<Do small people usually stick with the same one?>  (She's a little surprised, in the background, that anything that small could be a person, or at least that they could and also not be able to copy anything.)  <How many of you are there compared to humans?>  For that matter, how many of the people she sees walking around have additional people in their heads?

<Usually! Unless the host is special and someone with particular clearance or skills is going to need their face. But nobody's gonna know you're special. Right? You don't want five hundred thousand Yeerks sliding in one ear and out the other in succession to learn umpteen languages they made you copy, or whatever, followed by vivisection.>

Most of the people walking around do not have company. That one over there has one but he and Ispalt do not acknowledge each other.

<Chill.  No, I don't.>  She muses a moment.  <I'll refrain from pulling anything on purpose but we're going to need to pick up a little on how to seem locally unspecial.>

<So glad you're with the program. Fortunately at a hotel nobody'll know who we are and there'll be lots of folks coming and going.> There's an ATM. She goes and punches some numbers into it and it spits out numerous twenties.

<I wasn't done looking at that,> Colley says of the ATM's screen.  (There's a hint of sincere curiosity but she's mostly checking Ispalt's response to this type of request.)

<If you want to look at common Earth objects we will do this in our hotel room, on the internet, where no one can see us acting like a dork.> Time to go buy a laptop.

<It's not my fault if you can't act well enough to pull off another glance.>

<Oh, it is. I get practically all my skills from you.> Best Buy will sell a laptop and a case to carry it around in and then they can hop on the store's internet connection and find a hotel they can walk to, though it'll be a time-consuming walk.

Colley is substantially more resentful about this than previously!

<We can take more risks when we're more oriented.>

For just a flash she considers coming up with a polite response containing an implied threat about the chance of a discreet escape opportunity, or if it looks like Ispalt was wrong or lying about anything, or - but of course that would be dumb on so many levels, not least that she's being mindread and has no plausible deniability available even if she delivered it perfectly - and now she's composing, composing, composing.  It's worse at masking anxiety than the fuming was.

<Fortunately for my life expectancy I am not lying at all! You'll get a look at the situation when we go to the pool.>

<I'm sure.>  (She's not.  But hopefully it's close enough for them to both pretend.)

Hotel. Room paid in cash. Laptop slapped down on the desk, opened, plugged in like sooooo. Configuring of the laptop tap tap tap.

It's just like in a sci-fi play, only with so many intricate and pedestrian details that it's actually a usable object.

How do requests for ways to use her own senses go over now?

Ispalt will sometimes glance at something Colley wants to glance at. Colley's hearing, proprioception, smell, touch, and taste are completely unobstructed, but she doesn't get to shift position or time her breaths to take better advantage. Ispalt does look up ATM machines and obligingly look at the result image for a few seconds, though.

<Could you let me do things while you're still in here?  Like, can you.>

<Yeah, I can. What do you wanna do, breathe?>

<I want a block of time every day unless something comes up and we both agree it's too risky then.>

<You know what, fine, as long as you don't do anything stupid and they keep me on a schedule with enough downtime to afford it. Which I guess they will since they don't know you don't need to sleep. What are you gonna want to do?>

<Mostly music.>

<That works for me. Though you'll have to keep it down, since mostly people sleep.>

<Even if I have to be completely silent some days being able to take it down will help a lot.>

<Do you have other demands?> Ispalt inquires, setting up a Sharemail account for... google google context grab... "Colleen Farrell".

A swirl of thoughts - <So far I don't think either of us has ruled out a 'we're both in this together' attitude.  If things get more antagonistic then I'll want to lay out some rules but I'd rather start as allies.>