'What do the handcomp-towers look like.'

"Uhhh, you wouldn't be able to see the part I can see through these trees, but it would be a light source with a really long wavelength, at least, hm, ten times as far from us as we've walked so far but maybe farther? I don't know if you know what subjective experiences go with longer versus shorter wavelengths. Endless stars though, your subjective experience must be amazing."

'I do not think I know what subjective experiences go with longer versus shorter wavelengths.'  They look off in the indicated direction and blink six times, about once per second.  'But I see no such light source.'

"Huh, okay. How about--actually I should check first, how much patience do you have for taking about 65536 experiment-tests for everything anyone can think up? Because a lot of people are going to be super curious about you."

Ancorabenilisifentiliane considers.

'Over what timescale.'

"Depends how long of breaks you want and how long you're willing to talk to scientists for?"

"Everyone is going to want you to be happy you came here; if you say you want to be left alone people will leave you alone and if you want to be paid money or an undefined but definable set of other things to be looked at by scientists you'll get paid."

"There are probably hundreds of hours worth of things people will want to know eventually but they won't think of them all at once."

'I will sometimes, but not always, want to do other things.  Describe money?'

"Money is a bunch of numbers in computers--machines like my handcomp. Everyone has a number which is the amount of money they have; there are also some groups of people that can have money that belongs to everyone in the group according to complicated agreements but the simple version is that people have money. When someone wants someone else to do something they would prefer not to do, or prefer to do less of than the first person wants, they can offer some money. So suppose Kara has a piece of chocolate--as far as I know they don't, but hypothetically--"

"I do actually have some chocolate in my pocket right now but it might be melted."

"Oh neat. So suppose I wanted to eat Kara's chocolate, which I don't, I could say 'hey Kara, I will give you five firstcoins'--that's an amount of money--'for your chocolate,' and if they were happy with that idea then I would make my number go down by five and their number go up by five and they would give me the chocolate. In general people will do most but not all things for enough money because money is useful to have because other people will do things for it. It's like a way of keeping track of how much useful stuff someone has done for other people so that people who do useful stuff can get useful stuff done for them. And answering questions about yourself and doing experiment-tests would be very useful because you're the only one who can do it, so you would get lots of money you could spend on a nice apartment or pretty things or food or whatever else you want, assuming anyone knows how to provide it."

'I want pretty things.'

"Then you will be have plenty of use for money!" says Kara happily.

"We're almost at the train station," says Neren. "Did you have any other questions about how to ride a train? Also trains are kind of noisy, so if you hate noise you might want to borrow my earmuffs."

'I know little enough about trains to have no other questions about how to ride them.  I do not hate most noise.'

"Just follow us and do what we do and assume that everything is fine unless one of us tells you there's a problem and it'll go great."

Soon they come to a flight of stairs leading down into the ground with a sign above it staying "Forest Station - Red Line Outer Endpoint". "Right down here," says Voli. "Does anyone have a stored-value pass so they can beep twice or should somebody just buy them a half-moon pass"? 

"I can buy a half-moon," answers Tren, and nobody pre-empts them.

Ancorabenilisifentiliane's skirt clips through the stairs on their way down, its train appearing to rest on an invisible platform behind them, level with their feet.  They take 'do what we do' fairly literally and (imperfectly, erring on the side of elegance) imitate different members of the group, switching targets at irregular intervals.

"Woah, is your skirt some kind of illusion or something?! That's surprising*!"

*Translator's note: the connotation is of a surprise of strong but uncertain valence.

They don't respond for several seconds, and keep mimicking Tona during that time rather than displaying any outward sign of contemplation.

'We are still friends regardless of the answer?'

"Thinking."

Neren stops halfway down the stairs and is silent for at least thirty seconds.

"I can imagine answers that would make me nervous about interacting with you, but as long as I am not in immediate danger I will talk it out with the expectation that we can have mutually beneficial interactions. I will continue to want mutually beneficial interactions with you regardless of the answer even if I decrease my probability that they are possible. I do not want to disincentivize truthtelling and will weight highly the fact that you are revealing whatever you are about to reveal willingly and proactively. I will continue to help you orient to this planet unless it would come at the cost of serious harm to myself or another. I will continue to want to be your friend unless you are intentionally or recklessly harming me and intend to continue. Can you six say the same?"

The others were all listening carefully; one by one, they say "I say the same."

- nod.

'It is true that my skirt is some kind of illusion or something.'

"Are you creating light or something that reacts with light, or are you directly altering my eyes or brain to perceive something independently of the light entering my eyes?"

'It is something that reacts with light, in this case.'

"Does 'in this case' mean you can also do the other thing? Oh, was that how you communicated before you figured out our language?"

'I can also create light, yes.'  They glow their eyes demonstratively from behind their mask.  'Elaborate on 'before you figured out our language'.'

"Well, what you're using to communicate now resembles words in our language, but before you were doing that, I mean really early on, you were doing something more, hm, direct."

'The way I was communicating before and the way I am communicating now are not precisely the same, but neither are they fundamentally different.'  They mimic a fidget.  'It is a matter of scale and finesse.'

"Can you describe the mechanics in more detail?" Tren asks excitedly. "Also is it the sort of thing you could teach someone else to do or do we not have the anatomy/hardware for it?"

'I expect this method of communication to be inherent to my species and not replicable by humans, although none of the ones I interacted with previously attempted it that I am aware of.  In describing the mechanics I could make a comparison to emitting light, and narrowing the wavelength as I recalled and rediscovered what humans are capable of perceiving.'