It's in a building which is itself an interesting shape. The exhibits are mostly drawings and models, but there are some photographs too. New Jerusalem's architecture traces its roots back to a few styles from Earth, but it's gone in interestingly different directions. The plaques are written for an audience that doesn't necessarily know much about architecture yet.

There's a little gift shop in case he'd like a pillowcase printed with someone's sketch of an old temple, or a book about architecture, or a notebook of graph paper.

He can always use a good notebook, and he's never seen one with graph paper before.

He eats his lunch, and then - hm, it would be good to have some kind of income, not to mention that if he's rescuing people they might want to know about their prospects there. He heads back to the library to see if this is the sort of thing one looks on the internet for.

There are job search websites. This one specializes in matching freelance programmers, technical writers, and science journalists with projects. That one is aiming to be all things to all job-seekers and unshakably convinced that everyone on the entire plane would like to see five ads (for each of five possible shifts) for the same bus driver job on the first page of results no matter what they search for or where they are. Another one is specific to transportation-related jobs and has some sort of system for verifying applicants' skills. One won't show all the details for free. And finally there's one that turns out to actually be the website of a temp agency.

Hm.

If he wanted to hire someone to do magic, how would he do that, does a search turn up anything?

Some of the ads posted on one of the websites are looking for magic-users. There are also some magic-users' personal websites that mention how to hire them. There are some people talking about which ones are worth hiring and some other people talking about whether magic is evil.

What kind of magic are the sites looking to hire people for?

Conjuring things. Interplanar transit. Jargon the meaning of which is opaque even with translation. Garbage cleanup. Water treatment. Emotional changes.

Water treatment he can do, and emotional changes and garbage cleanup maybe, depending on what they're looking for exactly. He sends emails.

It's mid-afternoon by the time he's done, and he doesn't feel like spending any more time indoors. He heads out onto the streets to take a walk.

There sure are streets. Some of them are lined with greenery. A few buildings have been painted with murals; most others have designs of various kinds, but a few are solid colors or solid colors with trim.

Nearby there's a building where the first five floors each hold a different store - a trendy clothing store, a store for work clothes, an ice cream parlor, an art supply store, and a garden store. Down the road a little there's a hobby shop and two restaurants and an office supply store and places that sell electronics and cookware and carpets. There's another information place, not nearly as obvious as the other one and almost deserted. There's a public bath-house and a karaoke bar on opposite sides of the street. There's a rec center with a big hall that advertises dance lessons, dance parties, martial arts lessons, and an upcoming presentation on the history of Catholicism. Scattered between all these are a few empty places for rent or for sale. Most of the buildings are several stories and more than half have at least one floor devoted to apartments, office space, or both.

He gets a small strawberry ice cream to eat while he walks, taking note of the places he passes; on his way back he stops into the rec center to check their schedule and the bath-house to get an idea of their offerings, and then heads home.

The ice cream comes with a compostable bowl and spoon. The rec center's schedule has a bunch of openings in the coming weeks when he could rent the place for events, and other than that it's dances, martial arts, regular arts, a couple of classes, and a religious group that doesn't have their own space to meet in yet. The bath-house has facilities for washing, and different facilities for enjoying the water, and a small attached spa. Back home, someone has left a thank-you note for the food.

His meeting with his neighbor is the next day at noon.

He's there a little early for it after a morning spent exploring the neighborhood, with a picnic basket full of sandwiches and salad and fruit and cheese.

Ooh, exactly the kind of food they don't usually get. They could go for some of that.

"So what's up?"

"Oh, I'm curious about how it was for you when you moved here, mostly. If I'm going to be bringing people in I want them to know what to expect."

"Ah. Well. They'll need to be ready to say no and keep saying no to... help. If they want. They won't get in trouble for it and they might not know that."

He nods. "I can pass that along. Is there anything specific they should be looking out for?"

"Mm. If anyone wants them to stay in a place, they don't have to do that, but they might not be told they don't have to do that. They're not required to accept the food but it's not conditional on anything and the housing mostly isn't either. But it really depends on where they're from, what they'll expect. Where are you getting people from?"

"I don't know yet - I might have my pick but it sounds like we'll need to worry about politics, and I don't know anything about that yet. I'll probably know more tomorrow, I have an appointment with the king."

"I don't know what he'll want you to do but I came from one people around here sometimes call the underworld, and I know people from the valley of shadow and the stone city, and I only know what I've read or heard about the others. So talking about what I know best, if you get people out of the underworld or the stone city, they'll be surprised how much the king doesn't care what they do - like, there's an entire movement of republicans who hate the monarchy, and he doesn't care, even if they stand around outside the university chanting about it. And they'll all want to know that people say you go to hell for being a worse person than the kind of person who goes to heaven. That the kind of thing you want to know?"

"Sounds like it. I think I might be missing something about the last part, though."

"Mmm. There's a religion that teaches that you get to heaven by being completely perfect. Not that people around here usually believe that, but..."

"But they haven't decided it's completely wrong, either, I suppose. Is it going to be controversial, bringing people here? What's the general feeling about that?"

"Oh, bringing people here from places like that is wildly popular - I mean in New Jerusalem, I can't speak to the other cities, but I think anywhere that would object doesn't have open borders with us - last survey I saw on the topic, most people wanted to import people faster. Because they're too nice to want other people to spend eternity being tortured just to make their own afterlife a little nicer, right, we're not all going to turn this place into hell and there are more of us than them so it's a... worthy sacrifice, to tolerate us." They shrug. "That's really specific to New Jerusalem, though."

He nods. "That makes sense. Anything else?"

"Mm. So much. But if I have to boil it down to something quick to explain it's... people here act very... nice, very gentle, and it's not all sincere and it's not all an act. It's important to keep your wits about you, not let your guard down, always say 'thank you', never say anything seems too good to be true even if it does, and never tell them anything was better back home."