Please wait, brain processing... "Thanks. Bad?"

"Um... I don't think it's bad, it's just weird and I realized you wouldn't know it because you're not going through Orientation so someone should tell you." He shifts his weight a bit.

"...okay..."

"Okay so. Um. Ah." He looks around, as if trying to look for inspiration, or something that will make him not have to be the one to tell. "You. Ah. People are like..." He clears his throat. "Um." He looks down and says, very fast, "Youareactuallyacopythereisstillayouwhereyouarefrombutthisoneisjustasrealitjustisn'ttheoriginal."

She blinks, looks vaguely concerned; sways gently in place, toward him and then back. "Okay."

"...okay? Okay! I was worried. A, um. A lady um. She k—she took her own life yesterday, when she found out. She thought she wasn't real just because she was a copy, but. Um. That's not true at all, I was born here and I'm surely real, right? So you're real, too."

Ahh. Yeah, okay.

"Hug?"

"—yeah."

Hug, slightly squeezy; she'll stay until he seems to want her to let go. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Kinda. I think." He pulls away. "It happens a few times, I think. People don't take the Echo Revelation too well, or there's religious stuff around it... I don't know. I am my thoughts and my memories. Even if I were copied... well, so what? A copy's just as good as the original. I think, therefore I am."

She nods.

"Okay. Good. So I met this guy at Orientation who knows pretty much everyone and he said he's gonna find me a job and he helped me get this stuff."

"Good."

"Yeah, he's pretty cool. Is there anything in particular you'd like me to bring next time?"

She considers, and then shakes her head.

"If you need..." she gestures to her ear, "hearing, ask."

"Okay, I will."

She nods.

That's... probably it, for this visit? They seem to have run out of stuff to talk about, but she doesn't seem especially eager to get going or anything.

"Right-o, then. I think I'll get going."

He gets going.

Sure, that's fine. She takes the basket and heads home.

A couple of nights later, she hears someone purposefully go into the muffled spaces. Two people, in fact: one armed with several spray cans in a bag plus some other navigation tools, and another in a suit carrying a ladder.

That seems, uh, less than wise? She's definitely not going in after them, but she keeps a close ear on the expedition.

Unlike the surrounding environment, they are not muffled. And in fact, the girl with the spray cans tags every other building, and this somehow causes the area around them to become less muffled, almost normal.

That's interesting.

She continues listening.

The path they trace remains unmuffled even after they go through it, and after a while it becomes obvious they're making their way to that one tower, which is just beyond the edge of her hearing.

And if she goes right up to the edge of the undefined zone?