point.  "My blue eyes."

"Ear. Arm."

He pauses. "Luna, Rhuna, Thamar?"

He doesn't seem like he expects to get much out of the question.

She just looks confused. Are those names? Countries?

Itaruko, unfortunately, has no way to answer her unspoken question. Instead, he shrugs and looks at the common-word book. Then the pen. Flips open the back page and writes something down.

He says something and holds the book out to her.

Hmm. She points to the word in the book. <yes?> <no?>

He pauses briefly, takes the book from her, writes two more words and then hands it back to her, repeating the first phrase and then saying the words for 'yes' and 'no'.

The list now reads: "Test sentence. Yes. No." Quite comprehensibly.

That was either a remarkable guess, or ...

Where are you from? she writes. 

He tilts his head at it, frowning. After getting the pen back from her, he writes: Originally, Eiro, in Serenta.

How did you get here?

… I was in my bedroom and I think I fell into my mirror.

Train platform window.

Then, smaller: We should try to conserve paper. 

I can try learning your language?

He also writes in smaller text. It's rather neat handwriting for how small it is, but that could be the weird pen.

Can you read the words listed -- 

she points to the list of commonly used words.

He looks at the first page and shakes his head, but flips through the others to make sure.

Turns out there are a few more words, starting on the next page after where the previous list ended. It's common words in his language, and he frowns at them and then tells her as such.

Do the words happen to correspond with one another? Also; does he recognize any of the books on the shelf as being in his language?

A large number of the words seem to correspond at least loosely in position, but unfortunately it's not a one-to-one, nor is there any obvious matching, so they'll have to go through them manually.

He recognizes one of the books. It's apparently about some part of his world's mythology, plus 'lumen'. The mythology – in case her world differs in this respect – is about a sort of ever-present wind, guiding and protecting, and purifying fire, improvement through destruction of the old and rebuilding, named Thuviar and Karheil respectively.

She certainly doesn't have anything like that. The mythology sounds vaguely like a shamanistic thing.

Lumen?

Is it not translating?

A small glowing blob appears in front of them, about ten centimeters in diameter, the color of his hair: slightly dark blue. He nods in its direction.

Whoa. Neat. You a mage?

He looks confused. No, I'm not magic? There's a pause and then he continues: Does magic exist on your world?

It does, but not everyone can do it. I'm mundane.

… Everyone on my planet can do lumen.

What else can lumen do?

Change color? Intensity? Transparency? Plus it's able to do slight changes in temperature and keep an area relatively uniform in temperature and you can do diagrams with it if you're practiced with it and he can do little models of people because he is in fact relatively practiced with it.

Cool. Her world's magic can do .... more categories of things. She's not a mage, so she's not sure what, but it definitely includes illusions, conjuring fire, invisibility, mind control ... 

Well those sound sort of useful but also slightly terrifying? Lumen isn't particularly terrifying. It's used for diagrams and pictures and jokes and things, or sometimes to be rude but, y'know, it's not that inherently.

Yyyep, magic is terrifying. Especially blood magic, which is powered by literally killing people! And guess what: it's legal in Aztlan. 

That is slightly horrific. Meaning very horrific. Itaruko looks rather horrified.

Is Aztlan a big country? Is it the name of the world itself? If a country, how much of the world does it take up, are there places it's illegal?

Aztlan encompases this entire continent (formerly called South America) and half of this one! The country is run by a corporation called Aztechnology. Corporations in the future get to enforce their own laws on their property -- the practice is called "extraterritoriality", and means anything in Aztlan is legal if Aztechnology buys land elsewhere. 

Oh, and Aztechnology produces half of the world's food supply. 

That is really not how it works where he's from! His whole world is basically on one relatively small continent in comparison and a few islands, and there are four main actual countries – originally the Thamari used to all be over in this section to the south-west which is now the country Thurin, the Luna (like him) were down in the south-east in what is now Serenta, and the Rhunes were all up north in either what is now Kerune, over in the east, or slightly over west in the northernmost bit which is Isora.

Then there are a few islands. The biggest one is has only been colonized more recently, looks sort of like Madagascar off Africa (in terms of scale, not absolute size), and is mainly part of Thurin but various governments have small areas in it and it's used mainly for tourism really and they mostly follow international laws on things with their own sort of mini-government so it's not really a part of Thurin.

