The plane has hoses connected and disconnected and items swapped and then takes off. It's pretty loud. The wings don't flap, but there are spinning bits in front of the wings.

"What makes it so noisy?" Blai inquires.

"Well, the propellers – those are the spinning bits you saw on the outside – have to move really quickly for the plane to fly, so that's loud, and then there's systems for powering the propellers, which are also loud."

"Why is the system for powering the propellers also loud?"

"You know, I'm not completely sure just off the top of my head? How about we head in and check the encyclopedia and see if we got any deliveries."

Blai nods agreeably.

One of the kitchen staffers is distributing fruit. They've got apples and oranges and bananas.

Fruit! Real fruit not conjured not frozen!

He would like an orange please.

Even the peel smells really nice.

…Blai is here, he should do his job.

"They brought enough fruit for everyone to have one, do you know what you'd like?"

"I'd enjoy an apple."

Then an apple he shall receive.

"So, fruit first or looking up the engine first?"

"Fruit can be first." Chomp.

Kevin's orange-eating process, at least this time, seems to involve licking his fingers and plate and then gnawing at the outsides of the orange peels.

That's... weird... but okay.

And then he'll clear his plate and wash hands and get the computer.

"The plane we just saw is a little plane called a 'Twin Otter' – that's just a model name, no real otters involved. It has what are called 'turboprop' engines. In a turboprop engine, air comes in and gets compressed and gets mixed with fuel, which burns, and spins things while it does that – there's stuff going on with gears."

"Is 'twin' also just chosen to be a meaningless name?"

"I'd guess it's because there's precisely two of the same kind of engine?"

"I see."

"Technically it looks like the full name is 'de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter', where 'De Havilland Canada' is the company name, DHC is the initials, the six probably means something to the company, and then there are different versions of pretty much the same plane and you can also differentiate those with even more name, like, some of them are designed to be able to land on water. You probably don't need to know this for any of your goals though."

"How many planes are there in the world?"

"You know, that's a good question but I'm not sure I can answer it with just the encyclopedia. The United States Air Force is said to be the largest air force it has a bit over five thousand planes? The air travel company with the most airplanes is American Airlines with around a thousand. If we add up the encyclopedia's list of how many planes the biggest ten companies in the world have that's a bit over seven thousand. But there's also lots of smaller companies, and other air forces."

"So, thousands but probably not hundreds of thousands. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I'm curious why you asked, you often don't seem that interested in this sort of thing."

"It just seemed like having such - specific and decomposable names for types of planes might indicate something surprising about how numerous they are."