"No, he won't tell me. There were some guys following us and he thinks they might have it in for him for some reason but I don't know why now."

"I could listen to him for a while, maybe I can find out."

"...he might get annoyed if he finds out but then he shouldn't be hiding stuff like that from his only daughter in the first place."

"If it's going to affect your life, yeah."

"Would you do it?"

"Yeah, sure. I'll need to know where he'll be, to start out."

"Okay. I can give you the address of where we're staying, and email you when he goes out on one of his quote unquote 'errands'?"

Nod. "Sure. Does this thing have an app that can tell me how to get there?"

"Oh, I should install you some map readers, yeah—" She does that. "My dad and I work mapping the Sideways and selling the maps to the government, and the maps all have to be updated all the time 'cause the City imports new buildings and stuff and changes a lot."

"Oh, cool, how does that work? I don't think I want to map the Sideways - maybe if we figure out what's going on with Bedlam - but I could do maps of the city really easily."

"How does what work, mapping? There's this software called EchoMap that does echolocalization very well and can draw and save maps of locations and you can use it to map the Sideways or other places and it's awesome but I bet you're better. Maps of the City are in less high demand 'cause the City doesn't change all that often but could be useful, and also finding entrances to the Sideways, bet you could find lots—at least the ones that aren't one-way—and bet you could help the first-action responders! They never know what they're walking into when a new building arrives, you could help them."

"Yeah, I've been practicing noticing Sideways entrances, I don't want to fall into one of those again if I can help it. I could check out new buildings, too, but is that a government thing?"

"Yeah, they go find new people and stuff, get resources to redistribute, make sure it's not a cubist building that's gonna be a danger to anyone or full of Picassos or whatever."

"Probably not a good idea, then."

"Why not?"

"I'm not sure about here, but where I'm from, people with trouble talking and stuff like I have aren't allowed to be just out walking around. And being locked up is pretty awful."

"Locked up? But why? Just 'cause you can't talk with your mouth very well? But who cares about that? You have superpowers! And besides you're, like, alright, and even if you weren't why would they lock you up?"

"I don't like to talk about it. But you're right that there's not a good reason."

"Okay. Not talking about it. But, umm, it sounds like a thing you could really help with. Maybe you don't need to interact with the government people much? If you stay far enough away from them?"

"Maybe. I don't think I want them to know that much about me, though."

"Well... maybe you could sell maps of entrances to the Sideways, then, that could work, too."

"Yeah, I'll figure something out. There's lots of stuff I can do, I just need to figure out something that's not going to hurt anyone or be dangerous."

"Yeah! You'll do great, I just know it."

"Do you have an email? Oh, bet you don't, if you didn't know about search engines—want me to make you one?"