He hums and starts navigating through it. "Is there anything you still need - explained?"

"I think I'm doing okay, the queen sent over a bunch of neat people and I have a lot to read but not so many burning practical questions. You'll wanna grab those snakes sooner or later. Also it turns out 'past lives' is a conjurable parameter."

"I summoned them earlier; they're making a nest under the bed. They might come out to bother you for food soon..."

And then he shrugs. "And I guess that might be something interesting to know? My past life. But it seems unlikely to matter."

"...I didn't make this apartment building accessible to snakes, drat, I knew I was going to forget something. Let me know if they want me to put holes in things for them or something. It doesn't seem that important since you don't have memory continuity or anything like that but Karin was interested."

"Shiromi can turn door-knobs, but it might be convenient for Kusana to have some small holes, yes."

"It might be important for modeling, if my past life is someone I want to put back. Or avoid putting back."

"It'll be a little plastic model so you won't recognize them most likely, but -" Past life of Sasuke?

A white haired man with red facial markings.

" - That's Senju Tobirama."

"...okay? I have been absorbing a lot of information so if I've seen the name I've dropped it somewhere..."

He shakes his head. "He was the second leader of the Leaf, and the creator of the original Impure World Resurrection."

"Gosh! Uh, congratulations?"

Awkward shrug. "Might make it easier to convince him and his brother to help with politics. Though getting them will be complicated; they got sealed in the God of Death's stomach, which may or may not be a metaphor."

"One can be both reincarnated and... sealed in the God of Death's stomach? ...There's a God of Death? Is it just the one god?"

"He died, I was born a few decades later, Orochimaru used the Impure World Resurrection to get him and his brother to kill the Leaf's third leader thirteen years after that, and the Third sealed himself and both of Orochimaru's zombies into the God of Death. I don't know if that's literal, and there's assorted gods claimed but not any proven. Orochimaru thought he had a way to break the Death God's seal, but was lacking some unspecified materials. It's possible reincarnation just forks someone's soul. No one really knows how it works."

"Well that sounds like a whole can of worms."

He shrugs, and lifts his computer. "Orochimaru might've written down where his notes on breaking the seal were in these somewhere. Beating him to it might be smart."

"Well, good luck on that then."

He nods, and wanders off to check on his snakes and start on reading.

Cam resumes reading and drinking coffee and occasionally making stabs in the direction of turning the character set into a full character encoding.

Hungry snakes are his next visitors - Shiromi is indeed capable of rearing up to wrap around door-knobs - and then in the morning everyone except Sasuke seems to wake up at a fairly decent hour.

Cam makes adjustments to the building to allow the snakes to get around, and he feeds them too.

The snakes are highly appreciative.

What charming snakes.

What would his visitors like to talk about this morning? (And has he got any messages?)

He has a message from the Queen's office, detailing where they cleared out a warehouse for centralization of non-perishable foods. It's in the same port city they entered from.

The visitors would like to talk about fifty different things, but they did put together as detailed a timeline of recent history as they could without a giant stack of references and a larger department, if he wants to read that, as well as titles of history and geography books and publications that are minimally censored.

He appreciates the timeline and the titles! Do they have an idea when would be a good time for him to go fill up the warehouse?

"If you've gotten the letter, they're probably ready whenever. Daytime is more typical, midday or after is popular for any outdoor transactions because it's warmer, though there's always someone awake."