She awakens in a bed in a relatively small hospital room, wearing nothing. She's hooked up to an array of machines, including a recognizable IV, and is tucked into the blankets. There is a large fox plushie sitting at the side of the bed within arm's reach. There's also a side table on that side, which seems to have drawers and also a hinged, book-sized computing device that looks a bit like an old Nintendo DS only a little chunkier and with more buttons on it.

A nurse wearing dark blue scrubs is sitting in a chair by the door, tapping away on a similar computing device to the one by her bed.

Awakening in a strange place training kicks in. Ground and center. Start from your core and work your way out. Heartbeat? Check. Breathing? Check. All my parts where they should be? Check. Then after Storm gets past touching her finger tips and wiggling her toes she opens her eyes.

That's a cool deck. Stormy will not sit up and disturb her IV. Instead, she's going to feel around where her hand naturally lays for instructions and look around her immediate vicinity for the same. Failing that, she'll address the... person in the strange smock. Something like what a painter might wear as a protective garment? A bolt of panic hits her at the image of herself comically spurting so much blood that they need a painter's smock for protective gear. Storm takes a deep breath and let's it pass through her until only she remains.

"Hi?"

The nurse gets out of her chair and slips her device into a roomy pocket in her scrubs. "Hello! You seem to have taken a nasty bump, darling. Can I ask you some questions?" 

And if Education doesn't stop her she'll take a patient history, move on to a detailed medical history, and then start asking some more pointed personal questions.

Questions Education will be asked include "do you have a standard contraceptive implant" and "where do you come from" and other such similar things.

"Sure, I don't mind." Overly inquisitive doctors is kinda what you expect in a hospital after all. 

Stormy will feel around for writing as they talk. Obviously, people would use the same alphabet for braille and visual writing. Her gear should be stowed nearby. That means she should be able to find it with her fingers. Inventory, assuming any of it survived: One pair of digital grey Velcro calf high moccasins with break apart scissors tucked in boot knife style. One pair digital grey socks. One pair digital grey boy shorts configured for penis-havers. One digital grey MOLL-E style cargo skirt. One digital grey MOLL-E style tank top covered in patches and pockets. Various random gear- flash lights, condoms, one of those multi tool cards, etc.-  One deck, the "butterfly knife" style that only shows the braille display and the five-by-three button keyboard by default, but has the secondary display and her backup ID available to pop out by hitting the correct buttons. One ID card consisting of a full face picture on one side, a quad of different style barcodes/QR codes repeated three times on the back, and braille writing with her name and database identification number physically stamped into it.  One hat that has a lock pick set in the hat band. One ring, which also has a mini lockpick/saw in it. One pair glasses with AR display and bone conducting headphones. No backpack, she dropped that when she picked up the rock.

She doesn't have any medical issues other than being trans and a bit of myopia which she had corrected via Lasik. She's on the standard hormone implant, which has about five years left. She's not on any type of birth control other than condoms. She's between polycules at the moment. She was thinking of getting one of the reversible vasectomies but hadn't committed to it yet.

She's from Little Coldbrook, which she expects the nurse to be able to find with no additional information. 

The nurse produces her things for her when she starts reaching for the side drawer, preventing her from having to reach for it. There is braille, but it seems to be a different standard from what she's used to.

The nurse is surprised to hear she doesn't have a contraceptive implant and recommends she gets one (not that she has to have one but it's odd for her to not have one.) The deck is unfamiliar to the nurse as well, and the bar-codes on her ID card don't scan. The backup ID seems reasonably standard though. All the multi-tools suggest she's pretty in deep with a conspiracy of some kind, as does the unusual deck, so probably the barcode one is a conspiracy ID that means something to someone, but she hasn't been claimed by whatever organization she's running with right now. Bad manners of them but the nurse will do what she can. Apparently she isn't registered in Asterion's databases and the nurse doesn't know where Little Coldbrook is. Probably an assumed location; the nurse doesn't take too long over it. 

"I know you're probably running with some organization I don't know of, but they're not claiming you right now, whoever they are," the nurse says after a few more questions. "I'm not going to ask questions about the custom deck or why you have so many lock-breaking tools; hope you're having fun with whatever game you're playing. That said, you don't seem to be registered in the standard places - are you under a Face right now and have registrations you're not telling me about, or should I try to register you? We get immigrants from outside the stepping-path sometimes, but if I look up your biometrics more seriously I might get a hit for your real ID and I don't know if you want that."

Stormy will get the implant if it's the default-recommended? Did that change while she wasn't looking. Tiny odd things are starting to accumulate in the back of her mind. 

