She's waiting for her train, which is late (as usual).
Uh, that's weird, the wagon looked darker on the pictures online. Oh well, they must have repainted it recently.
She hops on the train, and goes to find her place before any adult can see her and ask questions she doesn't really want to answer.
There should be a way to lock the compartment from the inside for the night. The train ticket inspector can unlock it if he needs to anyway. Or she! Uh, working for railways must be interesting, you get to see al kind of places...
Ah! There it is. She doesn't understand the instruction, but then again she only knows two or three German words and the mechanism is quite obvious.
Time to sleep!
Bonnie wakes up at a station shaded by incredibly tall buildings, between two plazas positively teeming with people, with footpaths full of people above the train station connecting the tall buildings together. There's a gentle breeze, and the wonderful smell of fresh bread in the air. And there are charming, brightly-colored robots flying across the ground, deftly running around people.
That's... weird. When she hopped off the train she couldn't see the "Wein HBF" sign she expected to find, but everyone was getting off, the time was as expected (great job, ÖBB!) and it did look like a terminal station.
But now... the more she looks around the more confused she feels. She can't read the signs and... well, she doesn't speak German, but she expected to be able to recognize at least some of the words. Or to find some English, in the hopdamned capital. Germans Austrians.
The robots are incredibly cute, and she'll get distracted by a good ten minutes trying to find patterns in their movement.
She tries to find someone who looks like a local to ask for directions.
"Excuse me. Where to go for Schönbrunn Castle?"
The local is a woman wearing a short skirt above a pair of leggings, both bright blue, together with a long black athletic shirt slightly overlapping the skirt; it makes her look very sporty. But she's confused at hearing Bonnie's words. She looks her up and down, trying to get an idea about where she might have come from as she tries to come up with some idea of what language she's speaking and how to communicate with her.
...crud. The woman tries speaking to Bonnie, saying "hi" in as many languages as she can. She hopes one of them works...
Nooope. None of those. She shakes her head.
She tries to mime. "Where" looking all around, confused "can I go" point at self, then walking "for information and questions?" talking and a question mark.
Aah. What's the symbol at the end she just used? The looking around and walking things made sense. Well... she points directly to the nearest police station, behind one of the buildings, waving her body right and left. Helping people is their job, and they'd probably be best-equipped to handle someone not speaking the language?
"Thank you! Grazie! Danke!" she puts her hands on her heart and bows slightly, then waves goodbye and starts running walking briskly because she shouldn't run in public places.
Right of that building, then left, then. Uh. Is there anything looking like an infopoint?
Not quite; there's a black and white striped line visible on the walls of one of the skyscrapers, and looking behind the windows taking up most of the wall between the stripes, she can see that there's a lobby with a few people dressed in proper outfits looking very attentive and vigilant and bored.
Hmmmm. That's not what she was expecting, but... they can probably help her go further! The trick with taking directions is going in approximately the correct direction, then improve from there anyway.
Does it look like there's an obvious door?
Yes, there's a wide door to one side, right next to the stripes on the right side.
The people waiting inside look at her in confusion. Then, one of them calls someone on the phone. Someone who knows a lot of languages. And holds it out in front of Bonnie.
Something's not adding up but. Sure, she'll speak into the probably-a-phone.
"Hello! I'm so confused right now, is this not Wien?"
"Well, you're not confused about that, this place is called Coincrown!"
Well. At least someone speaks English. So there's that.
On the other hand she has never heard of Coincrown, and this place looks big, but she got there during the night so it must still be in Europe, at least.
"Uh. Which... country?"
"Not sure what you mean? It's on Heaven's Steps Island, Continent of the Lyre?"
"I don't recognize any of those names and that doesn't make sense. I'm bad at geography, but not recognizing the continent makes no sense."
"Am I on some kind of prank tv show? If so, please cut it out, I'm getting worried."
Ok, time for the Emergency Plan. Step 1: turn on her phone and text mum.
She grabs her phone from the top pocket of her backpack and turns it on. The name of the phone operator it will connect to is probably going to be helpful.
...the phone doesn't connect to any operator.
"Well, people get amnesia, and forget what happened and how they got places? It's rare, of course. But it happens."
"Yes, but I shouldn't forget continents? I'm from Udine, Friuli, Italy, Europe, and I got there with a single night train, so I shouldn't be on a different continent."
Not even emergency service? That's... concerning. Any open wifi networks?
There isn't emergency service or any form of wifi!
"People have forgotten... very big parts of their lives. Your situation is, as I said, unusual but not unheard of."
No wifi networks. In the middle of a city. What is happening.
"I am lost and now I'm scared and I need help and I want to get back home and I have a ticket but it's a ticket from Vienna so it probably won't be valid and I have some money but probably not enough for a ticket and."
She'll stop talking and just sit down on the closest thing which she can sit on. Or the floor. The floor works too.
She's not going to cry. But it will be a close fight.
There are several chairs in the room. They are almost bizarrely nice!
