It depends on the kind; most of the pebbleclinkers he knows about are like the world library's one, letting people get things from them without needing to be right there. Internally he's not sure, the simple designs he's seen instructions for don't need them but that might just be because they were introductory and most Crafters don't know how to make ansibles.

They nod. That makes sense.

When the ansible pair is finished, the tushot woman blinks back over to orange, and offers to carry the remote end back over.

"It was good to meet you, Traveler," she relays. "But I'm going to go. I hope* your visit goes well."

* Translator's Note: The word she uses is a compound word for a specific kind of hope — the pessimist's hope. The fervent desire that things will really turn out like that, despite the overwhelming fear that they won't.

The woman with the tablet isn't quite sure how to render that in glyphs, so she goes for a more generic word. It was a bit rude of her to say, anyway.

He hopes so too, and appreciates her visit.

With the ansibles done he starts working on a little toy to duplicate a bunch of and send over - a little spheroid blob of material marbled in nearly invisible and translucent cloudy grey, light enough to float but connected by a short thread to a handle heavy enough to weight it down and small enough to be tucked into the base of someone's fingers. He adds a bit of a glow to the floating portion and sets it up so that the hue can be changed by pinching the ends of the handle and running your finger up or down the thread; when he's satisfied with that he makes the floating portion chime when struck with moderate force, producing a pleasant sound that seems out of place from such a small object.

As before, they can keep talking while he works: he's curious about what sorts of things were going on before he got here, actually.

Oh! Of course.

The woman with the tablet composes a reply while her partner summarizes the conversation so far onto the ansible.

"This close to the city, a lot of people live in the city and then travel out to —"

She lacks the vocabulary to say 'work'.

"— do daily things. This place —"

She points at the train station.

"— is the middle of that trip. It's a place to switch between the car fast machines and the train fast machines. The car machines are useful because you can pilot them to go anywhere on the path. But the train machines are useful because they carry more people, and they can go by themselves, they don't need to be piloted. The car machines are mostly not allowed in the city. Some are okay — they say you're going to be visiting in a personal machine, and that's fine — but if everyone used a car in the city, it would be too crowded and there would be no room for them all."

She feels like she's gotten enough of a feel for crafter glyphs to try minting new ones for cars and trains; hopefully they're clear from context. 

"So the people here are mostly not doing things together. Mostly, they just happen to be passing through here on their way between their houses in the city and the places where they do things during the day. My partner and I both do things at the (moving small lightnings with dangerous rocks and steam machinery place). We arrange our trips to be at the same time so we can travel together."

"Once we got on the train machine, we were going to talk a bit and then go get dinner from a place that prepares food. But then you were here, and talking to you was more interesting, so we changed plans."

She's not sure whether that was quite what he meant, though.

"Did that answer your question, or did you mean something else?"

That's interesting! Most Crafters don't leave their territories most days, he's surprised that they do enough of that to have a whole system of machines for it. It isn't quite what he meant, though - back at home the answer to the question he's trying to ask might be something like 'the local singing group is about to put on their annual concert' or 'the crows just had a weird-colored baby' or 'there's been a lot of rain recently and everyone's figuring out what to do about all the mud'.

"I see — sorry, I thought you meant going on here specifically, not going on generally."

She thinks for a moment about how to summarize the current news cycle.

"There was a long race a few days ago. People were excited to see it and see who would get there first — it was a person from a distant city. There was a big snowstorm up north, but it didn't reach us. There are always music performances in the city, but I am looking forward to one in eight days by a music person I like."

She taps her lip, trying to think of more. Her partner says something.

"A group of math people figured out a hard problem related to the theory of pebbleclinkers. Also the special day for quiet rituals is coming up."

"There's a lot of things. I could keep saying more. But I think those are the big ones right now."

With so many people it does make sense that there'd be more going on. What's the quiet ritual day about?

"There are ritual days dedicated to different things. This one is about planning for the new year and the growth of spring and reflecting on what you want to do and who you want to be. Of course, people think about those things on other days too, but the ritual is a reminder to think," she explains.

