"I'm your long-lost friend!"

- she stops, startled. 

"You - I - I'm so sorry! I forgot all about you! - what's your name?"

"I forgive you. My name is Teru. I just need a place to stay for a few days while I'm in town and thought you might have space and we got along well when we were friends before so I thought I'd ask. If it'd be inconvenient I can go somewhere else."

"Oh, I - no, it's not inconvenient. We have a guest room, you can absolutely stay for a few days - we have a cat, I forget, are you allergic?"

"I don't actually know, I haven't been around housecats before, just the barn kind and they keep their distance. Hey, it's been a while and I don't generally live in the FSA, can you remind me your least favorite chores and how the appliances work around here?"

"Oh, I hate laundry, if you do the laundry you can stay until Dan gets sick of you. And we got a new espresso machine! I was just making myself coffee, actually, I'll show you how it works."

"Okay! And where you wash clothes, too, please."

Well, at least spending all day on tedious scrubbing will silence whatever shriveled up little thing passes for Teru's conscience. A washerwoman. Her. Wow.

Sure, she'll show off the washing machine! The laundry goes in this machine, and an hour later goes in the dryer. Most of it she runs on 'normal' but the grey basket goes on 'delicates'. Bedding you want to put in the dryer for an hour and ten minutes, it doesn't get dry if you use the 'auto' setting.

Teru can do that on pretty much whatever schedule they want. This is amazing. This is not laundry, this is the easiest possible handing-laundry-off-to-a-servant logistics.

"By the way, do you happen to know how much it would generally cost to fly to Vladivostok?"

"No. Probably around a thousand dollars, if you aren't picky about the date? I got tickets to Tokyo a couple years ago for a thousand round-trip and that's about as far."

"Um, I don't usually work in dollars, remind me how much that is in terms of, like, meals?"

"...a hundred? Three hundred, if you're getting them at the grocery store not a restaurant?"

Probably a lot to steal on her way out. Not to mention that anything that might connect her with real people who can tell lies might actually have a guard on hand who can understand the relevant concepts.

"I think I should try to make a thousand dollars legitimately and I'm not entirely sure how."

"Well, I know Starbucks is hiring, they have a sign up."

"Thank you. Where's Starbucks?"

"Right on the corner. I used to go there for coffee in the mornings before I got the espresso machine."

    Her husband comes down the stairs. "Janice?"

"Morning, honey. This is Teru, she's my old friend, she's going to be staying for a bit."

     "I'm annoyed and feel slightly emasculated because you decided that without me."

"Sorry, honey, it was spur of the moment. I did tell her that she could stay until you got sick of her."

    "See, that I feel is making me out to be the bad guy."

"What's your least favorite chore? I'd like to make you happy I'm here and if I can't do that I have other options."

"- take out the trash, keep the kids quiet during game time, don't get into any trouble, and we'll call it a deal."

"If you'll show me how you take the trash out here."

Sure. You move the big bins out to the front on Thursday, and you put the household bins in before you move the big ones out. Some people recycle because they like to feel conscious of the environment, but it's kind of a waste of time under most reasonable assumptions about the environment.

This place is amazing. Why can't it have real people. Why can't it have her brother. Why can't Sesat have slaves to remove the trash this promptly, and machines for the laundry, and janitors who dress almost as well as Teru.

Probably because it's not full of... fairy slaves... or something.

She will not waste her time feeling green. She'll just take the trash out and cause the machine to do the laundry.

The guest bedroom has an attached bathroom and a large closet that's full of boxes.

The kids are 8 and 5, and mostly like to play Playstation when they're done with their homework; they take Janice's friend showing up in stride. The Starbucks will train her in using their coffee machines to make orders for customers, though they can't pay in cash and need her to have a bank account set up they can deposit money into. 

Well, then, she will go to a bank and check whether she can get an account legitimately.

She hates Starbucks. This seems less than maximally relevant but she does anyway. She listens to what her coworkers have to say about it before deciding whether to admit to this.

Some of them hate Starbucks, and say so! There seems to be no expectation to not say that, possibly because it's not clear these people are capable of not saying things they think. Most of her coworkers think Starbucks is okay. If you really hate it you could always get a job somewhere else.

She can get a bank account! They want to know her name and age and address and whether she's defaulted on any loans in the past and then they'll sign her right up.

She gets her bank account. She claims to find Starbuck's moderately annoying. She admits to hating coffee after she's tried it. She starts conversations that she expects will get her coworkers talking about their educations and how the bizarre local conveniences work.

How much of this will it take to have a thousand dollars?