Running? Face? If she ended up in a hospital during a LARP that... well, would make a stupid amount of sense, actually. She's still not groking all the terminology, though. "Uh, sorry I'm not following all the jargon. I'm a Lancer but I'm not in game right now. I don't expect them to need to claim me." The rest of that must have been in game jargon. Stormy will...make sure she can disconnect from the sensors and IV then get dressed.

"Alright, I'll run your real ID then..."

She checks it quickly and shakes her head. "Looks like you're not registered. Welcome to the Constellation of Asterion, Miss Storm. Can you check that your gauntlet interfaces with the local net, we've had problems with that before and I'm not certain you'll be able to access your life-float account without a reliable internet connection - actually, you can just take a hospital clamshell, we're authorized to give them out to new immigrants." 

She passes Education a second copy of her chunky book-like deck, this one in a soft rose-gold color. "You can keep that at least until you get your current deck interfaced - no obligation to return it, but it'll be billed to your life-float account if you still have it six months from now."

Constellation of Asterion? That sounds like an airship name. Probably not military, those tend to have names like Unnatural Disaster or whatever. Explains the small room. Stormy will try and interface with the net. And fail And notice she's confused when she looks for the hard connection.

"Life-float?" Hell, immigration? Billed? Something is not right. "Sorry, I'm still disoriented. Are we on a ship?" 

The confusion only deepens as she looks at the clamshell. The keyboard is all wrong, those look like legacy connections maybe? 

There is a hard connection in her bed, but the connector doesn't match her deck's connector at all. The cable looks to be fiber optic?

The nurse looks at her with a questioning gaze. "Uh, they might have called it something else where you come from - you know, your UBI account?" If she's not familiar with UBI then the chance she's from somwhere terrible like Rising-Flame Derim is unfortunately high, though the tech looks too modern...

"We're in Rancala, Texcala, and this is a land-bound hospital?"

"Ah, thanks. Haven't heard of that. I must be farther from home than I thought." Or maybe kidnapped and being gaslit. Or Isekai. Odds of Isekai are one in two billion plus one. Odds of being gaslit vs just in a very odd hospital... hard to figure out, they're both very rare. Stormy is going to quietly start looking for clues. Meanwhile... "What sort of set up do we need for my UBI? Or anything else I need to do?" 

"You should be registered now, you can access your life-float account from your clamshell's main menu." 

If she boots it she'll be tossed into a startup menu with several options. 

[ARCHIVE ACCESS

LIFE-FLOAT ACCOUNT

CONTACT AN OATHBOUND ADVISOR

DEVICE STORAGE]

Huh, weird. Okay, she will poke around that... while she eats. "Thanks. Is there a cafeteria around I can hit up while I get oriented? I should make up a todo list." 

Stormy can walk and talk and type at the same time. She'll click on device storage first, then the life-float account.

There is a hospital cafeteria and it will feed her for free. The food is kind of... not that great, though. She could probably cook better than the chefs who prepared this. They have some decent vegan options including lab meat, but everything's kind of underspiced. Local favoured condiments seem to be a bell pepper spread called avjar, siracha sauce, and lots of salt. 

There's maybe an unusual concentration of people with dyed hair in the cafeteria, if she's not used to hanging out with people with hair shades of pink and blue and green that look fairly natural. 

The device reports that it has about 2 terabytes of onboard storage, which is presently almost empty, being only occupied by:

- the standard operating system (which goes by PEACHPRO)

- a small library of, apparently, "classic trance hits" which is about 200 songs large in a compressed format called .OPUS. 

- an LLM image generation program specializing in detailer controlnet management made accessible, called "Dreampainter", which occupies about 16gig of space on the card.

Both the loaded items have the look of the kind of thing that's loaded by default, and have a prominent "discard archive" buttons next to them if she should wish to dispose of them. 

The device also gives her a settings menu she can check its specs in; apparently it has 8 gig of DDR4-equivalent RAM, a good CPU for a 2020 gaming desktop, and a graphics card with similar specs. The battery capacity, however, reports an expected time to next charge of 130 hours with moderate use. 

What the fuck is wrong with the food? Did their local quartermaster fuck up? Are they cut off from the global supply chain? Did I land in a world that doesn't know how to cook?

The dyed hair doesn't phase Stormy... although there's maybe a lack of ears and tails to go with it? She's used to at least some visible furries.

The specs are... odd. It feels like an older device? Unfortunately, Stormy doesn't have enough computer knowledge to really dig into it. That's a lot of battery capacity though. Not an impossible amount, but a lot. Is that why it's so big? Why the specs feel low? Either way, Stormy hits up the "life float" next as she grabs something to eat. She doesn't avoid meat, but she will assume it's imitation. 

There are people with ears and tails around; the common models seem to be animatronic, able to stand up or lie flat or wiggle based on the wearer's mood, but not bone-conduction for some reason. Usually they incorporate a small sensor on the forehead. 