"Just... you have a ticket, right? Let us take a look at it, help you find out more. See if it brings up any memories so you don't get disoriented like this."
The man looks at it, absolutely stunned. He carefully feels it between his hands and speaks a quick phrase into his phone.
"We don't make tickets like that. We don't know how it was made, we don't think it was made using anything we have access to. This could only have come from... somewhere else."
How about she looks into the void for a while.
On the plus side, these chairs are really comfortable.
Water. Food. Shelter.
She grabs her water bottle, takes a couple sips.
"Do you mind if I eat a snack?"
"Well, I'm not sure what kind of snack that'd be?" says the person on the phone. Before repeating the words to the man who held Bonnie's ticket.
"A... Uh..." She grabs one croissant from her bag and shows it to them, still in its transparent plastic package.
The man instinctively gives a thumbs up, before explaining to whoever is on the other side of the phone that the mysterious person from a foreign civilization wants a... high area-to-volume pastry.
Ok, so. Water. Food. Shelter.
All good for now.
"I don't know how I got here. I don't know how to get home. I want to talk to my mum, if possible, but my phone doesn't work. She will be so angry, but it's better to call her now so she knows I'm safe. Am in the correct place to get help? Should I go to a police place? Will they speak English?"
"We don't know any of those two things, either, and we can't think of a way to let you talk to your... mother? This is a police station... and I don't know what English is. But I'll find someone to help you who knows this strange conlang we're talking in, just... wait in here a bit."
How can he not know what English is. They are speaking English! Unless it's some kind of language magic but this is real life, not a story. Magic doesn't exist in real life.
Good thing she's already at a police station. It should be the safest place to be.
"Thank you. I'm sorry. Can I look at a map?"
It doesn't take long before a map of the entire planet shows up on the phone. The continents are much smaller, and none of them look like any continent on Earth!
That is... not a map of Earth.
Is she sure she's not sleeping? She tries to pinch herself.
Ouch.
Yeah, no, she's no sleeping. Probably.
"That map looks unfamiliar. It should not look unfamiliar. I..."
She's still not crying. Barely.
"I will just wait for the person you were talking about."
She turns off the phone. It's not connecting to any network, might as well save battery.
"Yes, yes, someone, I'll get someone who can manage to talk to you" the person on the other side of the phone mumbles awkwardly.
"Thank you."
She fidgets for a minute, then grabs her books and gets back to reading. If your brain is in a different universe, it stops worrying about the one your body is in.
Eventually, a woman shows up, waving at Bonnie and seeming friendly. "Everything here must be totally new to you!" She is wearing... a very unobtrusive mask made of a transparent material, from outside the building. And speaking in an unfamiliar accent, too.
It takes a while for Bonnie to notice the waving, but as soon as she turns the page her eyes inform her that Someone Is Trying To Get Her Attention.
She dog-ears the page and looks up.
"Hello! It really is! I expected an Adventure but... this is a bit much. I wanted to visit a different country, not a different world!"
"Welcome anyway! If it's adventure you want, there are few places better built to give it to you! But first, you want a place to come back to when you've adventured enough for the day, or so I would think?"
"Yes. Yes I would like that."
Water. Food. Shelter.
And then she can look into how to and what to and why.
"But I don't have any local money. You don't accept Euros, do you?"
"I don't, but the value of paper bills coming from another world would have to be astounding!"
She decides to enter the police station.
"You have a lot of money in your pockets, young woman."
"Ooooh. I can see that! Then you're probably also interested in my book! Although I wouldn't want to be parted with it, but I guess you could photocopy it but I don't know how copyright would work across worlds but also piracy is not theft and I don't know your laws so. I guess I could lend it to you, if you promise to treat it well. It was my dad's..."
"I do! I don't have a payment card yet and anyway I heard people in Germany sometimes don't take cards and this is not Germany, it's not even Austria but that was the logic. But also, it's not really a lot of money? It's enough to buy a train ticket in case of emergency, which is a lot of money but not a lot a lot?"
"If you trust me with it I could take incredibly good care of your book, but I'd feel best if I was given a virtual copy of it instead. I'd have to call the library and tell them I have an incredibly valuable book for them to scan, and have them set everything up instead."
"Well, it's not a lot of money because it can't weigh much more than a few pieces of paper, but then even a thick, dense stack of bills wouldn't be that much either."
"Makes sense. I guess when we get back in contact with my word we can arrange some payment or something? That would be fair, I think."
"Makes sense, yeah. I have... some coins and a couple banknotes." Plus her for-real-emergencies-only ones in the hidden pocket, but she's not going to talk about them.
"I have a question though... how do you speak this language?"
"I practiced it? It's a common pastime, on our end, to make and learn new languages, and I thought this one let a lot of things be said in a nice way, so I learned it."
What are the chances that they would create a new language and land on English of all things.
Oh well. It's not as if the day can be explained purely rationally, can it?
"What kind of accommodation would you get me? How much does it cost?"
"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?"
