They are sort of apprehensive about the elevator situation but can be ultimately coaxed in.

They go down the hallway a bit. Eventually Betalan opens a door. There's something next to the door that looks more-or-less like an electronic keypad but be doesn't seem to interact with it.

The main part of the apartment is fairly open. There's something that looks like a kitchen, with a lowish counter dividing it from the entry hallway surrounded by stool/chairs. On the other side of the apartment is something like a living room, with several variants of couches-and-such scattered around the edges and a large bookcase in the back. There are a couple open doors near the kitchen that seem to go to bathrooms, or something along those lines. Off to the right, there's another hallway, leading to eight closed doors.

Betalan leads them over to the place with chairs. Can you get them some food, ideally either more of the same thing or else something with relatively few ingredients that are fairly easy to distinguish? I'm really confused about what's going on and don't want to accidentally hurt them.

Sure.

De gets out some food from the kitchen, sticks it on a plate, and brings it to the group. More of the energy bars, some berries, some nuts, something string-cheese-like.

Berries! Nuts! Cheese!

The energy bars are much less exciting than berries and nuts and cheese.

While they eat, Betalan goes off to one of the hallway rooms and comes back with a laptop, which be sets down next to the food plate. The page it's open to is mostly very confusing but does have what looks like a picture of the Earth on it.

The keys have writing on them. Neither the alphabet nor the layout is recognizable.

This causes the three of them to put their heads together to contemplate this oddity!

Be waits for a break in the conversation and then pokes the screen.

It starts playing some sort of video. Lines that are probably national borders appear on the screen, and different countries (and, eventually, what look like cities) start lighting up, matching the borders on the map they saw earlier. The Earth picture rotates around periodically to show different parts of the map. There's singing in the video (on-key at least, unlike the people on the train, but nothing to write home about). Words (in the same alphabet as the keyboard) flash onscreen as each country lights up, and occasionally a longer block of text appears to the side.

Be looks at them vaguely expectantly while it plays.

If they can't speak the language why would they know what their country looks like? It seems really weird to teach one of your crechechildren all the countries but not teach them how to talk.

Do you have any better ideas?

No.

They find this video very worrying, though each of them points uncertainly at a part of the world (on the globe, rather than the zoomed-in political borders) as it goes by.

Then once the video is done Betalan will poke at the computer before and pull up some pictures! Behold, unfamiliar-looking architecture! Behold, random wilderness!

Headshake headshake.

"Nuh-uh."

...

Can you update Tyrin?

I have been updating Tyrin. Te's pretty busy right now but doesn't have any particularly good guesses about what's going on.

Does te have bad guesses?

Te suggested time travel but I think that was probably a joke.

Be pokes at the computer some more. It starts playing another video. This one seems to be languages -- the visuals are mainly text, though there's audio too, and it switches between a few different writing systems.

The three of them will try all their languages again but do not recognize any of these at all.

Should we maybe let them sleep? They asked to sleep earlier, and it doesn't really seem like we're getting there.

We should probably let them do that.

Betalan pulls out more of the paper from earlier, draws a line down the middle, and sketches another drawing. On the left half of the drawing is three different squares, each containing one bed/couch thing and one person. On the right half is something that looks vaguely like this room, with three people sleeping on a couch and a beanbag chair and what could maybe be an extra mattress or something. Be holds out the paper to the group of them.

They point at the first thing, but not super emphatically.

Can you ask Tyrin to get Camini and Forabil's permission to let them sleep in their rooms? One of them can sleep in mine.