"Oh! I'm so sorry! It's all right, that one was fine I think, I can do much more."

"-Hey, don't, it's fine. It's your water, not mine. Just seems like a waste."

...He stares at the deep green coloration on the testing strip.

"Huh. Wait, what? This is pure grade water! I can't afford to pay you market rate for that..."

All right Naevys, you're in another plane like you wanted, time to be smart and canny and not immediately die, like you will need to, Obviously In Hindsight!

"...That's all right! You can have that anyway for being so helpful and also if possibly you give me all the context on your plane that I'll need? I'm really not from around here!"

"Um. People in red uniforms are probably from Station Security. They're law enforcement. I think Mr. Wild will be better for helping you there. There is lots of counterfeit going on, be careful of that. Don't drink water you didn't make if you can help it. Don't go into the abandoned sections. They're pretty clearly sealed off. The dumping grounds is kind of dangerous but anyone is free to pick through it and take stuff. Or dump stuff there. This is the symbol of the Republic. These symbols mean various hazards- Radiation, disease, vacuum, poison... There are cameras around, they can let people see through them or record things. Don't be alone with anyone you're not pretty sure is human if you can help it, there are these fuckers called Augs, I don't know the full story but they kidnap people and turn them into more Augs, they don't quite act natural, moving funny or speaking in strange ways..."

He can go on like this for a few minutes, with steadily more 'um's.

...Red people enforce the law but she should trust Mr Wild instead? All right this plane is strange and has lots of problems and she should be on her guard and really should have sent people who know how to explore bizarre unknown wildernesses first! 

Oh all right there are dangerous voids and... An obscure Elvish term she's pretty sure she's heard before somewhere. 

...and fairies. 

Oh dear. 

"Thank you! That's so helpful! Please please keep the water, I really appreciate it!"

"-If you're sure? I could give you a fifty for it at least?"

A man - dark skin, watchful eyes, broad smile, tall, wearing mostly a black jumpsuit, carrying a knife at his side and a pistol at his other side, tromps into the commissary.

"Hiya! I'm here to escort a woman with pointed ears to Mr. Wild's office." He nods at Naevys. "Ma'am. Was there a spill-? Well, none of my business. The code word is 'gladius'. How are you doing today?"

"Hello! On balance very well, thank you! Excited because this is another plane, concerned that you don't have enough water and people might try to rob me, looking forward to meeting Mr Wild."

"Well, the job is to take you there, so I'm happy to help with that. Follow me and stick close, please. Probably nothing will happen, it very rarely does, but if trouble breaks out I might give you instructions. I would really appreciate it if you followed them, and especially if you don't question me about them until afterwards. Though I understand I'm just some guy to you. In fights things can move really fast. If there is a fight, please don't join in, just hide behind something solid or run away. Got it? Shall we be off?"

"Yes! Let's go!"

She does know how to duel with a sword and shoot a bow - she's not three years old - and she does have relevant skills like erecting magical barriers and controlling minds and hurling bolts of lightning and many others, but also she's not a battlemage and has never been in a real fight, like with anyone who'd do worse than tickle her, and it does not occur to her to offer an Abjuration or anything. He's a warrior, clearly, he knows what he's doing. She'll finger her wand and stick very close.

Well. He walks along the maze of metal corridors with her trailing behind him. Again and again the same cycle happens. Tired or worn peoples' eyes go to Naevys's face, then her rather insubstantial clothes, then to her escort, then firmly away, a conclusion drawn: Upper Decker slumming it with a guard.

Nobody tries anything.

His instructions were to take the route that goes out by the Dumping Grounds. He can't help but idly speculate why, internally. To show this presumable Upper Decker how shit things are down here?

For the most part, the station consists of row after row of narrow compartments and bays at the side of a long metal hallway. A lot of them have small windows facing the outside world, little stalls and shops selling food, or water, or toothpaste and other homewares, or medicine, or clothes, or tools and scrap, or weapons, or all of the above. Occasionally, brightly colored signs or even more rarely art interrupt the monotony.

Then their route takes them to the most open space so far on the station. A vast metal canyon stretching left and right, with floor after floor lined with staircases and the occasional skybridge. The metal floor some five flights of stairs below curves up gently in the distance. It's a little trippy. Down at the bottom of the open space is a chaotic pile of junk, trash, debris, and other synonyms for the same.

They pass a woman in a red uniform, who doesn't bother to do more than glance at them. Same conclusion as before. Merc escorting some rich girl; And she recognizes the merc. He's not a troublemaker.

"Alright, we're halfway there. We're going to go down two levels, then a while down the main atrium here, and Mr. Wild's office is just a few cors away spinwise."

That's an incredible quantity of metal! The whole place is made of it and it's like a castle, or bigger than castles these days. She's heard legends of places like this, deep under the ground, impossible places of impossible design, but even on another plane she didn't expect to see one right away.

The Dumping Ground smells, like old pennies and... pitch? She's not sure. ...Do they literally not have fire here? Is she going to need to give them that as well as water?

"All right. What's a 'cor' and what's 'spinwise'? Is this to do with how we're on a big spinning wheel, do you mean we're going... the direction it's spinning in?"

