Lions are cool!

When Atsinni gets back he wants to know if he can get craft stuff anywhere. "I got kind of into embroidery."

"Probably not in the middle of nowhere, I'd try a city with more than like a hundred people."

"Oh well."

Back to the typing mines. Kung Fu Panda? How's that go over?

He feels a sort of affectionate rage toward the person or people responsible for this plot. He has an impulse to burn them, but only first-degree burns and while visibly struggling not to smile. (With vastly different life experiences he might instead say "thanks, I hate it." Then again, with vastly different life experiences, that might not be his reaction in the first place.)

He thinks that reaction might be evil or something and he's kind of glum about that.

Picky, picky. No sequel to Kung Fu Panda, then. What the heck is Slow TV?

The first example of it Jess queued up for them is only an hour long, the uncut no-music almost-no-talking footage of a train trip from Myrdal to Flåm through a rugged landscape sparsely touched with snow and looking very open with all its trees bare beneath a blue sky. Sometimes the train spends five minutes or more at a time passing through dimly lit tunnels.

It doesn't compare to the butterflies but it's definitely better than almost all the experiences he's ever had and in the top half of experiences he's had in the last few weeks.

Atsinni's human has weird taste. Slow TV it is. Type type type.

The next thing on Jess's playlist is several hours of real-time sheep shearing, spinning and knitting. He doesn't like it at all because someone keeps explaining things and talking about things other people have supposedly done. It is kind of nostalgic, though.

(That's really the main thing the other one had going for it, was the lack of claims to worry about the truth value of.)

Maybe they can skip this episode? Is the next one claim-free?

It's a questionable number of hours of reindeer doing reindeer things.

It's great, though he'll definitely start to get slightly bored less than halfway through. He keeps mulling over whether these people are legit, and what it would mean for them to be legit, and whether Atsinni is finally doing something about the apparently plural hells or just being tricked. It does seem like telling demons about their own floor plan and instruments of torture is probably not something to worry very much about being tricked into doing?

But then on the other hand, there's basically no way Atsinni would bother to check if these people are, actually, more demons in disguise. So thinking about that probably falls to him, if Atsinni will bother to listen to his conclusions, if he can come to any conclusions, if he can figure out how to figure anything out at all.

He's getting very floaty again. He doesn't have a body or a connection to the world and he keeps looking at these pictures of things that aren't there. Purgatory feels like another world entirely, is another world entirely. The idea of figuring out the truth feels like an abstract puzzle. This is kind of objectively worrying and probably happening because he's stuck in an objectively terrible situation but, well, it does still beat his previous objectively terrible situation. And - previously the only thing he really endorsed caring about was doing something about the apparently fucking plural Hells, he was very bothered that Atsinni wasn't even trying, now Atsinni is trying, and there might be more he can do to support Atsinni in that or there might not be but if he's already being basically mostly used for the only thing he really endorses caring about then there's not that much point in him being a person or thinking about things from the perspective of someone who makes decisions, right? Maybe it's time to accept that this is the best he'll ever get.

The reindeer are nice.

They can watch the entire reindeer episode, and then when it concludes knock off typing for lunch and a visit to the zoo. Do they have reindeer?

The zoo has no reindeer. They seem to have gone all in on the giant lion exhibit, which is the size of several Earth-zoo-typical large animal enclosures. Besides that everything is small or comfortable in tight spaces - bearded dragons, snakes, a gila monster, butterflies, colorful and metallic tarantulas, rats, schools of glowlight tetras and bronze corydoras catfish... the closest things to other big exhibits are the fox enclosure and the coral reef tank, and arguably the botanical garden.

Botanical garden next then.

Why can't he just lie down in a position with a decent view of one of these plants and then stay there forever while Atsinni does whatever Atsinni wants to do. Why can't he leave this stupid body. Why can't he just be grateful that he's allowed to see this place at all.

Well, Atsinni's willing to stare at a plant for a while.

He doesn't endorse Atsinni time off of useful things for him but he's not entirely sure to what extent Atsinni just also likes nice things.

He keeps making basically fruitless attempts to bridge the gap between mathematical certainty and actually useful thoughts.

Then they can go look at the aquarium!

Then more typing and Slow TV without voiceovers.

The Amazon biotope tank is a couple hundred gallons, dark and shady-looking from the tannins in the water, planted with freshwater eelgrass. When they come near the glass without the dark water in the way some of the fish stand out vividly, blood red and gleaming blue cardinals and squiggle-patterned iridescent discus. The catfish digging around for worms have big wide-open eyes and tentacle whiskers whose resemblance to any pirate movie villains will be lost on people with Atsinni's extremely sparse pop culture background.

The reef tank is much bigger. It looks artificial, fish in flat colors that dyes have only recently been invented to mimic, bright blue light that looks even bluer filtered through the water, coral growing on an artistically uneven rock arch whose points of interest were definitely planned in advance by someone with a very modern education in image composition. Some black clownfish vibrate at each other.

As almost an afterthought, there a couple of twenty- and forty-gallon tanks containing creatures that were originally intended for one or another of the big ones, with little handwritten notes explaining why that didn't work out.

There are more hours of Slow TV in existence than it takes to finish typing up a reasonable summary of everything strategically useful Atsinni's host knows, at least without more specific questions.

"Hey, I think I'm about done with the writeup."

"Thank you. I still haven't made much progress toward having a Kandrona generator for you but I'm willing to keep being available for you until that happens, if you'll let me know enough about your plans to find you."

"Zoo and TV will probably keep me occupied for a few days. I didn't have that long to acquire hobbies."