Petarka definitely does not recognize the weird circular building! Why would you do that, your walls would end up all curved for no reason.

Tyrin is back by now, with Latarena and Betalan. "They're up-to-speed," te says.

Do either of you have any guesses for what's up with them? pe signs. I've been trying to communicate with them via drawing but so far all I have is their names and this weird circle building that they came from.

My top theory was that they were from some sort of incredibly incompetent creche or something, signs Latarena. Which I guess also would require that their parents just never came back for them, but maybe they died or something? But anyways I don't recognize that building either, and it's pretty visually distinctive, so unless they managed to come from another city without speaking a word of the language I don't have a great guess about what's going on.

Betalan has pulled out bir own handcomputer and pulled up the map app, on the theory that Tyrin they seemed confused about that before so it's probably worth trying again. Be starts at their city and zooms out, this time; it looks like they're vaguely in Spain, or what would be Spain if the country boundaries at all resembled those of Europe (the country they're in also includes Portugal and most of France). 

Be sets down bir handcomputer in front of the group, points at the map (which is now fully zoomed out), points at each of them, and then points back at the map.

Bella shakes her head at the map and draws lines with her finger where she expects lines. Then she starts pointing at locations and uttering snatches of different languages. French. Spanish. Latin. She taps Caio for Portuguese. English for England.

Aadhya points at India and says a few words also.

Betalan points at the different countries on the map. "We all just speak the same language, here and here and here and here-- I have no idea what your deal is-- Lata can I borrow your handcomputer, this'll be easier with two--"

Be pulls up some well-known landmarks on Latarena's handcomputer and shows them to the group, watching for any sign of recognition. The library at Endekar? Arrenzo's academy? Some mountains? The wall around Lagomir? A really big waterfall?

They don't recognize any of these things though they are slightly less blank at the mountains and waterfall.

Bella points at the Great Salt Lake, mimes drinking, and mimes spitting it out.

Be looks up a picture of the lake Bella pointed to. Does Bella recognize that?

Shrug. She knows you can't drink it but has never been there.

You can't drink it here either but Betalan isn't sure how to communicate that.

Betalan pulls up a list of the most common words on Latarena's handcomputer. ...A list of the most common nouns. ...Half of these are things like "time" which are probably going to be hard to explain across a language barrier. Be'll just pick some words that seem relevant.

Be will attempt to use a mix of drawings and image searches to explain some common words. "Person," "people," "grouphouse," "food," "water," "sleep."

They will gamely attempt to repeat these words.

Okay.

"Do you need -- food, water, sleep?" Hopefully in context that'll be clear enough even without the verb.

"Sleep. Food."

Nods all around.

Tyrin hands them something that looks kind of like a granola bar.

"Sleep is--" Betalan pulls up the map again, zoomed into the city level, and traces a path on the map. "We'll take the train." Photograph of a train (it seems to be running a story above the ground).

Nod nod. (They break the granola bar into three pieces and share it.)

"If I take Petarka are you going to have enough people to keep the event going?"

(At this point, a gong rings out from the front of the room, and the participants start moving towards the front.)

Tyrin bites tir lip. "It'll be tight, I've needed to consult with pem several times already. You can take Darinye -- or technically Camini if you'd rather."

"I'll stick with Darinye."

Betalan makes a "come here" gesture, grabs another orchestrator, and escorts them out of the building.

The newcomers devour the granola bar and wait, huddled together, startling at sudden movements.

Most of the sudden movements are on the other end of the room, if they're paying attention to what's going on over there.

Betalan leads them outside.

Most of the buildings here are tall skyscrapers. The street itself is mostly empty at this time of night, but they can see a few people walking on it and a few more riding quadricycles or standing on powered wheeled platforms. Two of the people are softly singing, not especially well, and a third is periodically spinning in a circle. A smallish cart, going about 15 miles an hour, whirrs down the middle of the street; it doesn't have a visible driver.

The train station they're going to is about two blocks away. They can see the train track from the concert hall; this one is more like two stories aboveground.

This is all subtly unexpected but not so dramatically out of line with the range of possibilities that they couldn't be across the world four years after they last saw the world and in the custody of a place that buys into irregular separatist movements of some geography....

The train station has an elevator and a staircase. Betalan glances around the group before leading them up the staircase. They wait on the platform for a couple minutes, and then a train pulls up; it's more crowded than the street was, although they can still find a bench.

Additional subtly unexpected things the group may notice on the train:

• Most of the people here are weirdly androgynous-looking? Some of them do have presentations that vaguely correspond to something that would be standard on Earth, but the underlying phenotypes seem less correlated than one would normally expect.
• Apart from that, the individual people mostly look like people you could find on Earth, but when they're taken together the overall distribution of physical traits is weird -- the average height of everyone on the train is nearly six feet. Darinye is one of the shortest people on the entire train, and de's about 5'6".
• Some of the clothing styles don't match ones they recognize, although that's explainable by four years of fashion trends or just locally different styles. If they recognize the language well enough by now to identify a nametag as such, nearly everyone is wearing a nametag, mostly a variety with a little plastic case connected to a necklace. No one on the entire train has a visible tattoo, although one person has a lizard painted on their face.
• Multiple people are quietly singing and/or quietly talking out loud to no one in particular and/or stimming. (The singers aren't very good at it.)
• Many of the random objects around the train look different from what they expect, although mostly not in a way that couldn't theoretically be explained by technological evolution -- they've already seen the handcomputers (which are more square than a typical smartphone) and quadricycles, but if they're paying attention they might notice that the train has benches instead of discrete seats, or that the cyclists' helmets are oddly shaped, or that none of the shoes have shoelaces.

They murmur amongst themselves about it, but are not alarmed enough to try to solicit local attention to resolve any of their anxiety.

They continue to flinch at movements in the corners of their eyes, sometimes raising their hands or starting to.

After they've been riding for a little over ten minutes Betalan and Darinye usher them off.

They lead them down a single flight of stairs; there's another train platform, running perpendicular to the train they just got off of. The ride on the perpendicular train is mostly uneventful.

Murmur murmur.

It continues to be bizarre that these people don't speak the language!!

Eventually they get to their stop and are ushered off. Betalan and Darinye take them to an apartment building about a block away. Betalan touches bir handcomputer to the door, and they go inside.

There are several elevators near the entrance, but for some reason none of them have doors; they seem to work by just having several elevator capsules stacked on top of each other, such that you can walk in immediately, ride up to your floor, and walk out. There isn't an obvious way to pause it, but it does stop briefly on the ride up before they get to their actual floor. (It keeps going about fifteen seconds later.)