- Colley considers requesting that Ispalt ask permission or at least warn her before doing that but decides against it.  <I'd appreciate it for the whole body, though, unless it's terribly time-sensitive.>  Music music.  Colley's attention shifts between the layers of sound, often accompanied by a proprioceptive sense of how she would play a snippet of tune on the closest equivalent citreliac instrument, lagging half a beat behind as she processes what she's hearing and converts it to imagined motion.  The words are too poetic (probably that's what it is) to make much sense to her yet; she doesn't bother trying to hard to figure them out.

Ooh there's a version of this by a string quartet!

Ooh!  On the second listen she's focusing more on the instruments themselves; it seems like they should be pretty much the same as the string instruments she's familiar with save for the tuning - if she could see the people playing she could figure those out and practice fingerings without needing an instrument of her own - as it stands she listens really hard for notes played open.  It's not a skill she's previously developed or acquired; she doesn't get very far with it.

<Are you getting all your tastes from me or do we have different opinions on what stuff is good?> she wonders.

<I think I have a differently tuned sense of novelty but otherwise I'm getting a lot of it off you.>

<Hm!  We should get some food - there are so many food places here - and see how much we match on opinions there.  And copy wakefulness from somebody so we don't crash all of a sudden in like an hour.>  This all has been exciting enough that she's not really tired but it doesn't feel like her nap lasted very long; her composing fugue is going to catch up with her soon.

<Yeah, good plan. We should go someplace that's open round the clock so we can get a night-shifter who just woke up.> There is a 24-hour McDonald's not far from the hotel.

<'Happy Meal' is a cute name and I don't have any better ideas about what to pick.>

<Suits me fine! I wanna drive in case someone I know spots us though, awkward to have a visible body language transition there.>

<Alrighty.  Thanks for the warning.>

Ispalt takes over and heads out to the McDonald's and gets a Happy Meal, which comes with a small plastic dolphin for some reason, and sits down to eat it, scanning the people around for the most recently slept one to copy off them. Fortunately how awake someone is is distinct from how stoned they are.

Huzzah.  <I don't really know how local drugs work, let alone when you can't just copy someone sober when you're done.  We should look into that before you have to go to your thing.>

<I was planning to lean a lot on you having blacked out when you took whatever drugs you supposedly took but I guess it would be good to have more of an idea what the details were.>

<Yeah.  How are you liking the food?>

<It is everything I didn't have the neural architecture to dream it would be!>

<Aww!>  Colley is checking out the people around them for anything else it might be useful to copy.  And generally observing body language, fashion, anything she can use to blend in, to the extent that she can while not in control of her eyes.

<You can look around but I will stop you if you stare or something.> Ispalt lets her eyes go. Their fashion is very standout, though there's enough variance at the extreme ends of local fashion choices that they might be passing as some irregular subculture, though probably not the ones who wear all black over there or the ones with the motorcycles. <Clothes shopping probably has to wait till morning.>

<Poor everyone else here, having to sleep all the time.  - Do you, normally?>

<Not exactly. We rest, but in our natural environment we're never totally unconscious.>

<It's refreshing sometimes.>  Ooh, that lady over there knows how to play a handful of songs on something called a piano; Colley wants that.

Ispalt yoinks it so seamlessly it almost feels like she was letting Colley do it.

What a good Ispalt.  Colley spends the rest of their meal trying to integrate that with her general instrumental knowledge so that hopefully she'll be able to play substantially more songs than the copiee could.

And when they have finished their Happy Meal and trashed the packaging they can go for a bit of a stroll, it's not yet quite late enough that anyone will raise an eyebrow about their sleep habits. See what's around, grab more context and local skills. Ooh, now they know how to drive! ...ooh, now they know how to drive not like a total asshole!

<Incredible.  I'm used to everyone just running around.>

<There is probably like one guy somewhere who does that, and nobody in the whole world can duplicate his trick. So sad. It's a good thing you already had all the cool perks.>

<Ugh, we're going to have to keep in shape ourselves if we want me to stay that way, though.>