"Well, do the best you can, I suppose, and supplement with whatever digital search tooling you have, and I'll use whatever you can tell me. Excuse me a moment, I have to fetch some notes."

He sits up, stretches, jumps off the desk, briskly walks towards the back of the library, and disappears through a cat-sized door (no doorknob, it's just mounted on a sprung hinge).

"The best I can? Always, of course."

He stews in his thoughts for a minute. Has he done something wrong? These people are... Strange. Slow, perhaps? Are they playing some game with a longer horizon than he can see?

What a shameful display he put on in the entrance hall. Showing his weakness like that in front of two really quite important people. But what's done is done, it's not productive to stew on it too much.

A few minutes later, Curotha returns, a few sheets of paper floating in the air behind him. He leaps onto the desk, the papers arranging themselves in front of him.

"This is our list of priorities for research and acquisitions, basically. Hopefully a few of the books on your computer will have some of the information we've been looking for."

And then he has a series of questions about the contents of some of the books on Fiadh's list, looking for knowledge the library doesn't already have. They're doing pretty well in terms of scientific theory, but they could use more engineering textbooks and manuals, especially anything relating to manufacturing.

The SDA's education system has an incredibly overwhelming focus on STEM subjects, especially those related to development of military technology. Fiadh is incredibly terrible at it (read: actually sort of averagely competent by Earth standards) and will gamely list out some of the details in the books. None are actually designed for 'build modern industry from scratch', but many, especially the more manual-like ones and many of the textbooks go into fairly obsessive amounts of technical detail.

For example, one of the textbooks on chemical systems design (1076 pages long) contains a 360-page worked example on designing a factory to produce Ammonium Nitrate, from budgeting to physical space design to reaction vessels to managing timelines to electric and HVAC design to safety procedures (which are... kind of lacking actually...? and focus on saving machines over people?) to lengthy charts of spool-up and spool-down procedures.

Other highly represented subjects include: Designing novel bacteria (for industrial and biowar tasks)! Lasers of all kinds! 3D printers and automated print farms! Mining systems! Weak AIs and hacking and counter-hacking! Metallurgy! Tunnels and hardened structures!

Wow... that level of detailed examination of manufacturing is exactly the the thing they've been looking for. Except for how the refuge has no use for explosives or fertilizer, that is. It will probably still be pretty useful when it's time to manufacture other chemicals at scale.

Metallurgy is good to have, but most of the rest of this looks like it's mainly good for war or is so far above the refuge's current tech level it won't do them any good for a long time.

Curotha takes notes on what Fiadh says—he wields a quill telekinetically with greater speed and precision than it seems possible to write by hand—and, after some deliberation, produces a short list. The book titles are copied from Fiadh's list, but Curotha's annotations are written in cat language, which Fiadh somehow reads as naturally as his own.

"These six books are the most important. The next few dozen will also be useful if you feel like spending that much time copying them. Beyond that... we'll accept any manuscripts you give us, but we probably won't make copies of them anytime soon."

"Fair work is never done... I'll do it anyway as a duty to all knowledge... I have been wondering - I know I do not fit in. Do you know if there is a good book to read about local culture?"

"I see I didn't make myself sufficiently clear. If you bring me hundreds of handwritten copies of military manuals, I will not literally reject them, but there are definitely better ways to spend your time. Better ways if you wish to devote your entire life to the library, even. I expect that, when your computer eventually breaks, or when you die if that comes first, we can get it in time dilated storage and the data storage components will most likely last long enough for us to figure out how to get the data off them—it's not keeping everything in volatile memory, right? It's not a sure bet, but given, again, the general lack of use any of us have for such focused military texts, I'm comfortable with it. If you do copy all those books to paper, probably the first time anyone reads them will be to copy them to new paper when the original manuscripts deteriorate... if we aren't just able to get the data directly off your computer by then. It's probably hundreds of thousands of days away and depends on factors that are difficult to estimate, I don't know."

"Speaking of which. Most paper is acidic, which causes it to become yellow and flaky with age. When preparing manuscripts for the library, make sure you use acid-free paper. You can grab some from the bottom shelf below my desk—it's too heavy for me to levitate it to you. If you need more, come to the library and we'll give you some. Don't try to get it from the house directly, it's hard to tell the difference if you haven't been trained."

"I do have an answer to your question about local culture, but do you have any questions about any of this so far?"

"...It's keeping my neuron map in volatile memory, that's constantly changing, but the texts? No. So... There is nothing that I need to fight, and I'm not suitable for building industry, so I do need to find something helpful to do. I can be diligent, I can contribute, but I can't do that if - I don't understand what society values. Is someone going to assign me a duty? A clear set of goals? It seems unlikely at this point, unless the mistress of the house simply did not want to bother with a waste like me."

"Conceivably someone could tell you what to do, and that will be made more likely if you loudly advertise your desire for it. But if someone does, it would probably be because they don't care about you and think it would be amusing to have a minion to order around. I don't recommend taking direction from that sort of person. I think, and I believe this opinion is shared by most refugees, that it is in your best interest to choose your own path. It's not always easy, but it's part of growing up."