And that's about it, excluding the ice caps. There are a lot of mountains. A few volcanoes, too.

The governments are all quite nice and mainly work 'for the people' in, uh, actual transparent and presumably-legitimate ways?

Governments on Earth -- that's the name for her planet -- don't work that way. They tend to be dominated by a single corporation or extremely declawed with jurisdiction over border security and little else. In major trade and finance cities dozens of corporations vie for control. The entire world is extremely fragmented, due both to spirit encroachment and to the sudden chaos of the dispossessed fighting their governments with magic and taking back their land. That happened in China, Australia, much of the former United States, Europe ...

Her planet is way bigger than Itaruko's but displays many of the same topographical phenomena.

Huh.

If they're trying to learn each other's languages, they should probably start off with some more basic words, so perhaps pronouns and basic nouns and a few verbs. He suggests doing that and then aids the process with some lumen diagrams.

That will also help them save paper! Especially since whatever they write seems to translate automatically. 

... are there any other pens around?

There is a blue one on one of the shelves of the bookshelf and… one that is probably transparent, over near the mini-fridge?

The pen itself isn't transparent, but it seems like it writes transparent ink. Perhaps it just reflects UV light or something.

She uses the blue one to write Can you read this? on the same sheets of paper they've been using.

He looks at it curiously and then at her questioningly, shaking his head tentatively.

So it's not the paper. She uses the black pen to write Can you read this? on her arm. 

He tilts his head briefly… then nods.

The black pen translates things! Does your world have anything like this? Might be unique; the world might have other useful things, too --

Let's go exploring. We need food, anyway, since there's no obvious way to go back. I've been to the tall building that way -- she points -- but not on the path with the trees. It's weird no one else is around; I'd assume humans to have build all of these buildings and roads.

Itaruko nods, but takes the pen and writes: I'm not human – I'm a Luna. My world does not have anything like this, as far as I know.

Right. I should have said "people". You're not offended? Drek, I always make that mistake, our world has nonhumans too. But they like to be called metahumans.

I am not offended, he agrees. I'm curious about the metahumans, though. And I assume 'drek' is some curse word?

Er, yes. Metahumans appeared around a century ago, right around the time magic came back. First it was just elves and dwarves, born to humans, distributed randomly from what they could tell at the time, they didn't have very good genetic testing and anyway everyone knows it was magic now. Elves are like humans but taller and with pointy ears and really pretty. Dwarves are shorter and tend to be more magic resistent, especially to mental magic.

Then came orks and trolls, but they weren't born as such. Suddenly some humans just sort of -- spontaneously became taller and grew tusks. Usually teenagers around puberty. Everyone started panicking, especially when the censuses came back after thirty years and revealed that orks live about half as long as humans do, and trolls not much longer. But also because racism.

That is kinda horrible! Is there any chance this was intentional by some unhelpful parties, maliciously altering some people's genetics for reasons of unclear motivations?

Nope. It was all connected to the magic coming back. Some people think the dragons are responsible for metahumanity, but they aren't taken too seriously. 

Oh, they have dragons? Any idea why the magic came back?

Seems like every thoumatologist has a theory. And yep, there are dragons. They're giant, can shapeshift, and are an order of magnitude smarter than the smartest of metahumanity.

Have they existed all the time or did they reappear with the magic?

They reappeared with the magic.

When did they first have magic, if it came back? To Itaruko's knowledge his planet has never had magic.

It's also somewhat suspicious that they seem so similar, the species he's acquainted with and humans. Any chance they did some sort of colonization thing that they then forgot about? He's pretty sure his species have history on his current planet, but he can't think when anyone would have done a colonization mission from his planet, especially if they've been there for a while.

No colonization projects she's heard of. The thought is kind of unsettling; corporations aren't exactly shining examples of benevolent imperialism.

The magic first came back about a century ago.

… So when you say came back, came back from where? He was assuming you had it at some point in the past, before the century ago, then it disappeared, and you got it back at that more recent time.

