"Oh, shoot, I can never remember that stuff. Mel? When's the spring equinox?"

        "March 20th, 21st, depends on the year."

"September 19th, 1972!"

"Great. So you can access your bank account with your card, which I'm going to print out for you in a moment here, or by entering your name and date of birth. No one else can use your card, if you want to let someone else access your funds you need to get them their own card as an authorized user. Funds are insured up to $200,000 because we are members of the FDIC."

"Thank you. Let's check if there's a loan appointment available?"

"On it. - okay, there's one today with Anders, but he's a bit of an asshole, if your case is kind of complicated you might want to wait for Suvets, who's a bit more generous with loaning to people who look moderately likely to default."

"What default rate is considered moderately likely? My case is kind of complicated but I have reason to believe that I am very unlikely to default, relative to your typical customers. Are loan decisions made by single people such that there is not a review process standardizing rates between Anders and Suvets?"

"They get some flexibility within broad guidelines and get bonuses at the end of the year depending who was more predictive, because there are so many intangibles involved in figuring out if someone's a good credit risk," she rattles off as if from memory, "or that's what's in the handbook, anyway, I couldn't tell you how well it actually works, I only started here a couple months ago. Uh, I think normal interest rates for an unsecured loan with no history are - 10%? I can't figure out the default rate from there but maybe you can, you seem sharp."

"I have a credit history, but my old bank does not at present exist so it's hard to get the records and we'd be going off of my memory. I don't know if that makes this complicated enough to prefer Anders instead of Suvets. When is Suvets' next appointment?"

"Do you have a particularly bad memory? Lots of clients go off memory, that's fine. Suvets' next appointment is Thursday, looks like."

"If I take the appointment with Anders today, does that preclude taking the appointment with Suvets on Thursday?"

"They usually won't see a customer the other branch agent declined for a loan, it's not really worth their time on average."

She doesn't love it but she can in fact attest to plenty of good reasons to give her a loan, so probably her worst case is getting worse terms than she'd like, in which case she can always refinance later when she has more of a record in this world.

"Ugh, fine. I will take the appointment with Anders."

"Cool, I'll put you in. You seem kind of weird so I'll make a note of that too."

"I am kind of weird so that's a good call! What time is the appointment?"

"3."

Then she will be back at three for her appointment with Anders.

He looks her up and down grumpily. "Are you employed?"

"I was employed until recently, but am currently unemployed because my last employer doesn't exist right now. My previous salary was around $327,680 annually if I'm doing the currency conversions right. I think the transferable skills from that job give me at minimum between $131072 and $163840 annually in earning potential working as a salaried employee for positions I am confident I could get within a few months. I plan to pursue those jobs, and expect to change plans only if I expect the risk of me being unable to repay my loans due to that choice to be less than one in two hundred fifty six. I self-assess as having at least ninety-six point ninth percentile skill at risk-evaluation relative to the local population. I have twenty-one years of credit history and have never missed a payment or defaulted."

Blink blink blink. 

"Do you have savings or investment accounts with Chase or with another bank?"

"I did last week, but my bank has also ceased to exist in the same universe as me so those will not be available as collateral. If you are instead looking for evidence of propensity to save rather than consume, I had around $3,145,728 saved."

" - okay, you're a good candidate for a loan and everything else is not strictly my business, but your bank ceased to exist in the same universe as you???? Actually maybe that is my concern if it happens to my bank that I work for!"

"It was in a different regulatory environment, I don't think you have to worry."

"I'm looking for a loan or line of credit of around $16,384 to cover a few months' expenses, but might be interested in a larger loan if the terms are good. What can you offer me?"

"I'm sorry, I'm distracted from my job by how incredibly weird you are and it's difficult to be professional when you have no idea what's going on and it involves alternate universes. I'll probably recover in a couple of minutes and be able to look at loans for you."

She was really hoping he'd assume 'ceased to exist in the same universe as me' would just mean 'ceased to exist'. She really doesn't want to lie to these people!

(If she were being properly virtuous here she would be avoiding deliberately misleading them but that would make her life so much more difficult while she's still figuring things out and getting oriented! She does not want to commit to being a famous visitor from another reality if she can avoid it.)

"I'm sorry, I know I am weird relative to most people you're likely to meet here and I talk in confusing ways sometimes. I also ceased to exist in the same universe as my great-grandfather when he died, and my favorite childhood cold dessert place when it went out of business. It just the sort of thing that happens sometimes! Usually less surprisingly and life-changingly than when it happened to my employer and my bank within a week of each other, but."

(Was that crossing a line? That was kind of crossing a line.)