- Not… really, no, - Toy-Mun shakes her head. - But… if I had to wager a guess I'd say these are numbers?

"Yeah." He has no idea how impressive that is, actually; maybe Toy-Mun's home culture names floors. Actually, why would you have a reified convention of numbering floors if you didn't have elevators?

He presses '1'. No one else arrives in time. The doors close. "I just pressed the one for street level." There's a slight, almost imperceptible acceleration. "I'd say it's dickish of whoever implemented the translation . . . field . . . over you, not to also give you the ability to read, but that'd be presumptuous. For all I know, it's all enormously costly." Maybe Toy-Mun will want to remark on that. If not, he'll stop with the mentally taxing subjects of conversation and let Toy-Mun rest.

Toy-Mun shrugs, still looking at the number signs, clearly trying to remember them for later, then copies them to her notebook as they go down.
- These are certainly normally different spells, but I don't know how strong the transporter is and so whether they can support both. Or, perhaps, it is intentional - to let me learn your language anyway, through its writings, while not leaving me without any communication before I manage that. And… this goes two ways, I guess? I could teach you Common via writing, even if everything I say with my mouth gets translated.

"- at what the frick point will it stop translating, if I learn Common?" The question is rhetorical, but after he asks it he realizes that Toy-Mun may know something.

The elevator doors open into a ground floor that's . . . apparently mostly sidewalk. They're in a little steel-and-glass cubicle, open to the world and to several others of its kind, dotting the underside of the building. There's a computer kiosk here, though all electronics are currently tucked away discreetly under plastic shutters.

Outside, a couple dozen people walk or run past in lights cast from fixtures on the ceiling, lights held in their own hands, and lights from unseen sources that pool in walkways and against other big buildings' facades. Mostly, the people are alone, wearing backpacks, and headed somewhere quickly (yes, even the sixty-year-olds!) but not worriedly. Mostly, they're dressed plainly, for chilly weather, pants and coats and partial facemasks and sneakers. When someone's wearing something odd, it's boots or a hard hat or a utility belt or some kind of Large Pack containing Strangely-Shaped Equipment. Neither hairstyle (buzzed, waist-length, everything in between) nor clothing style seem to track size (sex?) or age at all, except that the people with the weirdest equipment tend to be the oldest.

The only thing audible is a faint rush. This place seems pretty well soundproofed. 

- No idea… - Toy-Mun responds and is then slienced by the view. - Wow. These are… all tall. Buildings, I mean. And well-lit. It wasn't as obvious from above.
The equipment seems unusual, both at the kiosk and in large packs on people.
- What is… sold here? - she asks carefully, pointing at the kiosk: the trappings were sufficient to recognize a selling place, but not its goods.

Only the feet of the closest buildings are visible, below the rim of the concrete ceiling of the rent-a-meeting-room building they're still under, so Toy-Mun must be making inferences.

He keeps his face very neutral. He's not sure what face he would be making otherwise. Earnest insistence? Reverent awe? Stupid smug pride about something he didn't create himself?

"Wait until you see the tops," he says, stupidly glibly.

"Oh, this is -" he undoes the main shutter revealing the computer terminal and keyboard, and flips a little switch. A welcome message glows in white letters on the screen. "It says, 'Welcome, Yan Meeting Space Rental Members. Please enter your customer code. Prospective customers, press YES.' It's for - messages to management, getting a temporary key, and stuff like that. You can also buy a membership here." It's also for signing in and out of your room so the staff know which ones are unoccupied for cleaning, but then Kwaiets would have to explain why he's not signing out of the Refutation's room right now.

Toy-Mun looks at the screen in clear awe.
- Magic, - they exhale silently. - No, wait, y'all were very insistent you don't have magic. How does this work?!

"It's - in fact very difficult and impressive-looking on the inside, sort of a gridded fascimile of - the tangle of 'biological cells' in your brain that makes you able to think, only this one's not as smart as a frog. It's - in principle you can do it with literal levers and switches but you need thousands and thousands of them to do anything complicated so this one is made of little tiny 'transistors' that function as - gates for the flow of electricity, which is just a kind of substance that can be elicited from all materials, some more easily than others, if you didn't know that."

