"What's the rule on pocketknives?" He pulls a multitool out of his pocket; it has a knife and a couple screwdrivers and pliers and a file and a tiny saw. If he doesn't lose it here he'll have to mail it to himself before he flies home.

Layne frowns at it. "...Iskill?" 

"Needs an exemption. Which I would say he could totally just fill out in the lobby before we get on the train, but he wouldn't even have a base profile, would he?" 

"- I think it's probably fine to get a one-off under me, but we'll need to bother the help desk guy. I don't think he'll mind." She glances mildly at Bruce. "Just please don't poke out anyone's jugular with that if I'm gonna cosign your exemption under my base profile." 

"I won't. It's just for opening packages and fixing loose screws and stuff. Sorry about the extra paperwork." (If she knew what was wrong with him she'd be less willing to trust him, but having a knife doesn't actually make him any more dangerous. He still feels like a liar.)

"Then let's do it!" 

She takes his hand and pulls him to the turnstile with her. And they step out of the Underworld and onto the Surface. 

He looks around to see what the surface is like! He should at least be able to get a sense of what time zone and approximate latitude he's in.

"Actually, I just realized--would you cosigning my exemption mean you would get in trouble if I did anything illegal, even if it didn't involve the knife? I don't want to cause you problems if I, like, fill out a form wrong later." 

They're in a really big indoor space that looks like a weird cross between a train station, a mall, a community centre, and - maybe a fancy hotel, because some of the spotless brick walls on either side definitely have balconies attached to cute little apartment units. The ground level is packed with stores. There's a spiral escalator leading to some sort of roof space. There are two different hallways leading off; both of them have screens above them with updating departure schedules for trains headed to various unfamiliar place-names. There are doors, with signage that's also perfectly legible to Bruce, pointing out how to find the drop-in preschool and daycare or the fitness centre or several maybe-government-departments like the 'Office of Education' or the 'Office of Shipping.' 

Everything is astoundingly clean and organized-looking and uncluttered. Well-maintained, like it's either newly built in the last five years or at least refurbished and renovated frequently.

It's also - oddly minimalist? Not trying very hard to have character? In the place they just left, everything was trying very very hard all the time to be artistic. Here the vibe is clean and functional and not much else. This is most marked around the storefronts; there are signs, clear and easy to read, and what are probably recognizable logos - they all seem to be stylized solid-color shapes though - and a few stores have blown-up posters of what they're selling in addition to just displaying it out front, but there aren't advertisements, per se.

There are a lot of people around, but it doesn't feel too crowded; everyone seems to be mostly following lines tiled into the marble floor, resulting in a very orderly procession. 

"Nah, exemption's specific. And I'm not worried anyway. You don't seem like the type to make negligent mistakes in documentation, and accidents are fine, you just fix it when you notice." She says this like it's incredibly obvious. 

The problem isn't solved yet but the part that might actually have been dangerous, getting a disoriented person out of the Underworld back to Law, is done. Also stepping through the turnstile is almost an automatic cue to shift to median, apparently regardless of who she's fronting at the time. Atlas is pretty new, and usually already off for the day by the time Veth reaches the actual Underworld portal, so there haven't been opportunities to check this much before. 

"Are you really integrated? Or just really Law-leaning?" Ronda says curiously. "Just, I haven't seen you leak Chaos once. Even down under. It's impressive." 

Bruce goggles touristically at the Surface stuff the same way he did at the underworld stuff. It looks really nice; definitely not American architecture choices but they clearly have a solid economy and know what to do with it. The total quarantining of all art into the anarchist (?) basement levels is very weird, and also now that the contrast is available the implications of the implied lack of rule of law down there are making him retroactively nervous. 

It's getting weirder and weirder that he hasn't heard of this place. They're not one of the questionably-sovereign tiny island nations, or for that matter Singapore with its stereotypical cleanliness, because they mentioned being on a continent; maybe they're one of the Eastern European states that change names every time you look away? Actually, that's a worrying thought, maybe he time-traveled. He gets distracted trying to figure out if it's possible that he traveled more years than light-years or if that would have made the hyperspatial inversion unstable and almost misses the woman's question.

"Um, I'm not sure I understand that question the way you intended it, but I think I am a fairly lawful person most of the time? Especially in unfamiliar circumstances." The question makes him tense up a bit, and not just because of the confusion. It would be very strange for her to recognize him and know about his problem and even weirder to mention it in euphemism while not seeming scared or angry at him. Clearly she's just noticed his lack of desire to take advantage of the anarchist art basement. He tells himself that very insistently and relaxes. Mostly.

Nolita gives him a sympathetic look. "I get it."

"It's got advantages. If I'd teleported by mistake to the biggest Underworld on the continent, Anstat would nab the next week and I'd have so much explaining to do later." 

"Come on, guys, focus. Let's get our stuff. ...Who had the order this time again?" 

"Right. Um, one second..." 

Shift to Nuts, who does a little dance while reciting, "Ronda, Layne, Veth, Noli." 

"Thanks."

Veth forges over to a bank of lockers. Unlike the lockers underground, which were at least vaguely similar to literal high school or changing-room lockers, these ones are clearly higher-tech, with touch-screens for entering keycodes. 

Veth enters a string of numbers, very fast. (She doesn't explain this to Bruce, because you don't tell people your passwords, but the group uses their birthdays and randomizes the order every time.) 

She scoops out a cute embroidered bag - her mom made it - and dumps the ID jewelry into her hand, tossing them out to people. She and Layne and Nolita have rings; Ronda has a bracelet. 

"You've got some sort of ID on you, right?" Layne says to Bruce. "If you were at work." 

"Yeah, I have my driver's license. No passport, though." Looks like they do everything with chips here, which is cool but not going to help with the bureaucratic clusterfuck.

Blank look. "- Huh. I thought everywhere standardized that database at the last roll-out." 

"Let's just go bother the help desk, they can actually look it up." Veth leads them back across the room, apparently unconsciously following one of the floor-lines, the others falling in behind her. 

The help desk is tucked into an alcove beside the hall leading to the train platform. It's open rather than screened in. The woman at the desk has a notepad, but there isn't much else in the way of paper visible.

She's playing with a fidget toy, and doesn't stop when they approach, but her smile is apparently genuine. "Layne, right? I saw your mother at the potluck last month, she looks well. What's going on?" 

"We...have a really weird documentation problem. And some related problems." He nudges Bruce forward. "This guy isn't from the Continent at all, far as we can tell. He - had some sort of physics experiment mishap and ended up in our Underworld. We're trying to get him home." 

"He wha–" She stops herself. Blinks. "I'm sorry. Of course I'll do my best." 

"Also he's got a pocketknife on him and I said I'd cosign an exemption here's my ID." Veth sticks out her ring.