Point point! - after another moment she grabs a mango off her outdoor fruit display and thrusts it into his face.

"Thank you," he says, although she will continue not to understand Anglish, and only her strange Grecian tongue. Edgar will take the mango and return to the building. This time, he will try to avoid interacting with anyone, and try to understand what about this building is so important. How do these people spend their time?

It seems like some kind of ridiculously pretty office building. Some of the offices have glass doors and he can see people at them working with various devices that, while mysterious, don't seem to involve manual labor on the input or output end. One person is doing careful calligraphy. There's a conference room where people are having a very serious meeting.

Best not to interrupt anyone at work. Edgar paces the length of the building until he finds an unattended mysterious device.

There's an office with the door closed but nobody behind it; the occupant may have gone to the bathroom.

Edgar slips inside to investigate the device. He lifts the shirt from his eyes so that he can see it. It does not particularly resemble any tools Edgar is familiar with. He examines it curiously, trying to identify what is behind the pane of glass.

It has a pretty picture on it, gently luminous.

Of course it is. He doesn't stop to admire it. Edgar looks for knobs, buttons, and levers, turning, pressing, and switching things until something changes.

If he pokes the pretty picture, it becomes overlaid with a grid of sixteen dots.

Too risky to sit here and puzzle it out. Edgar does not need to be tarred and feathered in the public square. He ducks out of the room, once again covering up with his shirt. This time, he will watch someone work on the machine through the glass to determine how they operate the things- until they notice him watching, at which point he will move on. Walking through a building without lingering must surely not be a crime, no matter how abysmal he is to their sensibilities.

They appear to operate them by poking the flat screens. He does get to see one unlocked - someone traces out a pattern among the sixteen dots and their background picture disappears to be replaced with a mosaic of smaller pictures.

Potentially useful, if he can find another one in between uses. First, Edgar will try to find somewhere that seems designed for eating meals.

Out in the atrium there's a window where someone's accepting people's beautiful lunchboxes and returning them full of food.

Edgar watches for a dozen or so minutes to determine whether anyone else is approaching without a lunchbox.

One person does walk up without a lunchbox and get a handheld food.

Edgar is not entirely sure what kind of civilization could make do without money changing hands, but he's grateful to have arrived in it.

He attempts to mimic this transaction.

The person behind the counter doesn't seem to know what to make of this - maybe he expects to recognize everyone he feeds? - but asks someone else behind the counter a question and gets a response and hands over an attractive bagel.

Even their food is beautiful. Edgar will try to thank the person as mellifluously as possible, although the lack of shared language undermines the attempt at maintaining decorum. He retreats, finding somewhere unobserved (outside the building, if he must) to eat his food.

He spends quite a bit of time trying to memorize the pattern on the bagel, before eating it, in hopes of reproducing it when he finds himself with the right tools. Edgar is not a skilled artist, but he would never turn away from difficult work- practice is the only route to perfection- besides outrageous cheating.

Assuming he's allowed to eat in peace, Edgar will once again prepare to cover his face and look for...perhaps a shelter, for the indigent. Something less well-decorated and well-appointed than this building, but not a burnt-out husk, one assumes. Plain, and out of the way of the main thoroughfare?

If they have such a thing it's not readily discoverable.

A civilization that has cured the problem of the poor? Edgar is curious how they achieved that without simply clearing the streets of them; or perhaps they need, not finding something less coarse. He can't rely on charity, then, because what seems to be their charity could be something more fickle and subject to fashion than that. Perhaps without the dregs of society draining it, charity becomes an abundant resource. That would be quite the discovery. If he ever returns to New Albion-

No shelter. Edgar can only hope that he will find somewhere relatively unobserved to shelter from the rain, tonight. Instead of worrying about such minor practicalities, he searches for someone who works in metal. There was that artisan he saw earlier- perhaps that is a district where such craftsmen gather.

Yup, he can find a metal shop no problem.

Edgar will cover up once again before getting into close quarters with anyone local. He is looking to examine the man's wares- what is available to...customers...who cannot speak?

Not speaking is an obstacle, but there are a variety of tools - chisels, molds, knives - in addition to the jewelry.

And are any of those available without paying?

Edgar tries his best to charm without showing his face. It's a challenge he's unaccustomed to.

Nobody is very impressed by the charm of a guy with an ugly piece of fabric over his presumably uglier face. None of the stuff is free.