"In the area near this city, many people don't tell people things with sounds all day, and eat a kind of little cookie. Different cities have different rituals, though. And since some people travel and move here, on the day people do lots of different things. People from the city where my partner was born make little fires and watch them."

Aww, that's cute. And good timing for him, it sounds like.

Is it common, in this world, to make fires?

What a weird question. She's not quite sure how to answer this one.

"There are a lot of things fires are useful for," she settles on. "Setting things on fire used to be one of the only ways to stay warm in the winter. Now we have tiny lightning machines for staying warm. But not everywhere has the latest machines, or can have a wire to carry tiny lightnings to them. So lots of remote territories still use fires. Even places that don't always use fires sometimes have places for fires as a backup. Also, fires are useful for cooking. Some recipes require a fire, and some places that do lots of cooking use fires instead of tiny lightning machines. Some places for making things with machines also need to use fires to change properties of materials without crafting."

"The looking at tiny fires for the ritual is because for a long time fire was very important, especially during the winter, and also it's pretty. So little fires became part of the tradition. I don't know whether we make more fires than Crafters do or not — we make fewer fires per person than we once did, but we still make plenty of fires."

Huh. Crafters almost never make fires; they can craft something to be hot just as easily as crafting it to stay cool, so they use that for heating and cooking and things and it's much safer. The robe he's wearing is crafted to stay warm, actually, so he doesn't have to worry about it if he wants to fly or travels to a hot or cold climate or whatever.

"That sounds convenient," she observes. "We have to do a lot of work to keep things the right temperature."

That really brings her thoughts back around to physics questions, though.

"How cold can you make things? Because if you make air cold enough, its parts become liquids and get much smaller. So you could make a box to store lots of good air in as long as it kept it cold."

Huh. He doesn't see why he wouldn't be able to do that, though getting it back to a safe temperature when he wanted to breathe it might be tricky.

"Yes. You'd want something that could warm it up slowly and away from you," she agrees. She looks pensive.

"Your house must be able to do a lot. If you can have things warm up and move and so on without needing space to make it happen. What kinds of things can your house do?"

It can do a fair amount of stuff, yeah. They presumably saw the walking when he came in, and how he was able to guide it without needing to pull it. The structure is fireproof and indestructible and keeps its temperature, and he has temperature-controlled filters in the air intake vents so that it stays at a nice temperature in all sorts of climates. He's got a rainwater intake and filtering system - he's not sure how they'd do it, but he has physical filtering for particulates and then boiling for diseases - and then storage for the filtered water with ultraviolet to keep it safe and pipes to get it to the kitchen and bedroom and dog's room, and he's got a little system set up to make sure his plants stay watered properly - he'll set up something bigger and more permanent when he has a proper plant house again. He's got lights everywhere, of course - some Crafters prefer to light their whole ceiling but he likes smaller ones scattered around. For cooking utensils he just keeps a countertop oven and a frying press, if he wants to use something else he'll make it when he needs it, and he's got an ice chest for meat storage. In the bedroom he's got a more complicated light setup so he can control everything from the bed rather than needing to get up to adjust it, and fans, and the water spigot he mentioned, and different weighted blankets, and he can adjust his mattress's firmness by hand control if he wants to, and he's got a system to monitor things while he sleeps and wake him up - like if he's flying overnight and he starts losing altitude or there's a mountain ahead or things like that. In the bathroom he's got a heat-treatment system for waste and a full-spectrum light to keep his scrubbing plant happy. The dog has her own water dispenser in her room that she knows how to use, and that's set up so it won't overflow the bowl, and an automated system for feeding her on a timer, and her own waste disposal system, and an alert pad she can use to signal if something's wrong, and he can lock and unlock the door from the bed if he wants her to be able to leave without him. And then in the main area it's pretty sparse, actually - of course he can adjust all the properties of the furniture if he wants to but he doesn't have that specifically set up - but he's got some sensor outputs there and like the emergency help drum - he doesn't think he's explained the emergency help drum yet, he should do that - and a closet with cleaning tools and things. And he's probably forgetting some stuff.

