"Don't people care that it's important?"

"They do; that's why they're willing to pay insurance premiums big enough to cover hardship bonuses so that people will choose jobs that involve fixing them. If fixing sewers wasn't paid well, it would end up getting done by people who aren't good at anything else, and those people would do a worse job than people who do it for the money."

"Would they?"

"Yes, because people who are incapable of doing most jobs are usually in that situation because they're generally incompetent in a way that makes them somewhat bad at the things they can do. Not always, if one is for example a brilliant mathematician with a paralyzing disease they can be awesome at some things and garbage at other things, but most abilities are correlated. Also people tend to work harder if they're getting paid more."

Oh, and the generally incompetent people just don't have jobs and don't have money and probably eventually starve. "Mm. I don't know anything about plumbing right now. With training I could. With less training than that I think I could do boat inspections or janitorial work or some of the disaster relief."

"Great. So you have a couple options: you can get one of the jobs you think you can do now and not take classes, you can get a job now and take classes on plumbing until you feel ready to try to switch, or you can stay fully-student until you're trained and then get a job. I mean, you can stay fully-student as long as you want, but it sounds like you want a job eventually."

"Fully-student?"

"Not doing any paid work. Usually because one is a child or taking a lot of classes or retired but some people stop doing paid work for reasons that aren't any of those."

Yeah, like not being good at that giant stack of tests. "I see. I think I will just see if I pass the thresholds required for the jobs in question and then see which of them want me."

"A very reasonable strategy! Is there anything else you think we should do tonight or should I go away?"

"You could walk me through preparing some of this food." He thinks he remembers most of the appliance instructions but if the handcomp throws a bad translation he will have less context than Tazz will.

"Sure! I got you pretty simple stuff to start out. The hardest thing is probably the macaroni and cheese; you need to boil a pot of water on the stove and then cook the macaroni in it for however long it says on the box and then drain it and add the sauce. Want to try it and I'll watch and warn you if anything is about to go wrong?"

"Yes, thank you."

He does everything slowly, reading the instructions over more than once, but he manages to do all the steps without mishap requiring intervention.

"And now I guess you get to find out if you like mac and cheese."

It's creamy and cheesy and starchy and somewhat salty, and he has salt and pepper and hot sauce available to put on it.

He does like it! He does Not like the hot sauce though he does finish the bite he sprinkled it on.

"You know how to message me if you have trouble, right?"

(Kyeo's messaging inbox currently contains twenty-three requests for videochats or in-person meetings  from physicists, economists, historians, and reporters, or representatives of large groups thereof, plus a message from the building admin asking him to acknowledge the building policies.)

"I think so - how urgent are these other things -"

They look them over. "Nothing that really can't wait until tomorrow. Building policies will take ten minutes unless you have a lot of questions about them, newspeople can be ignored indefinitely, the academics can also be ignored indefinitely but they'll all be really good at explaining stuff in their own fields so if I was in your situation I would be very excited to talk to them. Also most of them will be willing to pay for interviews because they expect to get material for research papers or books out of it."

He wishes that this planet required less constant perseveration on money even if they insist on having it. "Thank you."

"What does that mean in terms of which emails you want to deal with tonight and which ones you want to put off to tomorrow?"

"I will look at building policies quickly before you go in case I have questions."

What are the building policies besides quiet hours?

Don't burn any substances that smell bad or in any other way pipe strong smells into the shared vents.

Get permission before making any permanent modifications to your apartment or any permanent or reversible changes to the public areas including the exterior. If you make any reversible modifications to your apartment (e.g. painting the walls) you may be asked to reverse them or pay for them to be reversed when you move out.

Take your garbage and recycling to the big bins behind the building; don't leave it anywhere else in the public areas. Don't leave anything blocking the doors or the bottom of the climbing wall.

The bike rack is in the back; don't mess with other people's bikes. Guests can use the bike rack but be considerate of the limited number of spaces.

Don't deliberately or by being stupid cause damage to the climate control, plumbing, or structural soundness of the building.

Don't dangle stuff so far off your balcony that it blocks the view from the next balcony down unless the person whose balcony it is says it's okay.

Don't mess with other people's mail. Don't order a big pile of packages and then forget to pick them up for weeks; similarly, don't leave your laundry in the laundry room for days. Lost and found is at the desk.

No pets except fish.

If you and another tenant have a problem with each other's use of the building and can't resolve it, either hash it out on the forum or ask the building admin for a ruling.

"This all seems straightforward."

"Oh good." They can show him how to electronically sign it, and then if that's everything they can go get that set of spare bedding.

He chases down a last noodle on his plate of macaroni and cheese.