"I'm new here and I am still trying to learn about things. Elias said that you could show me Artefact Storage?"

“I can do that. Follow me?”

He does!

Finally an answer to questions!

Sasha shows him through artefact storage, staying farther away from the artefacts than is really necessary ("it's a good habit to be in"). This is an origami how-to book that results in geometrically impossible shapes! This is a wooden-handled gun that's safe to use as long as you don't get splinters, which give severe violent impulses until they're pulled out! This is a gumball machine; it's a perfectly normal gumball machine except that if you try to buy a gumball you will instead get a stream of animal bones! 

Then Sasha pulls a face. "What is it?" Martin asks.

"Here's where I worked," Sasha says. "Uh, that chair over there? Does hallucinations. I slept in it, once. Couldn't tell when I was dreaming and when I was awake for a week. It pays the best in the institute, but I do not miss it. Gave up a memory to that book over there. I--wouldn't have written anything important, but still." She sighs. "--Oh, I know what I should show you! This necklace, see? The pendant changes entirely every few hours. If you take a picture with most modern cameras, the picture will change too, but if you use something with actual film, it preserves what you remember. It's what we usually show to new people, since as far as we can tell it's otherwise safe."

He takes notes in his notebook for transfer to his computer later tonight. 

So, artefacts do interact weirdly with electronics and not in a way that straightforwardly means that taking notes in Google Docs is safe. It does suggest that keeping things backed up in multiple forms is useful.  

Artefacts do not follow the laws of mathematics. Artefacts do seem to interact with minds-- relatively high-level concepts like memories and violent impulses-- which suggest that minds are something ontologically fundamental. 

"Does the wooden-handled gun have the same effects on everyone?" Lev asks. "Do you know what happens if a splinter gets in the finger of, say, a committed pacifist?"

“Some people can resist for longer, but as far as I know, as long as you have the splinter you’re just going to get angrier and more impulsive until either you hit a breaking point or the splinter comes out. Maybe it’s possible that there’s some Buddhist monk out there that can keep resisting it indefinitely but we haven’t found anyone who can, and it’s not a particularly safe one to test.”

Huh. That seems like the sort of thing you could do with drugs. He writes down a question mark next to his notes on it in his notebook. The memories are more confusing though.

He scribbles down "dualism??????" and underlines it three times.

"So should we come back and look at the necklace in a few hours?"

“Sure! Unless there’s anything else you want to see? The really dangerous ones are mostly encased in steel or hermetically sealed plastic or both, so they’re not much to look at, but we could swing by if you want.”

"I'm not sure I want to get that close, but I'm curious what they are."

“Sure! So, the one I know the most about is an abstract painting? It shifts, when you stare at it. It’s not at all a picture of a person, you know objectively that it’s not, but it feels like it’s obviously a person. If you look at it for longer than a glance out of the corner of your eye you just... disappear. No clue what happens to you, just— gone. There’s a water purifier that creates new strains of virus when you use it, nasty ones, the sort that would be called superbugs. The ones that compel you to pick them up and keep them also get put here, even if we don’t know how dangerous they are, just in case the answer is very; we have a set of kitchenware that’s like that. The rumor is that they had to cut someone’s finger off to get them away, but the gossip’s only occasionally true.” She walks as she talks, heading back to the archives. 

Has he noticed any strange feelings while he was in Artefact Storage, or talking to Sasha?

"Hm. It feels like it's obviously a person for everyone? And the kitchenware gave you an impulse to pick up them specifically?"

He feels watched, but no more than he always feels watched while in the Institute.

“Yes and yes.”

"I'm curious about other mind-affecting artefacts," he says, trying not to sound overly excited.

“Well, there’s a lot of them. Lots of them are like the kitchenware? Makes you pick them up, doesn’t let you put them down. Some of them it’s hard to tell if they’re affecting your brain or your body, but either way is bad. An example of that is... a book where everyone who read it ended up climbing up to their roof and jumping off. There’s one that makes you unable to understand language, I think? You can still talk and write but you can’t understand what anyone else is saying. There’s a mosaic trivet that makes you—confused, about whether or not you are also a trivet, and incredibly distressed whenever you think that you’re not, which can be very dangerous for rather the obvious reason. There’s a conch shell that makes you feel intensely lonely. There’s... kind of a lot, like I said.”

"Oh, wow, that's really c-- interesting. It's really interesting," he says, eventually managing to behave like a professional adult about the concept of deadly artefacts.

“Mm,” Sasha says noncommittally. “I guess.”

"I've been trying to get to know all the people I'm supposed to be managing," Lev says, "do you want to get lunch sometime?"

“Sure,” she says. “You inviting Martin too, or?”

"Nah," he says, "I think I should get a chance to talk to you one-on one," and attempts to convey to Martin through his eyes that this is not because Lev hates him. 

“...Sure, yeah. Is everyone getting asked on a lunch date, or just me?”

"...everyone? I talked to Martin before."

“Mm-hm.” She glances at Martin with an annoyed expression, but instead of sympathetic, his face is stony; confused, she glances back to Lev. “Anything else you need me for?”

"Not really! Thank you."

Sasha raises an eyebrow and leaves; Martin is a dark red.

“So,” Martin eventually chokes out. “Did you... learn everything... you wanted to...?”

He has been trying SO HARD not to say anything while Sasha was in the room and now he is FAR TOO INTERESTED IN PSYCHOLOGY to notice what is going on with Martin. 

He bounces.

"Martin! Martin! Minds are ontologically basic!"