Jean's universal translator, which has now in fact had time to pull a corpus, gives it to him as a stardate.

...well. A spatio-temporal anomaly, then. If only he'd been a better student of history. He's ... somewhere in between the Eugenics Wars and the Bell Riots? What is he supposed to do with that information.

...he knows exactly what he's going to do with that information.

"Can you direct me to the nearest live-action theater?"

" - the ballet? I think there's one downtown."

"Marvelous, thank you -- how do I get downtown...?"

"There's a subway, or taxis, or you could walk."

"All right -- thank you very much -- ah, is there a way out of here that's not through the window?"

"There is," she says seriously. "Through the door." She points. "And then you'll want to take the elevator down. Do you know how elevators work? Asking that seems condescending but you seem incredibly ignorant."

"I would be delighted to answer your question," Jean says, brightly, "but I fear I am ignorant even of what an elevator is."

"Wow, okay. How about I help you get down to the street level, then."

Elevators are summoned by pressing a button, like so. Then you step inside them, like so, and press 'L'.

"Oh, it's like a turbolift -- it's charming -- how do you tell it where to take you?"

"Well, I pressed L, for the ground level. If you were going to a different floor you'd press a different button."

Jean immediately succumbs to the universal human impulse to press all the buttons.

"What is the matter with you? You have impulse control more characteristic of a five year old!"

Jean thinks this is hilarious.

"Come now, you can't tell me you've never wanted to do the same."

"I have certainly wanted to do the same but I haven't done it because I have impulse control characteristic of a grown adult!"

"A waste of perfectly good impulse control, if you ask me."

"I didn't."

The door opens on every floor.

Jean fails to appear even slightly abashed about this.

"Thank you for your help!" he says, when they finally reach the ground floor. "I hope the concert is as lovely as you are."

(Then he walks face-first into the door of the building. It isn't even glass.)

"- good luck, you'll need it," she says, and then leaves.

It is hardly his fault that her door is broken!!

Jean wanders around the ground floor, attempting to find a non-broken door. Surely one of these doors will open when he -- more cautiously -- walks up to it.

No, you have to open them. With the handle.

With the what now?

...it does eventually occur to Jean that perhaps those objects are meant for grasping, and from there it only takes a few minutes' experimentation before he figures the door out.

Then he'll find himself on the streets of Chicago! They're kind of grubby, and it's windy, and it's rush hour; there's lots of traffic. Billboards say things like "Underground Ballet. Rated 'pretty good for a first try' by critics and if enough people don't come see it on the strength of that rating, we won't get the chance to improve." and "Ziperidol. It's an incredibly effective anti-nausea medication and we want to make it widely available in stores but it's only approved for cancer patients right now. If you are a cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy there's a 91% chance you'll be really glad you saw this ad, based on our study of 200 patients in two different cities."

...advertising has come a long way in the last century.

Well. Even if the ballet is disastrous, it's still an authentic turn-of-the-millennium ballet.

Jean wanders in search of someone to buttonhole who doesn't look like they're in too much of a rush.

Tourists, with a map and clunky box camera?

Woman pacing angrily outside a restaurant?

Security guard outside a fancy building, standing at attention though no one's going in or out?

The tourists have a map, which seems promising. (A paper map! Like they're pirates!)

"--excuse me, I seem to have gotten myself terribly lost. Do you know how to get downtown from here?"