"My plan was actually to ask you to live in our family apartment floor, register yourself, and join the basic income program. The cost is around 70% of your basic, and that includes my pay for being your parent and the schools and courses you're entitled to join."

"Wait, I would pay you for being my parent? What? And you pay for school here? Weeeird. On the other hand, you give income to kids, so. Different system I guess. So I would use the 30% left for... food, transport, a phone plan, and fun stuff. Is that... enough?"

"Oh, and I guess taxes? I know it's a thing that adults do but I have no clue how they work."

"We try to have a thing about paying for everything here, that way everyone can pay attention to the numbers and better know what's happening everywhere. The last 30% is plenty for the things you ask about, I'd say, and, well, you have 30% left because you're sort-of paying taxes for school and so parents don't have to pay me to babysit their kids."

"I... see."

"Wait, do you also pay for library cards? That would be terrible. Libraries should be free!"

"Library cards for the newest and nicest libraries aren't free, but all the other ones are, and even the ones you have to pay for are pretty cheap most of the time."

Mmmmmhh. They do have free libraries, so it's fine.

"If I move in... with you? next to you? how does that work?"

"Well, you get your room in the boarding section, with all the other kids, and it's right next to the classroom, athletics room, play room, baths and everything else? Everything's really standard... our standard, I of course mean."

"Will my room have a lock I can close from the inside?"

"Yes, that's right."

That's... good.

"How do I say 'thank you' to the... uh, policemen? In the local language?"

She says "thank you" to them for Bonnie. "Then, are you ready to come with me?"

"I think so."

She double checks she has all her things with her. It's not hard, she has everything in her backpack except for the book.

"Let's go."

She takes Bonnie a few blocks before finding a subway entrance and leading her into it. It takes barely a minute before a train shows up, with a few dozen people walking in and out; the trains is significantly wider than would be normal on Earth, and Bonnie can also see that the floors of the carriages have different areas split into different colors.

Subways! She will look at everything!

Can she recognize anything that looks like a map? Do they have a realistic map or a schematic one like the London tube? Does their language use ideograms? Letters? Something else? Do they color the different lines?

"What do the colors on the floor mean?"

There is a map, it's schematic and they use different types of line in addition to unusual colors different from what she's used to seeing; there's enough space on the wall to also have a timetable, but it's fairly hard to read because there are so many departures that it just turns into a wall of numbers. There are screens showing times, but only for the lines that arrive less frequently at this station; there's one coming in 3 turns and another in 7 turns.

The language uses letters, but they're vaguely reminiscent of morse code: lines, dots, dashes, and crosses. The lines use both colors and geometric symbols; there's a Triangle Line, Square Line and Pentagon Line, among others, until you starting heading into new kinds of shapes like stars and circles and rings.

"A lot of families take trains, so colors are supposed to make it easier for them to not be mixed up with a different family because everyone gets to sit together instead of being spread out across the train. There are special trains with mini-cars that almost let families have their own compartments, but that's only in special cities."

Ooooh, shapes for lines! Weird letters! She wants to learn all the things!

"Sounds handy!"

"You said the school is on the same floor as your family apartment? How does that work? Is it a very small school? Are you just very close to it? On my planet schools are usually big buildings that are just... schools, with no people living there." - pause - "I think. I have looked at the floor plans and it didn't seem to have bedrooms, but I could be wrong."

"Well, it's more right to say it's a classroom! And you also have the gym and baths and library and all the other things in a school in the rest of the building. But mostly you'll have the classroom, and that's always on the same floor as the dorms. Wheelchairs, you know. Wheelchairs end up saying how everything has to work, and then the robots can also get where they need to go."

"The robots? What kind of robots do you have? Do they follow the three laws? Wait, no, you wouldn't know about them. They were written by this american author, or maybe he was russian, I don't remember, Asimov. I really love his books. So basically he invented the three laws to describe how he thought the robots would be made to behave to be safe for humans. Do you have anything like that?"

"...they have Emergency Auto Braking systems that work really, really, really well and have a bunch of soft plastic with no sharp edges? The robots are just boxes rolling on the ground with robot arms attached really, so they can look a bit boring. The can have drawings in front so they look a little like a butler, maybe? But they make life 100 times easier, believe me."

"Ooooh, so they're not thinking ones. Well. It's fine. That's less worrying." But also boring. No robot conspiracy, no paradoxes to stop rogue AIs. Well, life is not a story, is it?

"Also, I got distracted by robots, but I'm happy you're considering wheelchairs first. It's good when people are not left behind. How many books can I loan from the library at the same time? Wait, no, nevermind, if it's connected to the room then I can just get there and swap when I'm done, so I just need to borrow one. Or two, if I finish it during the night."

"Should I get a mobile phone that connects to your network? Actually, do you have a global network? On my planet we have this global network of computers that mobile phones also connect to and you can find all sort of things on it, we even have an encyclopedia that is created by everyone, and it's the coolest thing ever."

"I don't think there's a limit on how many books you can loan at once? I'm not sure on the policy, books are ultra-cheap so we can just buy tons of them so there's basically always one ready. And we do have a global network, yes! And when it come to encyclopedias, the tough part is knowing which one to start with. And a phone should probably be the first thing you buy, so you can get clothes that fit."

"Wait, what does a phone have to do with clothes? I guess some people use it for payments? I don't have a credit card yet, so I just use cash."

"You need to have a pocket that the phone sits well in and that depends on what phone you have. It's awkward to have a wrong-size pocket." 

"Oh. Yeah. Makes sense. I was overthinking it."

"Uh... how will money work in general though? You were talking about registering for income?"

"Yes, that's right... Oh, of course. You have to do that at a police station! But it's a very simple and quick process and I'll just take care of things until then, it's no big deal at all."