"It's your not-library, Eli. Can he come in? -Oh, by the way, I've decided to stop acting suspicious and act as if you are all in good faith and real. Doing otherwise sounds annoying and complicated and not even particularly helpful in the counterfactual that you are tricking me somehow."

"You could have said no if you wanted to?" Eli asks a bit nonplussed "And thank you. I will try not to have been retroactively trying to trick you someway. Come in, Adamos. How is the laptop?"

He comes inside, holding the laptop, like a toy in his oversized hands. He also brought Terrence's tools. "Here. From the little feedback I am getting, it feels way more intricate than anything I have touched," he manages to sound excited, tired and shy all the same time.

He sits down at Eli's side, and Eli reaches to touch Adamos' elbow. Some tiredness goes away. The items are gently put down on the table between them.

"Yes, they're mass-produced, thousands all alike, in many steps with very intricate machinery. With our tech level it's usually easier to replace electronics whole instead of trying to repair things." He tries to turn the laptop on.

Adamos leans over, looming over Terence and observes. "Oooh," he says when the laptop starts to turn on.

"Less looming," Eli says patting the boy's knee. "Our guest never saw a Giant before today."

Adamos stops looming, but finds a sitting where he can watch the laptop turn on.

Words flash on the screen in rapid succession.

"Only in fiction, but I try to be accepting. So - There are many layers of abstraction to computer programming. First, it loads the BIOS. That's a relatively simple program that is designed to verify that all the hardware is functioning and responding correctly, you can change some details and do diagnostics with it too. Then, if everything seems alright BIOS tries to load the operating system, which is one of the most abstract layers. The operating system lets you load other programs - games, word processor, calculator, an internet browser, programming apps to make new programs - swap between them, look at files, and actually use the computer. It can take a few minutes since it's loading many books' worth of information off of the hard drive into a faster form of storage that doesn't last when it's turned off... But I have an expensive version which is faster."

A pleasant chime plays as a logo is replaced with- "The log-in screen. I use the mouse to click my name, and then type in a password. A code I have memorized so that other people can't use it if they steal it, or hopefully anyway." He looms in over the keyboard to type this in.

"So! I can't look things up right now since there's no internet connection, but what do you want to see?"

Eli pulls Adamos away during the password typing part, though the boy quickly notices the need for privacy and doesn't take a peek.

Adamos wants to see everything, being less interest in games and more interested in the programming apps than one might expect from a teenager of any world. He asks many questions and comes up with fairly insightful deductions about user interface and how the programs might work. There is a dopey sort of grin in his face during all this.

Eli will be impressed by the shiny and flashy pretty pictures, and let Adamos take the lead on this. At least until Terrence gets tired of it.

Explanations continue for a while!

"The battery is running low... I should probably get home at some point. I have been... Trying not to think about it."

"We can give you some time to prepare if that would be helpful. Sorry, for putting that weight on you."

"Are we going to send dad or Temperance? Or maybe some human?"

"Oh, I'm sure this is probably more important than the dozen or two things I ought to be fixing at work tomorrow, isn't it? It would be helpful if I could at least contact them and tell them I'm cashing in my vacation time."

"Sure. Do you want a few days to get your affairs straight? We are probably going to need time ourselves too." Eli tells Terence, to Adamos. "We will see who is available then. And the already abused limits of our host."

"Is there a good way to contact you without a full summoning? Also, I should probably see what sort of shape my car's in - really unfortunate I was driving at the time. Cars are convenient, but can be dangerous."

"They got most of the front third in place and the rest of the damage was fixing up cracks. At least last time I saw it."

"When we send you we can add some writing materials that we can summon back. The act of summoning things can be used for communication too if we agree to summon something as a code. We can also send things to where the writing material is or to your general vicinity, but those are more likely to go wrong like what happened to your car."

"They can send someone to set up something safer on your side, but that involves sending someone for at least a day, I think."

Eli nods.

"Hmm. How urgent is it to get you some place to evacuate to? Nobody's actively dying for lack of space or anything, right?"

"No one is actively dying because of that. The people on the moon, have many months if we decide to not go down again to rescue more and not offer supplies to the ones that won't or can't be moved."

"They were talking about trying again, even if your world turns out to be accepting. Just to have more options."

"Yes, you should probably do that. More options is usually better. Well. Tomorrow is Friday, and Saturday is after that. The weekend is a period of no work and rest, lasting two days. Saturday and Sunday. Friday evening is a good time to send someone to my house for a day. I can take home writing materials and write on them once it's a good time to receive someone?"

What is he getting himself into? Still, can't pass this opportunity up.

"Sounds like a plan. And that gives us a comfortable time window. Do you have any preference against receiving shapeshifters? Or in general preferences regarding the people we should send?"

"What kind of shapeshifting? ...Ideally, someone who can fit into places designed for humans. They can rest in my house. How much space is needed to set up a summoning relay or whatever you call it?"

"They are limited into staying as living flesh and having forms that are capable of staying alive. They are capable of changing into specific people, animals or create new forms combining things, the latter are limited by one's skill, but they are quite skilled. I understand if you don't want to take them in, but they are nice. It would be a summoning beacon to make it easier to land in the right place. There is no minimal limited, but if the space is too small we shouldn't be able to send people. They will be fine, but show up at the nearest empty space instead."