"But I'm not a great person to have that conversation with. I recommend you speak to Levron, or David. Both of them are better at this kind of thing, and can either offer you some advice or will know better than I what direction to point you in. The same for your question about local culture, actually—it's not really something you can learn about from a book, because we don't write that many books. Morgan Eriksdottir did author a fascinating monograph about refuge culture, it's just seventy thousand days or so out of date."

"Levron is an old human male, brown skin, often wears a round hat. He can be found in the great hall most evenings, after dinner. David is a cat, a tabby. ...Probably the best time to talk to him is in the morning. Ask around in the cat garden and someone will tell you where to find him."

(It is currently late afternoon / early evening.)

He makes a thoughtful noise.

They just don't have the history and structure to ensure people contribute optimally here, maybe? Lovely. He'll have to figure that out himself, too.

"No, random bullies is not what I meant, really... Well, knowledge is a good start. I'll keep those two names in mind, thank you."

"You're welcome. You're doing the library a great favor, you know, copying these books to paper. It's much more than most new arrivals are asked to do. I can't exactly pay you for it, because the refuge doesn't use currency, but the library does possess a certain amount of... social credit, which you'd be able to draw upon. Which is to say, some people are willing to do us favors, and if you do work for us you'll be able to call upon some of those favors. Once you've completed a manuscript or two, if there's something you want, let me know."

"It doesn't sound particularly onerous. Does having shelter and food provided by magic really make people so lazy?"

"No. Why do you think people are lazy?"

"There is no urgency here. No... Hierarchy? Reading is well and good if you are learning useful things, but... Forgive me, are all creatures of your shape people, here in this place? I saw many, doing nothing in particular, in a garden."

"Yes, all cats here are people, although we suspect non-sapient cats exist on some worlds. Those you saw in the garden were probably either socializing, resting after a bout of play or hunting, watching kittens, or sleeping—we aren't strictly diurnal, and we do need to sleep, we just do so at odd ours. It's also worth noting that our telekinesis is still fairly weak, so there are a lot of activities which require hands that we simply can't do, or that require help from someone with hands in a way that tends to be mutually frustrating. So what may look to you like unambition or laziness on the part of cats is in part reflective of a lack of alternatives."

"And yes, there is a lack of urgency or heirarchy in the refuge, but those aren't the same thing as laziness."

"...I don't understand. But what else is new, aye? At least you have 'telekinesis'. That would have been useful in the war in a number of little ways. Staying functional while waiting for a hand to grow back being just the first."

He taps his foot restlessly.

"I'll stop asking you about it if you're bothered, Levron and David, yes?"

"I'm not bothered, I'm just not especially excited to have the sort of long conversation about these topics that you should have, and Levron or David would be better people for you to have it with anyways."

"I don't know the social cues, so I could not tell that, you see. 'Tis best not to offend carelessly." As opposed to deliberately or strategically.

"It's not as much of a problem as you'd think. Well, not as much of a problem for you personally, maybe more of a problem than you think for the refuge in general. There are refugees of a wide variety of different species and cultures with completely different social cues. Most learn to communicate explicitly when it matters and not to take offense too quickly. I probably should have been more explicit with you, frankly."

"I don't need to worry about figuring out everyone's titles?" 

He sighs and shakes his head.

"So, a summary of our conversations to ensure there are no major miscommunications. Those can kill, at the worst. I'm going to work down this list of books to copy, writing on low-acid paper and with ink and pens provided by you or another of the librarians, or printers, or what have you. I'll thusly earn some nebulous social credit or favor. I don't want to have my computer taken out of my brain. E-War module for connecting to computers is on hold pending consultation with experts. I'll likely try to find Levron at dinner."

Thoughtful pause.

"Oh dear, I just had a troubling thought. Do you have trouble with interfering biologies causing allergies or immune disorders or epidemics here? Eyes and bones, I should have thought of that sooner."

"I don't know what you mean by titles, but you probably don't need to figure them out. If anyone gets sick because of you, Ton'guni will take care of it and probably ask you to get treated so you stop causing those problems. But it's probably worth seeing him soon, if you haven't already, so he can catch that early. As far as we can tell, any ink the house provides you for the purpose of writing is about equally durable, so it doesn't especially matter what ink you use. Otherwise your summary is correct."

"Mm."

He'd really rather avoid the doctor. What if he decides to remove the DNI anyway, for archival purposes or something? Or something else that's hard to imagine. It's never a good idea to become salient to important personages. Then again, it's an even worse idea to become a problem to them... 

"...I'll get started." He checks the list for the number-one ranked book. 'Siann Industrial Trust - Consolidated Reference - Practical Engineering of Alloys in Suboptimal Conditions'.

"Alright. I wish you a good evening, Fiadh."

Hopefully he figures things out. Might make for a good librarian one day if he wants to be, and isn't just desperate to serve something.

(Fiadh has one to two hours to copy the book before it becomes obvious that most people are leaving for dinner.)

He's been thinking about the danger to others in between shoving all the other worries behind a veneer of Doing A Task. And he really should go see the doctor. He was memorable enough...

Fiadh goes towards the great hall, following along others and holding his progress on paper and pen, and looks for Ton'guni.