She is informed she is owed one year's backlog payments as a new immigrant and is given an account with 15,000 dollars in it, and informed that her current life-float payment is 1200 dollars per month, that average rent with utilities for a one-person apartment is about $600 a month and average groceries are about $300 a month. Group living situations can of course be cheaper, as is living out of a nookhouse. There are links to advisory articles on these facts. 

Furries are good. They're like a species you can tell that a forest is healthy when they're around.  All the tech here is just slightly off, though. It's like watching an old movie, almost. What else is on the todo list after food?

Stormy will check out the life float.

...Oh. That's not ground rent accounting. That sounds like actual money. That's bad. She's going to try and look up what happens if your life float account hits 0.

It is in fact possible to get evicted from a nookhouse or apartment for nonpayment, but there are some fall-backs in place; the government has programs for communal housing for people who have issues managing finances. She's unlikely to be outright homeless even if she runs out of money - she'd have to badly fumble getting onto government assistance to have no housing available for her - but might have to live in structured housing and deal with educational programs that think she needs help managing her finances if she can't cover her own expenses reliably despite the life-float. There are also ways to get increased life-float allowance through disability claims and other welfare programs.

(Also, has she considered possibly earning money by selling her skills, knowledge or body?)

Stormy has been doing eight to ten shifts a week at the factory since she was 15! She knows how to put in an honest days work! Although it's not obvious if factory work is the best use for her. Or if she's going to get fair compensation... 

She notices that she's acting as if she's actually been yeeted to another world without actually checking. Is that nurse still around?

She can find the nurse pretty easily, yeah. 

"Hello, is there something you need?"

"I need to test my gear. It's going to be loud. Is there somewhere outside I can go where it won't bother anyone?" And where she can look for GPS signal, take some star measurements. What if they jam the emergency beacon? If they can jam that and GPS they deserve to kidnap her. 

"Uh, we're in the middle of the city here, but there's a park in the block across the street?" 

O_O That... okay, there's no way they can fake a city if they're gaslighting her. Right? That's just definitive? 

If you are certain, check.

"Uh, okay. I'm going to go do some things. Thanks for all your help!" And she's off to the park to find a stick. And figure out what the hell this new context she finds herself in means. Don't get ahead of yourself... but maybe consider two possibilities. 

There is a road between her and there, which is relatively quiet at this moment but does possess a crosswalk and traffic light. In the distance she can make out an elevated train on rails. The buildings are beautiful for a modern-day Earth, with fox statues perching on the corners of rooftops and golden, mandala-like patterns inscribed on each skyscraper. The density is about that of Earth's New York, and the hospital is in its own block surrounded by small gardens of hardy flowers and bushes. 

The park across the street is roughly hexagonal in shape, and wide enough that she can't see where it ends; the streets route around it, as do the trains. It's densely wooded, even with some broad-leafed oaks that must be a few hundred years old, but has quite a few footpaths cut through. There's a river that cuts through it in a bow-shaped arc; in the centre of that arc there's a small gazebo that's currently occupied by a half-dozen women in different states of undress; they don't seem to be having sex though, more just laying in the sun and petting each other. They've got some bottles of an orange liquid labelled "Peach Sunset" and are passing them back and forth to drink from them. Distantly, she can catch the words: "Ooh, an indirect kiss!", followed by laughter. 

Most everyone else in the area is clothed, mostly in pastel-coloured enshrouding cloaks in pinks and peaches. Some wear their cloaks open, showing maxi skirts with patterns of flowers and trees, along with canvas and faux-leather bags and v-necked t-shirts; others wear them closed, only showing heavy-looking leather boots beneath them, festooned with buckles. For those who have decks out, they mostly look similar to Education's loaner. There is one exception - a woman sitting down by the gravelly shore of the river on a large stone. She's currently topless, her shirt on the rocks next to her in the sun. She seems to be sunbathing.

There's a noticeable lack of airships in the sky, which is currently full of puffy white clouds and a blazing sun that almost burns to the touch. 

Across the road from the park, down a block, she can see a convenience store, followed by a neon sign for something called the "Peach Lounge", and the city continues on into the distance, signs for libraries, bookstores and other businesses continuing on. 

Down the road in the other direction the city gets less dense, and seems to separate out into walled compounds taking up whole blocks, each with a large house big enough to hold a few dozen people, surrounded by courtyards, some of which are fenced and locked with wooden gates, some of which have fences but also signs out saying "all welcome", and some of which don't even have fences around them at all. She can also see what looks like a cupboard of some sort standing out by the street, with a hand-painted sign on the side saying LENDING ROCK LIBRARY - GIVE A ROCK TAKE A ROCK.