Again he has the sense that he's giving away the Future too cheaply, too casually, and again he reminds himself that Toy-Mun is expected, for his part, to have similar flippancy with the insanely valuable secrets of his own strange Past. It still doesn't sit right with him, having everything be stored in informal social debt, which can be defaulted on at any time without recourse for the 'violated' party, but - with Toy-Mun being a hapless newcomer to the Future, with his entire employment with the Refutation being based on him being a hapless newcomer to the Future, Kwaiets can't see how to set up their 'tuition contracts' any other way.

Toy-Mun half-closes her eyes, clearly overwhelmed.
- Electricity. Like… the thing lightnings strike you with. And these are artificial brains? No, I guess I'm too lost for today. Let's just… continue on our way.

He wants to quiz Toy-Mun further and find out exactly how much he does know about electricity, but he nods and opens the door. Chilly-but-not-freezing air rushes in, and two distinct major waves of sound: a chorus of high, thin drones, and another of fast, severe chopping rhythms. Both sound distant and muffled. A few conversations of paired passersby are audible, but the words are indistinct. 

He leads Toy-Mun between widely-spaced support pillars, out from under the meeting-space building.

And the concrete-glass-and-steel figures rise five to fifteen stories above them, higher toward the city center, circled and crossed everywhere by glints tipping and silhouetting small, lithe propellor aircraft. The sky is paled a little by the lights that mark out the outlines of all the buildings to help them steer clear. Stars are visible, between clouds, but not many.

Most individual Gaha'eka, given the choice, would have chosen a 'sensible', restricted color palette, for the night lights of Sareksal. There wouldn't be much consensus about which parts of the color wheel to involve. White is the most common color, but some people thought that obviously carplane-clearance beacons should be orange, others that they should obviously be green, or blue, or red, or magenta. It all serves.

At street level, pedestrian paths spiderweb wildly but forthrightly between buildings, into the distance. One gap reveals a straight-cut road traveled by automobiles. A few less straight lanes carry human-powered wheeled vehicles.

Neither the pedestrian paths, nor the occasional wide gaps representing nature-parks and statue displays, are all that brightly lit. Carplane pilots need to be able to see obstacles well in spatial advance of meeting with them, but pedestrians don't, and have good night vision, and also generally carry personal lights. What's a violent crime?

"Sareksal," he says, strapping on a mostly-redundant habitual headlamp and starting down a path - covertly watching for Toy-Mun's reaction.

- Since it didn't get translated, I guess it's the name of this place, - Toy-Mun chuckles, following suit. Automobiles almost prompt the obligatory "horseless carriages" line… almost, as something else catches attention. - It's strange. You can clearly afford making a lot of light, but your paths aren't all that brightly lit. Reminds me of streets of the city of Brute - but that one almost officially supports its pickpockets, I'd be surprised to see such motivation here.

He zips up his coat and flips the hood up. "'Pick-pockets'? Oh, right, you wouldn't have a light - here." From a deep coat pocket, he extracts a bulky, mildly greebled-looking plastic cuboid, works his fingers on it. For a moment, white text flashes on a tiny screen as it did at the kiosk. Then a light flares into existence at the center of one edge. He hands the thing to Toy-Mun as they walk, then glances at his robes. "Are those alright for the weather?"

Having taken the light, Toy-Mun nods, lighting their way.
- Thank you… As for weather, I come from the tenebrous glaciers of the northern islands that are only theoretically islands because the glacier doesn't melt in the summer, - Toy-Mun snickers. - So yeah, I'm definitely not cold here. Pickpockets are… well, thieves that try to take things from your pockets or bags and leave unnoticed, hence the name. And they, of course, operate best in places that are dark but full of people, where you can't notice the thing in time and will have too many people to blame when you do. Do you not have thieves? People who take what's not theirs?

He leads them into a wider stream of people. There's a solid white line painted down the middle of the cement path; everyone is walking on their own right-hand side. 

". . . No? Don't you - have a Code? And stealing - that's basically the definition of cringe, it seems like everyone should be able to figure out for themselves that that's cringe anyway. I don't think there was even a problem with bald stealing back in the feudal days, or the State of Nature."

