"Huh. Which kind of magic?"

"The one where they wish for people to be able to do things." He can't quite not sound weirded out by how fake that sounds.

"Those are all in Mîr, I'm not an expert, but I can try to do a search..." Compute compute. "Almost everyone has a scholarship or subsidy when they enroll but the sticker price in - will the rate in Mîr carats mean anything to you -"

"Not yet but I suppose I'll have to learn how much those are at some point."

The tapir turns her screen around to display the figure.

"And... how do the scholarships work?"

"If someone with money is invested in you learning to teleport, or people like you in some way learning to teleport, they'll foot part of the bill, or all of it. There's this list here, but it says it's incomplete - if you're a species or background they want more represented, say, like if it were me I could get one for being a familiar."

Nod. It's not obvious how to acknowledge anything about anyone's species politely so he's just not going to say anything about that. He'll read the incomplete list in case any of it applies.

In addition to various species (none of them are "humans", more's the pity) there are scholarships and subsidies from various quarters for persons with disabilities, dozens of ethnicities and nationalities he's never heard of, various gender and sexual minorities, reds, ex-cons, anyone who has been a victim of these 17 adverse events, persons intending to go on to work for this or that or the other thing - oh, here's one that applies to him, somebody's kicking some money towards people from preindustrial societies.

He figured they might be, the better to assimilate all the savages and break their native communities, or however they think of what they're doing.

If it doesn't cover the whole cost he'll look into working for this or that or the other thing, and if that's not enough he'll figure out whether cutting off a hand would make him adequately disabled.

He asks the tapir familiar how to apply for it.

The tapir will help him fill out the form, and apply to prospectively work for whichever of the float teleporters of Vanda Nossëo, this dwarf company, or that bus system.

He'll apply to whichever of those is least associated with a specific government. Probably the dwarf company. How long is the indenture and is it one of those awful predatory ones where you somehow end up owing more rather than less as time goes on? Not that he'll turn it down on those grounds but it seems important to know.

He doesn't actually have to swear he'll work for them, just declare his intent under truth magic. He won't have to pay back the tuition, even if his plans change.

Wow. Well. He can honestly tell them he intends to work for them for some period of time unless something happens to make that unworkable.

They will accept that as soon as he has this statement notarized by any trusted wielder of the truth song and then he has his scholarship. It doesn't cover everything, but it covers most of it.

He can probably pick up enough odd jobs to cover the rest, right? They won't want an archer for anything but he has all his limbs and he can read.

Now how does he sign up for classes...

They have a website! If he wants to stay in campus housing they have that, meals provided.

They're totally just doing that to put all the people they're trying to constantly watch in a single convenient place, aren't they. But hey, it's very convenient.

It does look optional, but also convenient, yes! The next class cycle starts in two days.

Two days is enough time to find some kind of short-term gig and figure out how to show up as clean as someone who's going to spend the next two days sleeping rough can reasonably manage. He signs up for the next class cycle and googles "need a scribe tomorrow" and "short-term unskilled labor" and "safe places to camp for two nights right now".

No one needs a scribe tomorrow. Short term unskilled labor includes various temp agencies staffing places like caterers and housepainters; consumer focus groups; jury service for places that do that; and assistant/gofer for various academic fieldwork. There are lots of campsites on lots of planets with amenities ranging from "nothing near anything, great dark sky site" to "basically a hotel".

What on earth is academic fieldwork. Maybe he'll find out, if any of them want his help with it. He really shouldn't be hearing criminal cases here, even if they would for some reason allow him to, and he probably doesn't have useful information for a consumer focus group unless they specifically want to sell things in Sesat. He might as well try one of the temp agencies.

There's no way he can afford any amenities, great dark sky site it is.

This great dark sky site is on a lake and has a no artificial lighting of any kind after 9pm local time rule.

The temp agency interviews him real quick and then has him step in to take the place of an assistant to a landscaper; the usual assistant is on vacation and the landscaper needs someone to hold/retrieve/emplace stuff who can take direction more vague than what golems are good at like "hold that, no not that, that" and "give me the one that looks like a constipated snake".

He can identify constipated snake lookalikes and has never in his life wanted to be up later than that anyway. It's cool to try the kind of work ordinary people do, sort of a new perspective on things. The thing where the landscaper doesn't beat him at all despite not knowing he's anything special seems like a way it would be nice for everything to work for everyone, although maybe he's just better at everything including learning from verbal correction.

...That seems unlikely but he does ask, afterward, "Hey, I don't usually do this kind of work and I'm wondering how I stack up compared to what you're used to."

"I want my usual guy back, he can do more stuff independently and I spend less time yapping, but if you stuck around long enough you'd train up fine as far as I can tell."