Wow! That sounds really cool.

"If you've told anyone about the emergency drum, I haven't heard it. It sounds important. Is it something we should know?"

They personally probably don't need to but in general the locals ought to, yeah. If there's some kind of emergency that he can't handle on his own or leave to get help for, like if he has a heart attack or something, he'd signal that with an emergency drum, which is extremely loud - if they aren't sure if it's loud enough to count, it's not the emergency drum. It means they have permission to come rescue him but they'll want hearing protection to do it; he can make their emergency people some fully soundproof earmuffs if they don't have their own way of doing that.

... and the aliens have healing powers. Crap. Uh.

"We don't have perfect soundproof things. We have things that are pretty soundproof, but not all the way. So the emergency people would probably like earmuffs. How far away can the emergency drum be heard? How far away do people need to be for it to not permanently damage their ears?"

It can be heard for miles, but that's as much because of how it makes a sound that carries well as because of how loud it is. He's not sure how far away you have to be to not get temporary hearing damage but it'll do permanent-until-healed damage up close, like a little farther than the train platform from here? He can also use a different system if they have something better, the emergency drum is mostly good because you don't have to set anything up with your neighbors beforehand to use it.

The woman with the tablet takes a moment to compose her thoughts.

"Because we don't have healing like yours, we are a lot more cautious with things that could permanently injure someone. If your emergency drum went off by accident, and hurt people at the platform, that would be bad. I can show you how to send an emergency signal with your phone, which will work anywhere on the planet without deafening anyone."

She takes out her phone, which is a similar design, and shows him how to hold it pressing two buttons for a few seconds to call emergency services. The gesture is a little awkward to do with one hand, but it was chosen as a tradeoff between being difficult to do by accident and being easy to do with blood loss.

"And if you want something easier, we have simple buttons that do the same thing. I'm sure we can get you one."

She pulls up a picture of someone wearing a medical alert necklace, the large square button obviously being designed to be easy to press.

He's never heard of an emergency drum going off by accident, they're pretty well safetied since nobody wants to deal with the side effects of using one for anything less than a deadly emergency. He'd be comfortable switching to something like the necklace; he's not confident he'd remember the phone gesture if he was panicking. 

She nods.

"I will ask someone to get one for you," she promises. "Are there any other things in your house that could injure people outside of it?"

He takes a moment to think about it.

In theory his cooking utensils could start a fire that could spread outside his house but it'd take a lot of coincidences in a row, he's not perfect about making sure everything he has is fireproof but certainly the structure of the house is, and most of the rest of his things. His water tank can drain to the outside and in theory that could hurt someone if they were right under it and really unlucky but he checks before he opens it. - and if someone got under his house while it was moving he can't guarantee that's safe, the person he got the design from said it was good for having around little kids and undersocialized dogs and so on but he hasn't personally checked it over and wouldn't expect to catch every possible problem if he did.

"I think that sounds safe enough," the woman agrees. "People should know not to stand in front of a large machine when it moves. I was more worried about things that we might not know to expect — I wouldn't have guessed about the emergency drum if you hadn't said anything."

At this point the woman who departed has dropped off the other end of the ansible. There's another spot-auction among train-station-occupants and she's replaced by a tanned person wearing long green pants, muddy boots, and a blue vest that they don't bother to keep closed.

They exchange a few words with the two woman, and then sit on the third chair to listen.

Yeah, he generally tries to be a good neighbor, and there's not that much reason to keep dangerous things around anyway. And he wouldn't use the drum if something happened with people right there in any case; even if he didn't care about them at all it'd be better for him to go out and call for help instead of losing the house when they came in to help him on top of everything else that'd be going wrong in that situation.

Hello new person!

He's just finishing up with the trinkets now, with roughly half of the crafting material turned into trays of them; he takes three off the last tray and offers them around.