Apparently the dragons and some elves had been sleeping for a half-dozen millennia. She doesn't know too many of the details, but apparently before they spent thousands of years hiding underground and in volcanoes and glaciers and trenches, there were spirits roaming around. And they could do magic. There's an "astral plane", apparently that has something to do with it; Naomi doesn't know exactly what. She doesn't know much about mages or spirits except for what they teach in history classes.

Well, Itaruko is curious but it is probably not immediately relevant seeing as she is not herself a mage.

She suggested exploring – how about they go do that while he tries learning some basic sentences and teaching her likewise?

Sure! They can go towards the trees she pointed out earlier. And take that pen and some paper with them, and some food ...

Sounds like a good idea! Hopefully he'll just be able to light his way in the forest if it gets too dark.

Which means they can stay out later than they would otherwise!

They walk. Naomi learns Itaruko's language. 

The forest gets quite dark quite quickly, in fact. The trees form quite a thick layer above them and the light from outside the forest will quite quickly disappear if they continue in.

Itaruko can, however, create a ball of lumen and keep it hovering a few meters in front of himself, if they wish to continue.

"Let's keep going for a bit."

So they do! Itaruko keeps teaching her his language, and he is relatively good – not amazing, but relatively good – at focusing on necessary vocab and doing diagrams to represent what it means and writing down translations where necessary.

After about ten minutes of walking they will come across a tree with slightly glowing fruit. The fruit is green and red.

"More food! Want to take some back to the hut and call it a night?"

"Sure," he responds, nodding. "It might not be food, though," he continues, writing a black-pen-translation of same.

"What do you mean by 'not food'? Not edible? Dangerous?" She pauses, considering the multicolored fruits she's picked -- three of each. "Do they look like something that's poisonous on your world?"

"Not edible, dangerous, something like that. They don't look like anything in particular but they are in fact glowing fruit in this weird place and I wouldn't typically eat random fruit off some random tree in some random forest, so, my point is that I'm being hesitant to class them as safe to eat."

"Oh. I think I've read something about a process to determine if something is poisonous but it's long and tedious, you stick the piece of food on your wrist first and leave it there for fifteen minutes, then you stick a piece on the inside of your lip ... plus if it's magic it might work 'on consumption' and not otherwise. We could try both ways just to see, or we could stick to the food in the hut until we have more of a range of options?"

"… Maybe try the tedious method and then we at least has some sort of evidence against it being non-magically poisonous?"

"We should probably go back the hut, then, just in case it's a slow-acting paralytic or something."

"Yeah, sounds like a good idea," he agrees. The translation pen is probably going to be extremely useful for learning his language.

He picks a few of the fruit – they're more cherry-sized than apple-sized – and then they can probably go back!

They do!

Naomi does the first test -- holding the flesh of the fruit against her wrist -- for fifteen minutes while she practices Itaruko's language.

It produces no visible or tactile reaction! (Nor, for that matter, an audible or olfactory or other sense-based reaction.)

Itaruko continues to be quite good at providing lists of common vocabulary when desired or at constructing basic sentences showing off varying levels of grammatical complexity and explaining them as necessary. Or, y'know, using the translation pen. His language is quite simple, most sounds consisting of whole syllables that get approximately equal-length stress and timing, as in Japanese. It contains a couple of phonemes likely unfamiliar to Naomi if she only speaks English, but knowledge of Spanish or French will help out.

It's weird that the fruit doesn't smell like anything. Naomi cuts it in half and sees if that makes a difference. 

Her language learning is much better than it would have been before she got her boosters. The only things she really has trouble with are the unfamiliar phonemes -- she is not familiar with Spanish or French. Having the intellectual exercise available even calms her down from the unease at being in an unfamiliar place with no food and no way of returning!

Itaruko is very good at teaching his language and Naomi tells him so. 

He's glad! He's never actually done this before – he's kinda curious about her language, in fact, since they don't have many on his world.

The fruit smells kinda sweet, sort of like a low concentration of some artificially-fruity candy. Perhaps it was present before, but if so it definitely wasn't very strong.

Does the non-halved fruit smell as fragrant as the halved-fruit?

It does not. The smell is barely present but also just barely perceptible when the fruit is not halved.

Itaruko thinks the fruit is weird, though perhaps not actually harmful.

"Want to try it, then?"

