"I am merely RULING MY ENTIRE EMPIRE, not engaging in any activity worthy of the attention of any entity smarter than a soft-shelled crab, so I suppose yes, yes I am."

"- Pleased to hear it. I was mostly just wondering if now that the excitement is over, it would be worth getting some kind of explanation of, you know, all the stuff I don't understand very well about how your empire and your metal monsters and, uh, me now - work?"

"Well, I suppose I could spend a little time explaining the overwhelming brilliance and power of the technology that has bound your life to eternity, invented by far greater minds than you or I could -"

And they are elsewhere!

(For the record, 'they' is a seven-foot-tall robot-looking person who looks completely made of metal on the outside, vaguely resembling a kind of cross between a bat with arms and an bipedal tiger whose wings are also his cape with an outsized left hand, and a short woman of vaguely north Indian or Persian appearance wearing badly machine-made clothes and carrying a cane, half of whose flesh has been replaced by living metal and who is, aside from the obvious, stunningly healthy-looking. The cane's in her non-metal hand.)

They have appeared in the middle of an FAO Schwarz, where fourteen first graders are having a birthday shopping spree; one of the girls runs headlong into Rinara's metal leg and falls backward onto her butt. "Hey!" she says. "I didn't see you and I'm mad at you about it!"

"Wow!" says a different girl, putting down the stuffed rabbit she was examining, "what's that? I never saw anything like it before, how much does it cost?"

"I'm sorry," says Rinara immediately. "I didn't mean for you to hurt yourself. If we go outside I can probably heal you." She looks around in every direction, confused. "You know, Traveler, if you didn't want to answer, you could have just said that!"

"Not me," he says, ignoring the tiny meat children aside from clenching his metal hand aggressively. "Where in all the ten thousand fictional hells are we?" Did by chance his ability to pick up radio signals suddenly kick in after a long time of near-obsolescence?

"- Uh, I don't know," she says to the other kid, "he did it for me for free to save my life, a few - I think it was weeks but I'm not sure? - ago."

"No, I mean what's that!" clarifies the girl, pointing at Nau. "I don't know that kind of animal!"

"I," he says grimly, "am Nau, Hegemon of Profectus, the Traveler, and judging by base rates I expect we are on YET ANOTHER WORLD, RINARA, WHY." 

"- Hey, it's the first time I've been off-planet! I just thought I was inside a building somewhere on another continent or something! Aside from the cleaner, damper air, this could just be Profectus."

"WOW they're from aNOTHER PLAaANET!" shrieks the first girl, and she runs off to tell her mother.

"What planet are you from?" asks the second.

Other little girls are approaching cautiously.

"- I don't think we named it anything, as, like, 'a planet?' We just called it 'the world' -" (the actual syllables she tries to use are 'Jihan') "- Traveler, did you name my world anything -?"

"I called it The Eternally Horrible Place I Am Stranded Where The Laws Of Goddamn Physics Don't Apply For Some Reason, or Thepias for short. I assumed the official naming committee would find something better when I contacted them. Possibly use your word for 'world' as a loan-word, in whatever the most popular language was."

"I think I prefer Jihan to Thepias, myself, if you don't mind?"

"Jihan," repeats the girl who asked what planet. "That's not in this solar system!"

"There are no other inhabited worlds in the solar system Jihan is in," he confirms. "Unless their inhabitants work on bizarre and alien laws of physics which is apparently possible now!"

"The planets here are EARTH, that's this one, and MERCURY and VENUS and MARS and JUPITER and SATURN and NEPTUNE. And... that's seven. So I'm forgetting one."

"I don't think I've ever heard of them, but they could be named something else in my language?"

Nau has. "Are there any adults around here?" Maybe ACTUAL adults, Even if this place looks comfortably low tech, If this is actually Earth he's sure there are a lot of people smarter than him around.

"Sophie's mom is somewhere around and there are the people who work at the toy store."

"I intend to speak with them," he says. "Which way?"

"Sophie's mom is that way but I want you to talk to ME because you're COOL ALIENS."

He opens his mouth to say 'yes, but I want to talk to an adult, because adults can give me useful information,' but adults also tend to lie, and children are usually pretty bad at it. "Fine. What country is this, and what sort of government does it have?"

She has no idea why he abruptly changed policy? Presumably he has a reason?

She's going to look around. She's never been anywhere like this before.

"This the Fractious States of America and it's a REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY."

It's a toy store. There are stuffed animals, and giant piano keyboards you can walk on, and building blocks, and art kits, and bicycles, and jigsaw puzzles, and remote control cars.

... Wow.

Fractious, hah. Whoever named it had a sense of humor. "And who is in charge of this representative democracy?" Back home, there are leaders, in Laukera, there are leaders; even in the Unity of Man, there are leaders. All of them are representative democracies, even if the represent different people.

"The President!"

"Thank you." He is feeling strangely non-furious. "Do cars exist here? Do computers? Do robots? Does the internet? Do airplanes? Do spaceships?"

"Earth has cars and computers! Robots only kind of, not like good robots that can talk and stuff. Earth has internet and airplanes and not very many spaceships but some people went to the moon."

