"Then, given the opportunity, we'll certainly try doing so.  ...Do you know any troportation researchers, speaking of troportation research?  And - hm.  We're quite curious, but equally wish to avoid prying, into why you expect us to not get along with your glassblower."

"Doesn't like it when people don't get to the point and then stop talking. The university has some troportation research but I don't personally know the folks."

"Ahh.  Yes, she likely wouldn't enjoy a full nerd ramble.  If we speak in person, I would suggest requesting either Diana or Sylvia as intermediary slash interlocutor; both trend towards goal-focused curtness."

"That might work, I don't have your whole cast of characters in there down to be sure."

The 'cast of characters' comment prompts a small smile, as if she's laughing at a private joke.  "We'll keep it in mind, on our end."

"Do you have... any mice?" Wheat asks, after a silence.

"...We do not, no.  It is likely that we should acquire some, or equivalent drowsing-fodder.  ...The animal welfare people back home would pitch a fit about the mice, regardless of medical necessity.  I'm given to understand that they need a bit more space than being kept in pockets or in desk-top cages would provide, and have other care needs if you desire they have happiness, though one imagines that there's been significant selective breeding pressure.  Still, that's something for later."

"...I'm not even going to ask," says Wheat. "I can give you a couple and lend you my travel cage, and hopefully that'll tide you over till they've had babies you can use, but drowse them as little as you can get away with while staying awake to start, okay? Usually you want to rotate among more than two, they need to sleep for themselves as well as you."

"Indeed.  How often do most people drowse their mice, anyway?  If I analogize sands to hours, I'm still good for - ...hmm, when did I...Before I went university-wards, and then that was about three before you, and your office sand was one..."

"At least eight hours more, I think.  Plausibly twelve or more if I push for it, especially if I find something interesting.  So about six sands.  Do you have a care guide?  I do want to make sure my mice are appropriately fed."

"Mice will eat troported food, if you save the last crumb of your wrap there and swap it - or, uh, let me do it, it's slightly more complicated than swapping sizes - with a rock or whatever, you can leave that in with them and they'll eat that."

"You've got to make sure that you focus on the actual nutritive qualities, I presume, because troportation just bashes reality into the shape you want until reality gives, and there's less metaphorical force required for 'rock that behaves like food' than there is for 'rock-sized food item', am I right?"

"I don't know what metaphorical force means, but yeah, there's several steps to make sure the nutrition comes across. It's not tasty but mice aren't picky."

"It's not supposed to mean anything in particular, just be something that helps with visualizing what I'm imagining.  In this case, trying to - ball up fabric so it fits in a basket, or something similar.  What are those steps, incidentally?"

"I think if you try to do it yourself you'll wind up with a weird deficiency, I took a class on it and I remember the checklist but not how to teach it."

"...The more I learn about troportation, the less I understand about troportation."

"Sounds like a problem," says Wheat, reaching into a junk heap that appears to be left out for just this purpose and turning a shard of glass into a chunk of bread with the last crumb of his wrap. He walks her back to his office and pulls a couple mice out of the cage under the desk and finds his travel cage to put a male and a female into for her with the bread.

"I'm sure I'll have my understanding catch up to my knowledge eventually, but it's rather disconcerting.

"...It's just occurred to me that I have no idea how one teaches troportation.  Can you, like, metaphysically hover over someone's shoulder and watch them?  Or check their work somehow?"

She'll take the cage.

"...no, not really."

"...well, that's certainly a thing."

"I guess." He fills the water bottle in the mouse cage. "Well. I have a class to teach. Good luck."

"And to you as well."

She may as well head back to the library, then, and see if the troportation section can resolve her abject bemusement at its general methodology.

The troportation section thinks she's picking it up pretty quickly, at least out of a reference class of five year olds.

She has lots of experience with puzzle games, good memory, and a strong kinesthetic sense; this probably helps.

Nonetheless, she is still confused, in that she continues to fail to build accurate models of troportation's rules; has anyone done that?

There are lots of rules! Solid objects only, you have to touch them with bare skin, that sort of thing. There is absolutely not secretly a physicist who wrote a treatise about how it interacts with electrons, though.

No, no, not like that; she's not looking for limitations on how one can troport.  Those are reasonably straightforward.  She's trying to figure out if there's rules about what you can troport.