"You're looking great! I'm incredibly new to everything here, and I was curious about if you could show or tell me some things so I could understand this place better."

"Ah, one of the people from the program? There's been a couple of you around. Ah - I'm not sure where to start. What explanations have you gotten so far?" 

"That I have an ID, money, and a place to stay... little else. Certainly 0 about the people here and what they like and are like!"

"Let me see... Hawk, help me out here, I'm not sure where to start." 

"Alright, alright. The first thing is - everything is clans here. Clans of people working together. Generally a clan is a web of romantic and familial relationships, and they get very intertwined. Most people have about three to four romantic partners and twice that in friends, relations and partners of partners. Not to mention all their various facets - the numbers really start to add up quickly. The way to get ahead is to get involved with a clan and show that you're competent at whatever you're doing, at which point they'll send opportunities your way." Hawk leans her head forward, silver feather earrings dangling from her earlobes. "Having a known enra is a good way to get initial work, but that's something kind of personal that you'd want to figure out on your own - it's not something to do casually."

"Is enra a magic power thing? That's what it really sounds like to me."

"Magic?" Wasp laughs and shakes her head. "No, no magic, sorry. It's just the word for a... passion, a vocation. Something you love to do and do habitually."

"Why the new fancy word?"

"Different emphasis, I think. An enra is a thing your heart does because you're compelled by it. It's..." She fumbles for words. "I don't know how to explain."

"Well... I suspect that's not something I have, then." 

"Do you know where I could get a phone? I had one, where I came from."

"There's a mall one hex down the blue line," Wasp says. "It'll have an electronics store that carries phones."

"And I trust it's in OK walking distance, so I can start just making my way over there?"

"You'd be better off taking the train," Wasp says, "but it's walkable, yes. Just might take you twenty minutes to get there."

"I'll take the train back, I think." Cynthia smiles at Wasp briefly, before beginning on the walk to the store with the phones.

Wasp waves goodbye when she hops back over the stones, and the women go back to their private conversation. 

The through-hex paths meander a little, but after a longish walk through parkland she comes to the exterior of another skyscraper complex. 

Within is a three story mall, with a few different shops for electronics. It seems the foremost phone brands are between a simple-to-set-up and almost unkillably tough basic version optimized for long battery life, and a heavily-customizable phone that's built to slot into a case solution of your choice, offering higher aesthetic and technical control at the cost of reliability. She's told that if she's not a power user the simple to set up phone — a "Peach" — is better for her use cases, but if she intends to use the phone for programming work it's best to do a custom build on an "Integrat." 

Programming work on a phone! Eww! She chooses the more durable and simpler option; she's not expecting to have much interest in anything more than calling and texting people. A Peach it is, what a funny name.

The store employee connects the phone up to her citizen's account for her with a tap of her ident card, and after some simple setup steps she's recognized as herself. A little notification pops up on her phone indicating she has a new full-image ident card waiting back at her local bureaucratic office. 

Great, time for her to get an ID! And do something to help people. Maybe in a hospital, maybe in people's homes.

The office quickly turns over her new full-image card at the front desk. It's got a printed hologram of her face and several identification features that look somewhat high tech. 

The Worldnet certainly has a lot of job postings. There are many erogenics openings she could apply to; it certainly is an in-demand business. 

Does she need a certification of some kind if it's in a hospital? She can't exactly document and quantify her experience, the way she could back home...

A little research shows that yes, she needs a hospital resident's license; there is a licensing exam she can attempt to get the basic certification, though higher certifications generally require onsite experience. If she wants a well-paying position quickly she may have to talk to Asterisms, the exceptions bureau, for a one-off tailored examination. 

Presumably, her experience and long hours of study would mean... she'd pass the Asterisms thing? Her medical knowledge is limited to knowing about different kinds of drugs and interactions, as well as anatomy, but she's actually really, really great at the actual sex work! At least by her world's standards. She's curious to try it the examination, just to see what it's like.

The clerk at the front desk is happy to give her Asterism's number and informs her that it may take a little time, perhaps a week at worst but more typically a day, for an agent to become available for her case. She is encouraged to call to explain her situation in as much detail as possible from her own perspective, and the Asterism Bureau will handle her from there. 

Ohh yes. Call whom? And when? Cynthia thinks to herself what to say, to get ready to explain her situation: she has a large amount of experience and strong medical knowledge in circumscribed areas, but that's in a different world and she doesn't know what their expectations would be in this one.

The dispatcher, of course, at ☆ 9 9, any time that's convenient for her, they maintain 24/7 phone presence for exceptional cases. Call or text, either is fine. Her file's already been flagged with them by the main bureaucracy, actually, as being due to an ongoing exception; she's likely to get a fairly fast response time due to that. Or she can drop into their physical office, though she's likely to share her wait with the rest of the non-emergency clients for today. Once again, the office is open 24/7, but most people find it more convenient to text in unless they have business that really requires face to face interaction; the Asterism office is just up one floor above her if she wants to go there and wait in person for an agent. 

Oh, and just so she's aware, though it's not likely to be relevant to her case, it is a crime to deliberately waste Asterism's time with false reports or other such pranks, so she's encouraged to keep her case on topic; that being said they're generally pretty lenient with letting people info-dump as long as the intention's honest.