"I think I want to check out the other orchard, then go outside that perimeter wall and take a look at the closest building, and then back before dark."

"Sure, works for me." They travel to the orchard without issue. Alice pauses to let Walta look around. She reaches into one of the nearby bins to pull out a fresh Orange. "Everything good?"

"It's really quite clever how they set this up. It's on the side of the building where the sun was all day, and that path over there plus the white faces of the building reflect lots of sun here, warming it up. I bet there's heaters in the ground, too, in case of cold snaps."

"I bet it's all documented somewhere. There's so many facilities articles I have access to now, the lessons are taking me through the contents of a lot of them but it's kinda overwhelming. Also, on the creepier side the main interface for locking and unlocking doors is voice recognition which means there have to be microphones near all the doors at the least."

"All the agriculture is supposed to accept voice commands, too..."

"Huh, maybe there's just microphones everywhere. I wonder if it's just being checked for interface commands and then dumped or if there's some way to access them." She shakes her head. "I suppose I might eventually find out, if there's a job that grants access to that kind of thing it's probably security. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the door is over this way."

Off they go. "You know, for all the - not really understanding humans the architecture here seems to do it's still reasonably well designed."

"Yeah, I mean, whoever built it doesn't seem to have understood nudity taboos, or you know, how far humans can comfortably walk, but otherwise it's pretty, and it's definitely functional. Heck, even with the distances there are bike stores close to all of the home complexes, I checked."

"And maybe we'll find other computers when we explore further. Or teleporter codes back to Earth if we're very lucky."

"Yeah, I'm betting the apartment complexes have their own computers, I think I saw mention of there being other far flung libraries and manufacturing complexes, maybe some of those will have them too. Frustratingly, it still won't give me a map so I don't know where any of them are. As for the codes to Earth, I'm not holding my breath. We got brought here for a reason, if there is a way back to Earth I don't think it'll be easy to find."

"Twenty bucks says Nick will get a high powered camera from some Best Buy and make an aerial map of the whole complex sooner or later."

"I'd love to see one of those. We'll still need to label it, but it'd be a big help."

"Possibly kind of urgent thought... Are there gun shops in the malls? If so, you should go lock them."

"I checked for that, it doesn't look like it. There are places that sell knives including some that might be more combat focused, but there's too many to practically close all of them and even kitchen knives can be dangerous."

"And a whole lot of power tools and so on could be weapons, but at least they're not as easy to use and dangerous. Okay."

"Yeah, that was my thinking. Are you still holding up alright?" They reach the door and Alice opens it, the closest building looks to be a warehouse and they start walking towards it.

Is there anything on the ground besides the warehouse? Is it grass, dirt, concrete, native plantlife?

"I had a good rant in one of the empty rooms a while ago. I'll manage. Especially since I've gone and put myself in charge of food, something to focus on."

The Paths are wider here. Inside the wall they were more walking paths, now they're about the width of a two lane road, and they're made of a smooth material, a bit like concrete instead of the textured material that made up the footpaths. To the sides of the road is mostly grass with the occasional cluster of bushes or trees. They reach the warehouse presently it wasn't a long distance away.

"Yeah, I feel similarly about having taken on the security job, though to an extent I'm also part explorer. Let's see what's inside." Alice opens the door, and they walk in. The Warehouse is only a couple stories tall but it's packed with crates. A short distance inside is a computer console which has encyclopedia access but not employment. It also has another item marked inventory. The Inventory is a long list of largely mundane item: chainlink fencing, lumber, bolt of cloth, dyes. There are a few curiosities though: temporal relays, power loci, and wide-spectrum transceivers. "Well the mystery deepens, I wonder what a temporal relay is. If they're small enough I think one might make a good present for Nick."

"See if he can figure out what's up from piecing together encyclopedia entries, yeah."

Alice reaches out and requisitions one temporal relay. There's a faint whirring sound and if they walk along the edge they can see a crate being pulled off one of the upper shelves by something like an automated forklift and then set down. The crate is set down and the outer casing vanishes. A smaller robot pulls one package about the the width and three times the length of a loaf of bread out of the stacks before the casing reappears and the forklift sets it back on it's shelf. The smaller robot deposits its package in an area beside the console. "Well that just raises even more questions. Just how advanced are the people who built this place?"

"The robotics aren't too far out of the bounds of what I thought possible. Computers can be pretty impressive. And they're probably teleporting the casing out and back, it might be that teleportation is their one big trick. 'Temporal relay' sounds very advanced, too, though."

"Yeah, I'm really uncertain what they are but it sounds fascinating. I think I heard the medical guy murmuring something about temporal mechanics, and there were a couple references to temporally reinforced materials in my security training." Alice picks up the parcel. It's a little heavy but not too heavy. "Anything else you wanted to do while we're out and about or should we just head back?"

"Let me just write down a few characteristic items in the inventory. Nick could probably use them to build stuff, instead of hardware store stuff."

"Sure, that's a good idea." When Walta is done Alice opens the door and then asks, "Was anything on that list dangerous enough that you think I should lock this place? Nothing jumped out at me."

"A couple other things I don't know exactly what they are, like that relay, but nothing obviously dangerous. I think we're good."