"Yeah that is... not... a country. That exists. How do you literally fall into a country."

Well that's unfortunate. A lot of his life revolved around, you know, the country in which he lived and that also employed him existing.

"I'd love to know too! I was in my country, fell, and then found myself in the middle of the woods." He is just going to gloss over the window part of this story. It is Not Necessary.

"...okay so this definitely sounds like you are having a psychotic break."

"I don't want to downplay my creativity, but I don't think I could imagine Folsom."

"Folsom is a lot, isn't it. Only thing like it in the world."

Update: Folsom is weird even in this country. "It's certainly Enlightening."

"But from my perspective you had a psychotic break and started believing you're from a nonexistent country. Which is fine but we should probably get you to a social worker to see if you're a missing person and get you set up with welfare if you're not."

"I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't imagine my whole life, somehow acquire clothes that no one else seems to be wearing, add them... What? Forget my actual life as a person in a suit from Deseret?"

"You could have bought it at a costume store. --I admit that's odd but why else would a person be showing up in the redwoods claiming to come from a country that doesn't exist."

"I'm not sure I can really prove that I'm from a place you don't think exists? Even if it's true. Unless you get points for elaborateness of backstory."

"The clothes are weird. No one's worn clothes like that for centuries."

"Well, until an hour ago, I'd never seen clothes like that." There's a gesture in the direction of the tshirt and jeans.

"I wonder..." He pulls out an odd shiny rectangle. "Do you recognize this?"

"I have never seen that before in my life."

"This is called a phone. It does a lot of things, but the thing I want to do with it right now is take a picture-- which is sort of like a painting but very very fast-- and send it to a group of people whose hobby is researching historical clothing. By something which is-- kind of like a letter but very fast. And then they'll be able to tell if it looks made by machines or by hand. If you have an outfit that looks made by hand, that doesn't mean you're not psychotic, but it does make it more likely that something very strange is happening."

"Go right ahead."

He walks around Jing Yi, taking pictures from various angles; he also takes a closeup of the fabric. He presses a few buttons on his phone, then says, "it'll be a while before we know. --I do have a feeling that something weird is up, you don't talk like someone who's psychotic."

"Well I'm glad I come across as sane."

The conclusions of the historical costume people:

- definitely hand sewn

- made of high quality silk using natural dyes (at least one of the people consulted is Highly Jealous)

- looks like it was made in the late Tang Dynasty style, though the usual caveats apply-- few enough paintings, let alone actual pieces of textile, have survived for people to be able to be certain what 'late Tang style' exactly was.

"Wow, that's a fast response, some people must be very bored," Lev says. "Apparently you look, uh, late Tang. Either you're a very dedicated reconstructor who had a psychotic break and started inhabiting their SCA persona, or you're a time traveler who-- for some reason speaks English? Why are you not babbling at me in Chinese."

"'I also mysteriously started speaking and reading a language I never heard of' doesn't sound less crazy." 

"But I can speak in Mandarin if you'd prefer."

Lev presses a button on his phone. "Keep doing that, I'm going to record you-- uh, fuck-- I'm going to make a copy of what you're saying and send it to people who specialize in understanding languages."

"Oh, that's a mistake. I'm a chatterbox. Once I start talking, I don't stop--"

Random freestyle monologuing is a pleasant distraction from the discovery that Great Tang's days were not coming to a middle when he was around.

After five minutes he presses the button again and says, "that's enough. I'm going to send it off to the amateur linguists and tell them I found a random recording on the Internet and wondered what it was. --Do you want to head to the social worker?"

"If you think that's best."