"Good to hear." The rest of the topics he's interested in are pretty much what the PR folks led them to expect.

They'll get through the rest of the meeting just fine, then. Raafi takes Pelor aside at the end to explain the insurance situation and give him his client list for the next few days, and then decides to look around the arcology a little.

The sky is blue, but only weakly, past the clear dome. The city inside is very planned, and designed in a spiral with some grid streets breaking it up into navigable shapes. The president's office's building opens onto a park, with a clover lawn surrounded by flowering trees and a playground full of kids bouncing around. There's a Martian history museum and an art museum and a zoo.

Well if he's going to be pitching the place to gnomes - what does the history museum have?

It has a lot of stuff about Martian colonization, its constitution, its famous citizenry, its past presidents, and events like the erecting of new arcologies and Mars-local inventions.

Are any of the inventions things he'd be able to explain without explaining the whole world?

Cunning low gravity kitchen gadgets?

Some of those are pretty clever and he's going to have to mention the low gravity anyway. He takes some notes, and then wanders over to the art museum when he's done.

It has art in it. Martians are into rock-balancing, it seems.

Gnomes'll like that, too. He finds somebody to ask if he's allowed to take pictures.

"Yes you are, but you have to let a docent double check that your flash is off."

He does that, makes another circuit of the museum, and then heads out to the park again. How are the auctions doing?

He stands to make a lot of money.

Very good.

He considers his plans for the next while, and looks up Hope Miller Sphere to see what it takes to become a citizen.

He can submit an application by demonic mail to "Hope Miller Sphere Mailer Demon 2179" with his identifying information and an assertion that he agrees to the responsibilities of a citizen and that Hope Miller Sphere can negotiate on his behalf as necessary with other polities.

He looks up how demon mail works, double-checks what they expect of their citizens, and, if there are no surprises, does that. He sends a letter to Cam while he's at it: "The PR firm worked out great, everything is going much more smoothly now. Thank you."

Next - can he rent a place to store things, to free up some space in his portable hole?

He can find storage units. The cheapest storage units are zero-pressure boxes available for next to nothing on Luna but you need to be in an environment suit or using magic to access your stuff. The next cheapest are in Pear Valley, Texas.

Texas works. He spends a few hours sorting things and hires a fairy to move it into the storage unit, leaving everything magical and the things he's auctioning behind, plus a few changes of clothes. It's about dinnertime, then, and he's feeling social, so he posts to his blog asking if anyone wants to meet him for a meal, prepared to close the comments after the first few responses.

Real lobster at Theo Moon's Bistro in New York my treat

me me me

I made jambalaya hurry up

I've found something, but I'll probably do this again sometime.

he appends, closing the comments, and messages the last one to ask where he's meeting them.

He gets a picture of a dining room with a pot of jambalaya on the table.

And there he is. "Hello!"

"Ha! Wow, you're fast," says the old lady hosting this dinner. "Welcome! Siddown, pour yourself some water. I'm Khiem."

"Good to meet you. That smells delicious."

"It is delicious!" She scoops some into a bowl and plops it in front of him, then produces and starts cutting up bread. "Is this how you get most of your meals? Well, not asking online, but with random people."