He is now aware of what rectangles do what, and which ones really should not have metal put in them! Cascadians are really good with labour saving devices. It is one of their better traits.

And now Lev is going to take Jing Yi off to the grocery store to buy food, probably microwavable food, if there is anything that looks even remotely familiar. He is also going to obtain Jing Yi his own Cascadian rectangles, i.e., a laptop and a phone. 

(If Jing Yi asks whether he should be paying Lev is going to wave a hand and say not to worry about it.)

The grocery store ends up being an exercise in finding microwaveable food with vaguely familiar ingredients or sort of recogniseable forms, but there are some things that are 'yep that's recogniseably food.'

ID card, pin card, phone and laptop: he now has a full set of Cascadian Rectangles.

Lev is going to get him a fifth Cascadian rectangle (debit card) and then go back to Jing Yi's apartment.

Lev will figure out how to explain how to tell apart scammers from nonscammers later but until then Jing Yi should not give people on the Internet money without checking with Lev. This is Wikipedia, it's a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Things on Wikipedia are probably true, or at least scientific consensus; things on the rest of the Internet are often full of lies. If he's looking for some particular kind of content he can enter it in this box here, this is called Google. This website has movies and TV shows, "documentaries" are nonfiction but a lot of them are full of lies, sorry about that. Jing Yi can listen to music by clicking this program, which streams music. Email is sort of like very fast letters, he has an email account now. This is Lev's phone number and Jing Yi should call him if he needs anything. This is the maps program that will let Jing Yi find his way to other locations.

Now Lev has to go get work done! Mostly related to the sudden existence of a time traveler in their midst! Jing Yi is left to his own devices. 

Jing Yi tries to use his time left to his own devices Productively. Achieving things. He successfully microwaves his first meal. He walks a loop around the apartment several times. He opens Google, tries to think of something Useful to Google, like 'Spider-man' or 'what is corn and where did it come from,' before giving in and researching something he would rather not look into, even though he has to.

It's been two days since he fell out of a window and into the future. It is too soon to consider it hopeless to go home. But.

He has no idea how he got here.

He has to be realistic about his chances of getting back.

Of ever seeing his family and friends again. And... even if he gets back, it doesn't change that for now, they have been dead for several centuries. 

He has been avoiding the maths, and the maths has caught up. It has been thirteen centuries between where he was and where he is now.

He looks up Great Tang on Wikipedia, because surely it would be there. (And maybe he shouldn't look into his own hypothetical future, if he gets back, but haha, no, he is taking whatever information he can get.) The article is there. The article manages to be depressing in the first few paragraphs.

Apparently he worked for the last competent Emperor. Apparently in a few short decades, there will be a rebellion that would send everything spiralling into decline. Apparently he lived at the high point, just before the tumbling fall. Apparently Chang'an, his home city, the greatest city in the world with the best restaurants even if they do keep turning out to be run by murderers, fell. (The rebellion left 36 million dead at the highest estimate, but even the lower estimates are. Not Great.)

He listlessly does the maths on how likely his friends and family were to survive. He can try and comfort himself with the fact that the Jing family lands on its feet, that it went through rebellions and regime changes and survived. His friends are competent and savvy and would hopefully have the good sense to run. But that's also possibly unbridled optimism.

...and they're all dead anyway.

He does ineffectual Google searches for them, to see if there is any scrap of documentation about any of them. He is looking for obscure people from thirteen centuries ago. It doesn't go well. (He keeps getting modern day actors, and he is sure they are lovely people but they are not who he is looking for.)

He goes to listlessly watching old Spider-man movies, on account of that being the only videos he really knows the existence of. Staring blankly at explosions and people in brightly coloured costumes is less depressing than Wikipedia.

(He definitely does not calculate how long it is till the one adult he knows is no longer working-- work caused by his own existance. He doesn't calculate whether to ask something cheery like 'how does one turn being from the past into a career' or what he really wants to know like 'how good are forecasters at predicting the past, can they predict how someone died?' Because that is just a little bit too depressing.)

That night, Jing Yi learns some of the disadvantages of free public housing, as his next-door neighbor screams every half an hour from 9pm to 6am.

Netflix learns that Jing Yi likes Spider-man and suggests that he might enjoy Thor, Ant-man, Iron Man, Superman, Batman, and also someone called Radioactive Man who appears to be Chinese.

He manages to maintain an attitude of 'well, they're almost certainly having a worse night than I am' up until midnight. By 2am he is seriously considering whether finding the nearest patch of woodland and trying to sleep there would be more restful (the inevitable malaria from doing that not withstanding.)

He ends up sleeping in till 10am (a full uninterrupted 4 hours, yay!). Microwave meals can be made while very sleepy. Cascadia Is Great.

He also, after some brief trial and error, works out how to text. "So, how much trouble have I caused?"

uh, none? why would you be in trouble

Not 'in trouble' trouble. You mentioned time travel was causing work for you?

yeah I have bad news and, uh, neutral news

Yes?

So it turns out we knew that time travel from the past into the future was physically possible, we just didn't know how to do it. And-- we don't know enough about the brain to know how you were taught to speak English but it seems like the sort of thing very technologically advanced people could do, if they wanted to.

But as far as we know according to physics time travel into the past is impossible.

I'm sorry.

...

The nice thing about texting is that no one can see your face! (What a lovely Cascadian Invention! That's he's going to have his whole life to appreciate! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--)

The sympathy is appreciated. (It would be nice to make a joke, about how unless he was the very technologically advanced he has nothing to be sorry for, but it dies on his tongue typing fingers.) I guess I should start making plans for the long term. Turn being a time traveller into a career.

You don't have to. That's the neutral news.

If you want to just be an anonymous Cascadian you can, we'll keep the existence of time travel top secret until you die. I can give you money or you can live off welfare until you figure out how to get a job. If you want to go to school there are scholarships.

Someone fucked you really badly and-- we're not going to compound it. It's your choice what you do with your life.

I yelled at kind of a lot of people about this.

I'm not sure how well *I'd* be at keeping it a secret? Just with how much I manage to spook nurses by just being in the room. And being a professional time traveler is something I could do *now*.

And... there are some people who should be remembered, who I don't think they are.

But I appreciate you fighting people for me.

They thought the Chinese tested diseases on you. So they could use them in combat. There were really glad you came here.

But that *wasn't true*. And it is not going to be the last time I do something that makes it clear I'm not from this time.

Yeah. Probably you're going to need some time to... recover? Get used to things? Before you become famous.

Becoming a celebrity is a lot. 

I don't know what a good metaphor is. Imagine that two billion people know who you are and if you felt like it you could read anything they're saying about you and half of them want to make sure you see it whether you like it or not. 

If you recommend holding off, I'll hold off.

Though I'll need a cover story. I was raised in the woods by deer, and wandered into Cascadia...

Educationally neglected Gileadite. Your parents didn't believe in modern science. No one will doubt it.

...my imaginary parents who also failed to teach me about Gileadism?

There is a pause before the next text. I keep forgetting Wikipedia exists.

If it comes up look sad and tell them you don't like thinking about it.

Always good to have an excuse to strategically deploy puppy dog eyes.

Don't deploy them on me, I already have a bias towards giving you everything you want.

Why would I deploy them on you?  As you said, you're already biased! It wouldn't change anything!

...if someone was a hypothetically educationally neglected Gileadite, what would you recommend they do? Other than gorge on Netflix and Wikipedia, they've got that covered.