Toy-Mun also follows on the right side. Her brows raise at the Kwaiets's reaction:
- Ack, of course stealing is illegal. But when it's steal or starve, many… choose the risk of getting caught. I remember catching a guy who tried to rummage through my bag - he was so thin even my waist was wider, and it's not something I can often say about another adult. I didn't even report him, it would only bring sorrow. And yeah, while officially stealing is against the law - the Code, if you prefer - everywhere, unofficially rulers of the city of Brute have some kind of agreement about it and basically don't stop thieves unless forced to. Also, what's "cringe"?

They turn a corner onto an even wider path. A stretch up ahead, a metal-and-concrete tunnel entrance yawns its mouth up against the side of the road. People hurry up out of, and down into, it.

"Cringe -

okay, just to check, you know what hunger, sleepiness, dread, startlement, panic, joy, grief, revulsion, sympathy, rage, fury, indignation, elation, horniness, guidelessness, surety, uncertainty, self-doubt, confusion, surprise, boredom, loneliness, protectiveness, love, spite, resentment, shame, guilt, awe, jubilation, curiosity, enthusiasm, and pride are? Not to mention, like, heat, cold, thirst, hypomania, suspicion . . . "

This is less like he's giving away the Future and more that he's giving away himself. This isn't a list he'd go down for his cultmates, as they wouldn't go down theirs for him.

(He wouldn't be able to give the true answer why on the spot if you asked him. He'd confidently spew something he's spent some time making up to "explain" it, though.)

Toy-Mun puts their index fingers at their temples, slightly pressing them as they go, and sighs.
- Urgh, not so fast - but I think I got all of those except elation, this sounds like some fancy word with vaguely-good feelings. Was this list supposed to help me with what cringe is, except some sort of feeling?

They reach the tunnel entrance. The stairs heading down into it are brightly lit. There's a divider, and railings. The floor below looks decently populated. A few people loiter outside the entrance, or just inside. These are likelier than the ones with somewhere immediately to go, to glance uncertainly at Toy-Mun, but the glances don't appear to be connected to any plans for action on the part of the glancers.

He starts down the stairs. 

". . . How about embarrassment?" He's hushed his voice some, conscious of potential eavesdropping. "Elation, and cringe, explanation-promise-this-conversation*."

It's still not likely that Toy-Mun would end up with all Kwaiets's exact words except - which ones - except the big societal-anchor one and - not its complement exactly, elation, but . . . what - is it - ?

*also a common discourse marker in a society of curious recluses who are given over to impromptu informal best-effort single-blinded scientific polls and have a strong sense of conversational transactional fairness.

Toy-Mun nods:
- Yeah. Embarrassment is an often-felt emotion. It's when you are… ashamed? Like, you did something wrong - or maybe said something - and it came up in a dialogue? Oh, and there's also what we call "Dragan embarrassment" - it's when you're embarrassed for someone else rather than for yourself.

<💭>Okay, yeah, 'dragan' (and probably the related 'dragon' and 'half-breed') is one of those foreign-culture concept-balls that it was totally fair of us to be dropping, because the ball is slathered in pig fat. At least insofar as it's fair for anyone to ever be dropping any balls, which is of course 'not', but</💭>

"Yeah, that's not - shame is when you've done something your parent - in the old vulgar psychiatrist jargon they'd say your father - would be sad about, see? Cringe is when you've done something society will update its opinion of you downward for. They're both negative social feelings but they're otherwise not that similar?

Elation is - what happens in the moments between achieving an unblemished victory and needing to deal with the responsibility of defending it, the pure emotional reward you get for winning something."

The subway station is rectilinear and mostly utilitarian but the floor is paved with some kind of polished white stone. It's indeed pretty populated! He heads for a map, so he can show Toy-Mun where they're going while they wait.

Toy-Mun blinks. Then blinks again.
- I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you have a disdain towards a gendered term here, too, but I wouldn't say I associate shame with my father more strongly than with my mother or my teacher. Elation… yeah, the feeling is known to me, though I'd probably just say I'm glad.

She follows Kwaiets, looking around.

- But cringe… this sounds very strange. How would you know what society thinks? And, perhaps more importantly, when you know, why would you care? You can be afraid of consequences, of course, but what you describe didn't sound like fear, it sounded like something from… from within. If I followed what society wants, I would be stuck in a marriage with an unwanted man in a frozen hellhole - or probably already dead from ch-childbirth… - Toy-Mun clearly shuddered. Strongly.