"I do not particularly wish to be the test subject, no…"

Well then, Naomi's going to continue to tediously experiment. What happens when she puts the halved-fruit flesh-side-down on her lower lip?

It does not appear to harm her.

Alright then. Here goes.

Nom nom.

It tastes sort of like candy! Quite like how it smells, actually.

It does not appear to do her any harm, at least not in the first few moments after she eats it.

Huh. Then she'll refrain from eating anything else magic so she can observe the effects.

"Itaruko," she says in his language, "what are your plans for ... for being here? Leaving? Staying?"

"I don't know," he says. "I would like to find some way back but since you're not from my world, that might not be too easily doable."

"Are those ... Is my being here related to how difficult it is to leave? I don't think so."

"It means that this place is possibly not even on my planet, so," he shrugs. "The fact I got teleported here suggests weirdness anyway, though."

"My, ah, first thought, coming here, was that I had crossed through an astral plane." Astral doesn't translate, so she uses her word. "'Astral' means magic, where the spirits are from."

"We do not have spirits either, as far as I know."

"Do you have spirit-stories? You talked about gods before. Do you have, uh, small gods?"

"That's all a mythological thing – they're not so much, uh, gods, as bits of nature that people used to personify and sometimes still use in lucky charms and things?"

"Our spirits used to be like that. Then they returned. Like the magic, and the elves and orcs and dwarves and trolls."

"I will keep a watch out for wind that happens to do convenient things then, I guess?" Shrug. "I don't think we have many mean mythological things like this, unless they're from, like, cultures that died out."

"I do not know enough to guess."

"Anyway, now we're temporarily done with the fruit testing – I notice there were some pretty large buildings? Have you explored them yet, should we go do that for a bit?"

"I did! They were, ah, boring. Rooms were all alike, no people, some technology but inaccessible without hours of ... of. Work."

"Was it in a foreign language, or was it passworded, or…?"

"Both. I can break password, given time. The different language is a challenge."

"… Can you write something in your language, using – not this pen?"

The blue pen is available on the table.

... Naomi writes a nursery rhyme that uses words he's never seen before on an available sheet of paper. 

And he looks at it, considers it, and tries to copy the strokes of the pen using the black pen.

"– Is this a poem or something?"

"Yeah, why? Wait, can you read it?"

"Yeah," he says. "So we might be able to use those computers."

"Yes! Yes we could! Oh, and we could read those other books, too. We can't really divide and conquer because there's only one pen; want to bring some books and paper with us to translate while I work on one of those computers?"

He nods and goes to translate some covers, trying to work out which will be most interesting.

The pile, in the end, is of ten books, one of them quite thick.

And by then Naomi has gotten into the computer system. 

The computer system apparently does not have an internet connection – that's what the error was about. It does, however, have various documents available and some pictures and a few videos and maybe some music or – uh, non-work-related things, shall we say – in some other folders.

Itaruko laughs a little when he sees that.

Naomi knows enough about how people organize their data to guess what's in there.

... but she's curious about what it is in case it's not porn, so she opens it anyway.

Nope, nope, definitely porn. Seems like this person was actually quite organized about all of it, since it's categorized.

Itaruko laughs a bit more at this.

"... I'm not even going to guess what some of these things mean! Just kidding, I'm going to guess anyway."

"Feel free," says Itaruko, writing some of the titles down on paper.

Does she get some of them right? There are thumbnails, she might well be able to guess. (Quite a large variety, too.)

Naomi ... has experience looking through peoples' porn folders. It's odd to see a collection so bereft of the rest of meta-humanity, though -- she's used to elves heavily featuring.

What's in the other folders?

They seem to be invoices! Possibly! And a few reports, various things like that.

Apparently whoever this is works for a bank.

Neat! Does this banker have a name or address?

The individual does not appear to have an address mentioned anywhere, but his name is… pronounced something like Kapria Yeum, if they have the computer read it aloud? The markings are not very convenient to remember but are quite swirly, and if written down it translates as Kira Appleby. Somehow.

"… So this is pretty clearly a name," says Itaruko, pointing to the mark just before it indicating as such, "but why is it translating. That seems weird."

"Is that a more common name in your language? Maybe this computer is from your world."

