"Which bit, messaging the desk? Their email should be on the building's website which you can find by searching the address but also it's probably on a sign around here somewhere . . . ah, there, next to the quiet hours." They point. (Quiet hours are 23 to 4 and residents can propose changes to them and any other building policy on the building's forum.)

"How does timekeeping work on this planet?"

"Each day is 24 hours numbered from 0 to 23, starting at midnight, and each hour is divided into 60 minutes and each minute is divided into 60 seconds and you can go to the stopwatch app for a demo of how long a second is."

Kyeo consults the stopwatch app. "...so only five hours are quiet?"

"Well it would be rude to scream at the top of your lungs no matter when you do it, but if you want to listen to music or play music or or have a bunch of guests over during the rest of the day that's fine."

"This doesn't make it hard for people who need more than five hours of sleep?"

"Generally people aren't that loud the rest of the night either, and the apartments have pretty good soundproofing, but if your neighbors wake you up you should definitely propose longer quiet hours. These ones are kind of on the short side, for an apartment building, so maybe something is weird with your neighbors or maybe they just don't make a lot of noise so nobody worries about the official quiet hours."

The desk worker chimes in, "We had most of a rock band living here until last year but they've moved out now, even odds a motion for two or three more quiet hours would pass."

"Pass?"

"Get a majority of the votes and be put into practice."

"...oh." Kyeo has voted, so he knows loosely what that is, though he isn't sure how people would do it in this context.

"You can look at old debates on the building forum if you want examples of how building policy gets made. Check out the business with the compost bin last year, that was pretty representative."

"Oh? Where would I find that?"

"Stick out your handcomp so I can get your messaging address and I'll send you a pointer. I'm so curious what the future internet is like!"

He offers his handcomp. "We call it the skylace because it connects many planets."

"Oh, that's beautiful. Can messages go faster than light as well as ships?"

She sends him the pointer; clicking it opens a forum with categories for 'buying, selling, sharing, and borrowing', 'maintenance issues', 'social events', 'building policy', 'politics and philosophy', and 'miscellaneous'.

"Yes, they can," he replies. ...politics and philosophy sounds important.

"Wow, that's so good. Have they figured out immortality yet?"

The politics and philosophy section has a bunch of threads like:

* Voting systems arguments go In Here and Not Anywhere Else

* Inheritance tax idea

* Is eating beef immoral?

* I'm still confused about consciousness

* Prediction market participation is a universal right!

"No," says Kyeo.

...why would eating beef be immoral. He will poke that one.

He gets a debate on whether cattle 1) can feel happiness and suffering and 2) have such unpleasant lives that it's better not to create more of them and one should eat similar-tasting plant-based things instead. There's also a side debate about whether, even if there isn't a problem from a humanitarian perspective, one should avoid eating beef because cattle farming damages the ecosystem in various ways that could cause serious problems for the next few generations. Every individual post is multiple hundreds of words long and addresses multiple points and multiple situations-that-might-currently-obtain, and often quotes another post paragraph by paragraph and responds to each paragraph one at a time. At one point a government official is quoted as having asserted something about the ecosystem thing and then immediately dismissed as a poor source in the next post for having a poor track record of accuracy on similar statements.

...Kyeo does not read this all that far. What does "maintenance issues" say?

The last thread is from, if the translation is handling the Ibyabekan calendar correctly, 90 days ago. One of the burners on someone's stove wouldn't light; there's a response from another resident suggesting a workaround and a response from the building maintenance account explaining what the problem was and how they fixed it.

The thread before that is a discussion setting up a system for scheduling whose turn it is to water the flowers on the roofdeck.

He backs out of the app. "- I'm sorry, I hadn't meant to keep you waiting."

Tazz makes a dismissive gesture. "Everyone does it sometimes! Just remember to set your bracelet to uninterruptible if you're not sure how long you're going to be. Now, shall we go see your apartment?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Excellent."

Kyeo's apartment is up the elevator and a little way along the hall. It contains:

* A little carpeted front room with a wooden table and two chairs.

* A tile-floored kitchen with a fridge and pantry (both currently empty), stove, oven, microwave, and dishwasher.

* A tile-floored bathroom with a toilet, sink, bathtub-shower combo, and mirror.

* A carpeted bedroom with a closet, a desk, and a double bed, currently lacking sheets.

* A balcony overlooking the street they came in from.

"I know it isn't much, but it'll look nicer once we get you sheets and cookware and things," Tazz says reassuringly.