There is a clerk at the cash register!

Then he will approach the clerk! "Excuse me, I and my assistant are from another world. Are there responsible authorities who need to be informed of this, and, if so, where would I find them?"

"Wow! Another world! I guess you could call the White House!"

"The what?"

"The White House is where the President lives, except when he's traveling or on vacation or something, but it also has people who work for him in it."

"... The President rules your nation?"

"Mostly. Congress and the Supreme Court also do stuff. But I don't think you should go to the Supreme Court and there are a lot of people in Congress."

"What do they do?"

"Congress writes laws, and passes laws, and doesn't pass laws - mostly doesn't pass laws, I think - and the Supreme Court decides court cases that have gotten appealed a bunch of times."

Ah, governmental criticism from an alien society.

"And the President is in charge of enforcing the laws that are passed?"

"...I didn't do super good in social studies. He's not like, a police officer."

"One would think not," he says drily.

(Nau briefly had police officers. Then they mostly ended up beating people up and extorting them, and now he just has soldiers, security cameras, and bailiffs. This does mean it is functionally impossible to get arrested for murder as long as you do it in the house of someone who doesn't have security cameras, but there's necessities and then there's necessities.)

"... You do have police officers? Who is in charge of them?" That sounds like it may be a more accurate guide to who runs the state than anything else.

"I think there are... police chiefs... I don't watch cop shows or anything so I don't know if they answer to, like, the mayor, or what. Mayor sounds right to me though."

"Who is a local, not national executive?" He has no idea what 'cop shows' are but he's not going to admit that, and 'mayor' mostly translates.

"Yeah, mayors are elected to run a city."

"What's a 'cop show?'"

Thank you, Rinara.

"Sometimes a camera crew will follow cops around and record them doing things and talking about their jobs and then cut it together as a show."

Camera = those things Nau has in his streets so he knows who did crimes.

Camera crew = people who... pilot a camera? Use a camera? From context, probably "haul the camera around."

Doing things = from the translation and Nau's description of what happens when he tried that, 'beating up people and extorting money from them?'

Talking about their jobs = 'boasting about being up people and extorting money from them?'

'Cut it together as a show' = she doesn't even know what questions to ask. Cut it together to show people? For, like, blackmail purposes?

"... As a show?" Maybe just repeating the last three words will miraculously cause context to appear.

"A... television program for people to watch."

"Our world doesn't have television, sorry."

"Oh. A television is an appliance that can show you videos that are being broadcast through cables or, I think radio waves but now that I mention it I don't know how radio waves do anything but mostly expect them to transmit sound and not pictures so now I'm confused."

"Any series of possible inputs can be described as a pattern of YES and NOs, and there in binary translated by the machine that receives it according to a prewritten rule into orders to display a set of specific microscopic pictures that together form a larger image. You could also use visible light, it would simply annoy those in the pathway between them."

Nice that someone knows what's going on!

"I guess. That makes it sound more digital than analog and I thought TV signals were more analog. But I don't really know how it works, sorry."