If Nau has to be the person to cause his entire civilization to exist because this is some stupid-ass stable time loop, he's going to include a mention of where to find The Terrible Awful No Good Planet That Breaks The Laws Of Physics in a sealed time capsule to be opened the day after he disappears.

"Thank you."

Fortunately, there are probably SMART PEOPLE on this planet, who will listen to him, because he is the good kind of robot that can talk and stuff. Unlike the Terrible Awful No Good Planet.

"What is worst about America?"

"I don't know, I'm only six and there's a lot of history."

"That is very fair." He'll pause briefly to try to think up another question.

"Why are you in this toy store?"

"I don't know. A minute ago I was in my city. Then Rinara and I were here."

"Wow!"

At this point Sophie returns with her mom. "- hello," says Sophie's mom.

"Greetings. I am Hegemon Nau of Profectus, often called the Traveler. This is my assistant, Rinara of Lemyrsh."

Huge fake dead animals full of fluff! Cubes in fancy colors! That weird black and red thing! Pictures! Gadgets! Bicycles! It's really cool!

"Hello."

"We have just been transported here through unknown means I would have believed were probably impossible yesterday, and looking for local guides to advise us in where we have landed and whether, for instance, travelers from distant worlds landing here is common." It was on the last planet, though only in a historical sense.

"Wow! No, that's not common at all, you're the first one I've ever heard of! I would have believed it was impossible yesterday too!" says Sophie's mom.

"Can you tell us more about the Fractious States of America? I - am confused to the point of not knowing what specifically I should ask about."

It's kind of amazing how differently he acts when he doesn't have thirteen hovertanks with plasma weapons under his telepathic control, isn't it.

"Gosh! I don't know what to tell you either but I suppose I can guess. There are fifty states. We're in Missouri, which is one of them. There's a President, and Congress, and a Supreme Court. We have a really big military. There's millions and millions of Americans. I don't know how many millions. A lot, probably, because I keep hearing things about how millions of Americans have diabetes or get the flu every year and I don't know anyone who has diabetes or gets the flu every year."

"- What language are we speaking? I don't think it's one I spoke yesterday."

How did she notice that first?

"Wow! Well, to me it sounds like you're speaking English but I'm less confident than I normally would be that that's what's really going on. I'm speaking English, too."

"I am speaking - a language I did not speak yesterday. I am not exactly thrilled about this." Someone is being entertained at his expense. Unfortunate.

"State is a - regional area smaller than a nation, and also a nation, in your language?"

"Missouri isn't a nation. I think it's sort of like a province but we don't call them provinces. Canada calls theirs provinces."

... "Fair... enough. What do people do when something confusing and unexpected occurs? Do institutions exist for managing this?" Is there a path to bypass, are there people he needs to negotiate with, shoot or flee?

"I'm not sure. The time someone released a pig into my high school I think eventually Animal Control caught it but this probably not an animal control situation at all."

NO, no it is NOT.

"You have people who can control animals?"

"They have nets and things, I think. I've never actually seen one at work. When they came for the pig I was in math class and the pig was not in math class."

Nau is getting an impression of this world's technology level, which is 'primitive, but not as much as the last one.' "Do you know if there are generally-believed-to-be-universal laws of physics that prevent the creation and destruction of new matter and energy?" That will probably be the most important bit.

... Why would there be such things?

"Yeah, I think you showing up like this will be a huge surprise mostly for that reason."

Huh.

" - Is there a formal procedure for rewarding inventors for their work?" Even if this place is primitive, they might want not to be.

"I think they make a lot of money unless they wind up with the rights belonging to some corporation somehow."

???

Nau is only slightly less confused, because although he is fantastically stupid he still knows that there are countries that, unlike where HE was born, are terrible.

"I see. How does currency work?" Can he just open a gold mine?

"The Fractious States uses dollars. They look like this. Change is coins and looks like this," says Sophie's mom, pulling out a bill and a handful of nickels and quarters and pennies.

"Is the value of the currency based on the material making it up, a fiat declared by the government, or neither?"

"Uh, let me see." She squints at her five-dollar bill to read the fine print. "It says 'backed by the fact that the FS Government will accept this currency for transactions and so will most other people' so I guess the second thing. I wasn't sure because I remember they make it out of special paper that's partly fabric and maybe that's expensive but I guess not."

Did that... translate right?

This place is very strange.

"- So, the whole thing only functions because people believe it does? Well, because the government says it does?" She's honestly been confused about that for a while -

"It saves on digging up gold if they'll believe you when you say it."

"Well, of course we believe it."

"I would be glad if my administration was that trustworthy," he says drily.

She looks like that's a pretty weird thing to say. Then there are the sounds of a child conflict around the corner and she smiles apologetically and goes to deal with whatever that is.

"Does this place seem exceptionally bizarre to you, Rinara?"

"It is neither of the two places I have lived in and does not resemble any of the three places I have read about?"

"Mmm." Is this a simulation? He's asked this question before but is becoming increasingly clear that if it is he wants a REFUND. He'll look around for other people to talk to.

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."

Oh, he doesn't know how they'd do it, just the simplest way to do it. "Perfectly understandable. Do you have questions for an alien?"

"I feel like I should but I actually can't think of anything right now. This makes me feel stupid and boring."