"Nope," he says. "But what I can see written would not be pronounced as the computer did it. It's not even particularly close."

"Maybe it's trying to approximate the phonemes in your language?"

"… Nope, 'Yun' would be far, far closer to the pronunciation it gave. 'Akerin' is not very close to – 'Yeum'."

"Maybe the pen does its best to be mutually comprehensible to everyone currently reading what it's written? Because I sure as drek wouldn't have been able to pronounce that, my only language is English."

"Maybe it's just an equivalent of similar prevalence? 'Kuara' is not a particularly common name and it sounds like it might be foreign-derivation, 'Akerin' is sort of… not weird but not common?"

Apparently it translated as 'Kuara Akerin' for him.

"Wow, I wonder if my name translates as something different when I write it down and you read it --"

She writes Naomi McPherson on an available sheet of paper. 

"Naome," he says, pronouncing it slightly differently, "is pretty much the same and also a name in Seren. Feros is – not a particularly common surname but it's what it apparently gave you. Naome Feros."

"Huh. Wait, let me see if I can do yours --" she writes his name. "Evan Waters? Does your name mean 'water' in your language?"

"… I think it's actually from the word for fisherman? I'm not sure."

"Huh."

Naomi's pretty much done plundering data from this computer. It's -- weird in that it looks superficially like the old computers from around 80 years ago but seemed to follow a different trajectory. Moore's law still applied, but she's surprised at the implication that it would be connected to a wireless Matrix analogue -- that's only around twenty years old in her world. 

"Hey, how are the books coming along?"

"They are mainly weird," he responds. "There is a dictionary – that's the least weird of the lot – and then there is a fictional book about somebody being turned into water and it is not super clear what happens next, possibly requires cultural knowledge, and there's a book about some small bits of technology that I have never heard of before and seems to require more knowledge of physics and things than I have. Haven't got to the others yet."

"Maybe I've heard of the technology? What does it say?

He hands over the translation-ink copy! It seems to be…

… admittedly probably fictional. It's talking about using flux capacitors and chronometric waves to develop a method to perform telluric telomerization and therefore revitalize people to their youth. Plus there are things about some quarks and mesons and other extremely small particles and also – some fictional ones and ones shown not to exist – being arranged into special configurations using certain tools, which again sound fictional.

"Revitalize people to their youth" isn't actually that far-fetched in Naomi's world. There are already people who specialize in healing magic that takes off a few years, though they tend to exclusively serve the rich and well-connected. 

She has no clue what a flux capacitor is supposed to be, though it sounds vaguely familiar. 

Itaruko shrugs. "I think it might be fictional, some of those words didn't translate properly and the others didn't all make much sense, but it might be of some use and I might just be behind in my physics."

"Well maybe as we translate more books we'll figure it out. Speaking of which, I'm almost done with this thing," she gently raps the computer with her knuckles, "want to go to another room? I'll help you carry your books."

"Sure," he nods, and then he hands her a few of them and closes a couple of others and off they can go.

Itaruko looks around the lobby curiously but lets Naomi lead the way. Does she choose to go into one of the other offices on the ground floor or are they going up the stairs to the creepily-repetitive glass-walled floor?

"Let's go upstairs!"

He follows!

The creepy offices are still present. They are mostly quite sparsely decorated, as with the office downstairs.

"This place is weird," comments Itaruko.

"Yeah, it's really creepy for there to be no one here."

"How long were you here for before I got here? I don't recall asking you."

"Only a couple of hours. Not long enough to get anything done, really, other than looking superficially at what's," she waves her hands idly, "around. I knew there were computers here, though, and I'm glad that the interface and software is at least fairly analagous, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to bypass the password menu as easily ..."

Itaruko nods.

The computer seems relatively similar to the one downstairs with its contents, seeming to be owned-or-used by a lower-ranking employee in the same bank.

Again, no address can be found, at least not marked anywhere clearly.

"... all right, I think that's enough for today, I'm getting exhausted. Been up probably for over twenty-four hours. I'm going back to the hut. You can stay and research or come back and research or sleep, I don't care."

"I think I'll come back," he says. "Do a bit more research in the hut."

"Sure."

They go. Naomi tiredly fumbles into the second room of the hut. 

