He understood some of those words! But 'information' was one of them, he can ask about the others there. "Sounds good to me, let's see..." he studies the map for a few seconds to memorize the route, and then folds it up and sets off.

Where they are now there aren't skyscrapers; the city center is mostly older than the necessary construction techniques. His companion is gawking a little, but more like she thinks it's alien than like she thinks it's impressive.

"Really not what I expected," she says. "Fewer clouds and harps, and where are my wings and halo?" She laughs weakly.

"At least it won't be boring."

Shiver. "Maybe."

"I'm sure it can't be too bad; it's heaven, right?"

"Is it? I'm not a Christian."

"That's what the person I was sitting with said, and they've been here for a while. They did say it's not like the living usually think it is, but they didn't seem to think we'd be in trouble here or anything."

She nods. "That's probably fine, then. Do you think that's the place?"

Down this street is a building whose sign says "INFORMATION AND MAPS" next to a stylized picture of a compass.

"Looks like it! I'll let you go first, I'm going to have some extra questions."

She's pretty nervous about facing them but okay. She can go first. The person behind the counter, it turns out, does have wings, sky-blue with a few accent feathers in white. No halo, though.

"Hey, um, I was just... do you have internet here?"

"Yep. You can borrow a computer here or at the library. Also, we have books for newcomers, if you want to tell me your cultural background I can recommend one that doesn't, say, assume you'll get a bunch of references to Spanish pop culture when you're from Scotland and hate pop culture. Otherwise I'll just give you The Afterlives For Dummies and if you're going to get mad and think I'm calling you a dummy then you'll have to live with the fact that culture exists."

"...I know what the For Dummies series is. I didn't realize there were any here. Is that... authorized? Or is it some kind of copyright infringement?"

"No clue, but here, have one."

"Thanks. You said we could borrow the computer? Do you have the same internet?"

"Not really but the home page works like Google."

She nods an excessive number of times. "Got it. Thanks."

And she'll look for hotel reviews while Raafi asks his questions.

"Hi! So I might be a little more lost than you're used to, or is getting people from other worlds something that happens here sometimes?"

"We are aware of almost sixty worlds and we think that's all of them. Where are you from?"

"The prime material plane of Oerth."

"...Not on our list, congratulations. I do have books that try not to presume anything about your background but that turns out to be really hard to do at all and really hard to balance with being at all engaging and concise. And, uh, would I be right in guessing you're not dead?"

"That seems likely! I wasn't expecting to kick off just yet, and I still have all my gear, magic and all."

"In that case, it's going to be more urgent for you to get set up with food and shelter than it usually is. They're both available for free, if you're not very picky, and I can walk you through signing up for them and explaining your special circumstances so they won't leave you waiting for a week."

"I can actually take care of my own food - I'm a cleric of our god of travel, that's one of the spells he offers. I will need a place to sleep, though."

"There's public housing. I can help you get the form filled out for it - you'll need contact information, do you already have email here or anything like that?"

"I have no idea what an email is."

"Well, do you know what a computer is?"

"Not at all."

"Wow, I have never gotten to explain computers before. This is neat. A computer is a machine that learns, stores, processes and displays information. They commonly come with keyboards, which you use to input text one character at a time. And then you can store your texts on the computer, or you can put them on the internet. The internet is - I don't think it has a single physical location? It's just that computers can interact with other computers, and if you put something on the internet, then people with other computers can read it from their computers. An email program is a - an internet thing where you tell a company or an organization or a person something to call you, plus a secret password you can use to tell them it's you when you're on another computer, and then they receive your mail for you and when you go to a computer and visit their website and tell them your name and password, then you can read your mail. So you can have years of correspondence in your pocket, as long as you're somewhere you can connect to the internet. And when you log in to read your mail you can also send mail that way. Does that make sense?"

"It sounds clever but I think I'm going to need to see it to make sense of it."

"Of course. Hm, let me check something..." She takes something rectangular out of her pocket and taps it several times. "Okay, yeah, I don't have anything sensitive on here. Take a look at this, see?" She tilts it so he can see the screen. "The picture on this can be anything, and right now what it is is my inbox. See, all these are subjects - what someone said their email was about - and this column is who sent it. And if I touch this thing it'll pull up a thing where I can type an email. Want me to show you how that works?"

"That does make sense. Please do."