"Yep, precisely! A cor is one of the major branch corridors, like the one we just left. That's more distance at lower levels and less at higher levels, but here it's around six hundred feet. We just exited cor north ninety one, floor fifty five. We're going for cor north eighty six, floor fifty seven. Floor numbers go up as you descend in the lower levels. See those signs? Those will help you navigate. -Ah, when you're facing spinwise, 'north' is to the right and 'south' is to the left, by the way."

She doesn't need much mental arithmetic to know that's an even more serious amount of metal than she thought. "Thank you! Excuse me, do you know how long the longest corridors are, at the edge of the wheel? And how many there are all around? This is not at all like anywhere I've been before. Do places like this just... happen... or did you have to get all the metal from somewhere?"

"Haha... I'd have to look that up. You're trying to figure out how many megatons the station is? And yep, the station is about... Oh, they celebrated the hundred and fiftieth anniversary a while back, so around there. A whole lot of people had to mine the space rocks and smelt all the metal ore from them and shape it into beams and panels and everything else. The economy has gone really downhill since, though."

He gestures for her to follow down some stairs. "None of the elevators work in the lower levels by the way. Don't even try to use one. If someone says they do it's probably a trap."

She nods wisely. All great empires fall in the end; such is a fact of life. 150 years is recent, though, she'll have to keep an eye out for whatever killed them all. 

"Thank you!" She's making a note of all of this advice very carefully, and she's looking very hard around herself. 

She can handle stairs perfectly well, but all of this is starting to unnerve her. 

"What... happened down here? If you don't mind me asking?"

"...It's, above all else, neglect. Neglect, corruption, crime, and the failure of the free market system. Got a lot worse after HuaXing shut down their factories and moved all their equipment out. Over eight thousand jobs gone, and then all the jobs supported by those people buying goods and services from others. I'm not, like, an expert at this stuff, though. I think... Having a sort of slum was almost designed in. Small spaces are cheaper and fit more people. But I don't think the original builders pictured the lower levels as they are now."

...Are people not allowed to leave? She's not going to ask that in case they don't let her leave, for asking.

"That's so sad," she says instead, "to have - all this," she gestures at the station all around them, "- and not enough-" she doesn't actually really understand why labour is supposed to be so important, it's never come up before, "-not enough, for everyone."

"It is. Lots of things could be better if people just got along, made a plan, worked together to rebuild some of the infrastructure... But then the question comes out, who's going to be in charge? What do we do about the theives, the lazy, the undeserving? It's a tug of war in human nature between greed and altruism, hope and desperation. And people do fix up parts of the place. There are... Hmm, if you look at the history of politics. Seems like there's always ups and downs. Idealists. People who try to help. People who think their new idea for how to organize society will fix everything. And meanwhile, the people currently in charge... Well, if they really tried to fix things, spent resources on it, their rivals would backstab them. Because power is... Ah, I'm getting political. Should I stop?"

He's still keeping an eye out for trouble. They're walking spinwards now.

Wow, humans have so many issues. She's more impressed with the ones at home now. Unless that's just the influence of other races? No, there aren't that many elves around, and then it's mostly dwarves, even worse.

Elves don't have those problems. Why not? Maybe she could explain why acting that way is silly? She'd expect the Church to do that if it worked... maybe it does, and that's why humans aren't normally this bad. Or maybe she should just take over and make them fix everything... dominate any rivals who try to stop her, maybe...

"No, it's fascinating! Can't they... make sure their rivals would benefit too, or something?"

"Well, their rivals would benefit more by backstabbing the 'poor stupid idiot' who wants to help people. It's about who has power. Who has the guns? Who has access to the environmental systems and could vacuum the entire lower decks if push comes to shove, and use that as a threat to keep everyone in line? Theoretically people vote on seats in the Senate, but the only options to vote for are rich upper deckers who disagree whether the dock tax should be six percent or six point two five percent and ignore the lower decks as 'stabilized' or 'contained'."

Human societies continue to be terrifying. 

"That... doesn't happen where I come from." What do these people even get out of that kind of power? She doesn't ask, in case she gets an answer. This really seems like the kind of problem someone should be solving...

"If you were in charge, how you fix it? Assuming you don't get stabbed." Like if for example you're the only one with Abjurations. 

"Hmmmmmm. Well, first I'd actually think about it for a solid week. Not just thirty seconds. The charity programs don't really fix the problem. They help but are misguided in a lot of ways. You'd have to make a deal with the Revolution for sure, they'd probably demand a lot of the old guard get exiled. Fix up the water treatment plant properly. Fix up the power grid down here. Open up some mid and upper decks for people to move in and deal with the screamers who are terrified of new neighbors... Small business loans. There are brilliant people down here wasted digging through scraps. Give them a screwdriver and electronic parts and they'd build machines. All of this is hideously expensive, I'd hope I have a rich backer or someone I could make a deal with. Though, maybe the free market is the problem. They say lazzeis-faire is the worst possible economy... Except all the others that we've tried."

She wouldn't know about that. Elves don't really... do that, not for food, it would be like trying to start a market in air.

Actually, they're in the void, maybe there is no Air here. Maybe she's running up a bill. 

"Thank you! I don't know about that but I hope at least I can help with the water problems! Who are the Revolution?" They sound nice. She'd try to revolve this place too, in their position.