It occurs to her that the room could have not contained a bed. Or been dangerous. Oh well.

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."

Naomi steps closer, slowly, to test its flight distance.

If she looks nonthreatening enough, she can get within a couple of meters before it decides to start moving towards a bush nearby.

Itaruko will wait behind patiently.

"So close."

"They are nice creatures," says Itaruko.

"Yep. If I see another one I'm giving it some of the fruit."

"Popular activity in parks, yeah," he smiles.

They aren't very far from the tree.

Naomi grabs some more!

"I only had time to test one of the colors. Here's the safe one."

He grabs some of that color! Then grabs some of various other types and looks around for anything else that could be interesting in the area.

There appears to be a large-ish tree, visible over some of the nearby ones! It is about quadruple, maybe quintuple the size of the surrounding ones.

Naomi is curious so she goes over to look at it.

Itaruko follows!

There is a little clearing nearby, with a small pond (containing a couple of small animals, bathing) and some relatively flat grass and other small creatures around the edge of it.

The tree itself is about as tall as it seemed from afar, and of some approximately-yew-or-oak variety, though the precise genus or species is probably hard to pin down.

Naomi peels some of the fruit and tosses it by the the pond. 

A creature comes down from a nearby tree and fetches it. It looks like a small squirrel.

The other creatures are mostly pretty still near the lake.

(Itaruko eats some of the fruit.)

Naomi sits on the grass, staring at the animals. Generally if mammals eat a fruit it's safe for humans too, which means they're not going to starve immediately.

But that still leaves the question of what they're going to do in the long-term. There's been no sign of any way to get back to their home worlds, and even though they've come across convenient unfamiliar magic, they haven't come across much -- not enough to generalize about what kinds of things are possible.

Naomi thinks seriously about the possibility that she'll be in this weird, uninhabited world forever. Itaruko has been good company so far, but she really wants to -- find more people. 

"Tell me about people from your world." Naomi says after minutes of silence. "Did you have friends? Family?"

"I knew quite a lot of people? A few friends, lots of acquaintances. Family's mostly back in Eiro."

"Anyone you'll miss?"

"– My best friend, probably, is Theira? She was studying math, linguistics on the side."

"I had a fixer set up," Naomi says offhandedly. "She was going to be my go-to for getting a team. A good one, obviously, one that knew how to stay anonymous so I could trust them with stuff I told them. It took so long to find her, I went through dozens, and she ended up being so nice. Even set me up with some munitions contacts."

"And a fixer is… like, an agent? Someone who gets you in contact with people, advertises your skills?"

"Yeah! Well, sort of. They're not just representing you -- they're more like middlepeople or go-betweens. For illegal drek like setting up a shadowrunning team or buying military-spec weapons."

"… That sounds more like some sort of organized crime system than what I was thinking."

"It's not very organized. The networks are very informal."

"I don't think I know any sorts of crime networks," says Itaruko. "Presumably they exist, somewhere – like drugs, there are a few drug networks – but they're pretty quiet about it."

"Ha! Yeah, well, of course they would be, kind of comes with the territory if you're doing something illegal."

"Yeah," he agrees. "But it sounds a little like fixers are more well-known about? Or did you have contacts to get in touch with them first…?"

"They're not, really, you have to know where to find them on the Matrix. The most popular host for shadowrunning is Jackpoint, which is pseudonymous. I know a lot of people but I don't know who the really competent ones actually are because they don't have their information in wireless -- hard to do with all the tech everywhere, but possible."

"What, they stay off the Matrix totally? – That was your, uh, interconnected computer system thingy, right?"

"No, they just tend to have dummy identification numbers and different legal identities, or devices -- commlinks -- that they use to connect that are stripped of identification information, or cheap commlinks that they discard when they're done with them and that they only use for the one purpose."

"Oh," he responds. "Huh, okay, didn't realize that kind of thing would be… so easily done. Or, well, I guess they're pretty powerful by the time they're that – infamous?"

"Well, the dummy commlinks are really cheap. It's just expensive enough to keep buying them long-term that people end up buying the new ID to save money. Public transport isn't that great but it exists, and it's probably better to have a really good fake ID just in case than to get a car."