"They're a property of touchable solids.  And every other form of matter that exists around here, by my best guess, except maybe the suns' interiors.  Those could be plasma, or just some weird magic thing."

"Well, if you get it working and can demonstrate cool things I'm sure that will get some attention."

"Hopefully.  I'm not actually sure of the mechanics of electrical motors, is the annoying thing, but I do have some miscellaneous ideas that should be workable.  Introducing the modern bicycle, maybe.  Definitely seeing if I can introduce indoor plumbing and air conditioning.  ...could probably make a water heater if I tried, for that matter...mmm."

"You seem to have... too many projects."

"It's the ADHD.  And the number of seemingly easy-ish interventions, but mostly the ADHD.  My brain is just Like This when it finds exciting things."

"It seems to me like it would be better if you reined that in."

"When I've actually established myself enough to have priorities, I'm pretty sure it basically will, but when it's all just ideas?  My brain goes wild."

"...if you say so." He looks at an hourglass in his window. "Office sand's almost over, do you eat normal things?"

"I think I do?  ...I'll probably have to test that.  Damn.  What was that procedure...Though honestly I don't give the idea that somehow I can breathe your air and recognize you as human and translate chemical names but can't eat your food much credence.  ...Not really a soup fan, and I just don't drink alcoholic beverages, but those are preferences, rather than allergies."

"I wasn't going to treat you to drinks," he assures her, and he flips over another, larger hourglass and shows her to a cart that sells wraps.

"Yeah, I just don't know what your societal alcohol norms are yet so I'm being cautious."

Wraps are good.  ...How's their food handling standards, incidentally?  She might want to nuke it, just to be sure.

The cart guy is not washing his hands and his mouse cage hasn't been cleaned out in a while.

Upon processing this, she looks forlornly at the wrap, then tries to calculate some things.  "...okay, nevermind, found my first project: public sanitation.  Don't leave poop near food, that's just asking for trouble!  It smells bad for a reason, for fuck's sake!  And people should wash their damn hands before doing food stuff!  Nobody wants to eat dirt!  ...Okay some people want to eat dirt sometimes but that's in and of itself a medical condition indicating severe nutrient deficiencies, leaving aside the -- fucking goddammit you totally don't have anything resembling germ theory around here do you, I'll be lucky if you have penicillin.  Or indeed even the same general bacterial species, because it's not like I brought cultures with me...Right.  Boil anything you drink before drinking it, that kills off most of the stuff that makes you sick."

"Now please keep an eye on me while I do something kind of stupid to make sure the food doesn't kill me.  ...Probably doesn't kill me.  I'm not sure about whether food poisoning goes away if you heat the food up afterwards, but honestly I kinda doubt it does, so, fuck."

At which point she uses the many dangly zippers on her suitcase as heat sources, to heat her wrap until it's over 160°F.

"Ow.  Ow.  Ow.  Fucking ow.  I do not like this, and I like the alternative options even less.  Foodborne illness is bad!  Fuck..."

At least it was only a few fingers exposed to Really-Fucking-Cold for approximately no time, but...fuck.  She does not like this.

"If we get sick, we can... stop. Being sick," says Wheat, slowly.

The cart owner is giving her a weird look. "Wash my hands in what? We're in the street!"

"Bet you could fit a tiny hand-pump - well, foot-pump - sink-and-reservoir in the cart somewhere, use it before shift-start.  Even washing just with water would help.  And honestly, I can't hold it against you; it took forever for the place I'm from to seriously notice public health problems and start making public health solutions happen.  I'm a long way from home right now."  And the actually useful advice delivered, she has a rant to get wrapped up in!  "But apparently, instead of mitigating the cause, somehow y'all troport away the fucking effects; I give up on attempting any logic whatsoever about troportation, it just does whatever for reasons.  Okay I can probably reason about troporting materials but the internal logic of biotroportation just really kind of isn't.  What was I expecting?  When you can take a person, take another person, and stick them in a metaphorical blender that somehow nonetheless enforces a strict, stark separation between their consciousnesses that's apparently mission-critical to awakeness, there are no fucking rules!  I give up!"

"...Please do excuse her; she means well, but expresses it poorly.  This is a rather decent wrap, even by the absurd standards of back home."

"They're conscious at the same time," Wheat mutters to the cart owner, ushering her away from the cart. "And very strange. I'm sorry."

"Money's money," shrugs the cart guy, though he's inspecting the coins a bit minutely.

The 'and very strange' line prompts a wry snort from probably-Ophelia.  "Yes, that we most certainly are.  My apologies for the - dramatics, once again."

Annnnd exit stage left.

"She is quite incensed at the temerity of the world to fail to make sense, it seems.  And wondering how the implications of this nonsense impact troportations of metamorphic rock e.g. granite."

"I'm not a geologist."

"We're aware, and were not expecting knowledge regardless; the problem - or, the confusion - stretches wider than rocks alone, but metamorphic rocks were the first thing we thought of when we went searching for 'visibly heterogenous material, made of inclusions, that is still The Same Substance'."

"I'm - as I am so often - not really following you."

"I will try to explain more thoroughly; it seems that there is almost a consistent flaw in transmission between the local style of communication and our own patterns of thought.

"Where we are from, and we would not know for sure without a microscope but can certainly check with a glassmaker's assistance - oh, do remind us about...what was the name of it...something about floating molten glass atop a dense liquid to make particularly sheer panels - regardless, with a microscope, we can confirm that cellular biology as we understand its nature hasn't suddenly been translated, or find out that it has, which would be interesting but also frustrate our dear researcher because that's more she must throw out...

"Anyway.  The thing about troporting disease, is that it is like touching this wrap, and troporting out specifically the lettuce.  The lettuce is in a sense its own entire set of objects, as diseases are their own incredibly tiny organisms, as the flecks of granite are their own tiny crushed-together rocks, and yet, at least one is somehow troportable if it is within a delicious burrito, which does not, to us, make sense - we are given to understand that partial troportation is simply an impossibility, the way it has been explained, and troporting only a subset of material is partial troportation.  For example, touching granite, and then rearranging the fragment patterns.

"This does not even delve into the question of if troporting 'is granite' to some intermediaries and back again will preserve the flecking patterns somehow; that speaks to troportation having a memory if so, and plausibly true-random generation if not."

"Well, those sound like things you can do your own experiments on - not the thing with the glass, but I still really think you won't get along with the glassblower I use -"

"We could write down instructions, rather than meet in person.  That also generates a record, which we prefer to have, especially in matters of business."

"That might work."