"Um, do you know how I would go about getting my own number?"

"You'd probably move into a place that had a phone line hooked up?"

"Ah, thank you. I'm still getting used to how things work here."

"Is there anything else that's confused you?"

"Yeah, a few things. I havn't managed to figure out how to use transporation to get places - I had to walk here. I'm also confused about the layout of the city more generally."

"I usually go places by tricycle but many people have cars and there's also buses. If you don't know how to drive, don't get a car. There should be bus maps in the little box attached to the shelter at the campus bus stops, the nearest one is over there -" Point. "Out by the auditorium."

"Do you need to give them money for each ride?"

"Yes, most people buy bus tokens but on a non-express line you can pay in cash too."

"There's a seperate currency for the buses you have to buy with the normal currency?"

"Yeah, I think they used to take one specific normal coin but then they decided to switch to tokens so they could vary the price and still use machines that take only a specific coin size."

"Oh huh, that's clever - are there many currencies for specific uses cases?"

"- well, different countries have different ones. Here we have the crown and it comes in one-crown, half-crown, quarter-crown, and twentieth-crown coins, and bills for five, ten, twenty, a hundred, and a thousand."

"I think different countries had different currencies in the past back on my home planet. It was... useful for controlling the rate at which the currencies changed in value, if I remember correctly?"

"I don't think they do it because it's useful, I think they do it because they'd have to coordinate to standardize and haven't done that so far."

"Oh, dissapointing. In the Federation people uses lotteries and similar to divide up the few scarce resources, but I've always thought capitalism sounded much more reasonable ...also I got a bank account yesterday and it was really fun."

...how about if they're going to have more conversation she walks into the bio building with him and sits down. "What things are still scarce that you have lotteries for?"

"Seeing musical performances in person is a big one - it's the only way to see some of the more popular artists, sadly. Popular restaurants and some parks use lotteries as well." 

"I think my opinion of dividing those up by lottery depends on how many people want them... if you can probably get a slot sooner or later by entering all the lotteries, maybe it's fine, but if you probably never will, then it might be better for it to be something you could save up for even if it'd be really expensive to just charge for it."

"I think a lot really famous artists in the Federation keep their audiences small on purpose to make it so most people won't ever be able to attend a performance."

"...well, that seems sad. I guess it's not necessarily sadder than the entire period of history in which music couldn't be recorded, though."

"A lot of the really famous ones won't even put out recordings for most of their songs. I suspect they might be persuaded if they could make lots of money from doing so but since they can't they don't have a reason to seriously consider the aggregate preferences of the billions of people who want to listen to them, as opposed to the thousands who win tickets."

"How do they get popular enough to have a lot of competition for the performances in the first place?"

"You give private peformances to critics and other artists, I think. Also some of them release recordings initially and only stop after they get famous."

"Wow."

"Hm?"