Pull she does!

:I understand. I hope that we'll be able to arrange something better soon so that both you and I can live better. Maybe something through the homeless services thing, or perhaps the PRT. Speaking of which, I might try going to the library later during daytime, alone, and see if they let me through. If the food bank did, then probably the library will too? We can do the same procedure we did last time.

Actually, you mentioned yesterday that the computer there knew where we were, so maybe it had transmitted its location. It's still in your range, right? Do you think you'd be able to detect whether there are armed or armored people there?:

It opens right up. :Yeah, give me a minute...:

:Nobody there has guns or anything weird like that. And you can definitely get in, they aren't talking to people who just go in, I only hear people talking to them to take books and stuff.:

:That's good! Though I'll probably have to talk to them if I want to use the computer.

I think we should eat now. After that, I'll go to the library and see if the PRT has replied. I'll ask you later how you got the email to work and how I should access it.:

If Denice has no complaints, then she'll make herself sandwiches and eat them! She doesn't know how Denice likes hers, so she'll let her make her own. 

:Yeah, that works.:

The only real option here is 'dry bread and turkey with cheese' or 'dry bread and turkey without cheese'; left to her own devices she'll try to take a cheese slice, end up ripping it in half, put the half she's managed to get onto her first sandwich and eat the rest plain.

She will do 'dry bread and turkey with cheese'. It would taste better warm, but at least she's eating something more substantial than the snacks from yesterday. She's very hungry, so she'll end up having two of them.

:Do you want me to help you make the sandwich, or do you want to do it yourself?:

...she would like a secret third thing, which is not to be having this adult/child-coded interaction. She stares at Marina about it for a moment and then looks away without answering and goes back to what she was doing.

Marina will not press the issue and will also say nothing. It's great that they're talking by Telepathy, because that means they can talk without needing to stop eating.

She'll ask Denice what things to do to the computer and what keywords to look out for to access email. She's not going to ask her questions about how email works on a mechanistic level, but simply what steps to take to look at the email, and then exit.

:By the way, you can send me images through Telepathy too. That might be more helpful for me, if you can remember what it looked like.:

She'll describe the process of getting into the email account, then. The account name is 'blankpage6' (from a song that she could hear on the radio and the number the computer they were at was labeled with, in an attempt at not giving out any unnecessary personal information) and the password is 'hammer' (from the next song the radio played) and she can visualize those letters for Marina to write.

:Thank you: she will send, and write down those letters, and also write down a list of the steps in Towan.

She wants to minimize the chance of repeating the tiring incident from earlier, so she'll also ask Denice how to say a bunch of phrases like "Can I use the computers?" and the like. Denice can't help with speaking, but she can transmit text through Telepathy that Marina can read, and Denice can tell her whether or not her speech is comprehensible. Marina isn't looking to master American English phonetics – even if she speaks with a heavy accent, it's good enough so long as Denice can get what she's saying.

That is not actually true; Denice is dramatically better at picking up what people are trying to say through a thick accent than most people are as a side effect of her super hearing. But she can troubleshoot Marina's mouth movements again to get the most obvious problems solved, and that'll work well enough.

That will work! Marina will thank Denice.

:It's time for me to go. We can follow the same procedure we did last time. I'll check in on you every once in a while, and if the bag is gone or the acorn is destroyed, then I'll know you had to leave, and I'll meet you at the empty house.:

If Denice has no objections, she'll take the paper with her notes about email plus her phrases, and the printed out map, and be on her way.

Yep, that's fine.

And once she's gone, Denice will... go pace. Out of sight of the acorn and the front windows.

She will not notice this!

Will she encounter obstacles on the way to the library? She doesn't want to look at any more shops now, and will take the direct route to the library.

If she remembers the route they took last night, that's about as direct as it gets; if she goes by what's on the map instead of cutting through the forest, it'll take a little longer. In both cases, nobody bothers her: there aren't many people out walking around and she only passes someone on the sidewalk once, and he doesn't try to talk to her.

She'll go through the road. She has no idea what forests are like here, and she'd rather follow the landmark that is the road rather than risk getting lost in the forest, even if it's only a small chance. She does not have miles-long sensory ranges.

That is good! She is not up for talking.

She will then enter the library through its front door. Is there someone there? Does someone try to talk to her? Is access to the computers gated somehow – are there employees there guarding them?

There are people reading books in comfy chairs and at tables, and browsing the stacks, and reading magazines and newspapers in a nook set aside for that, and using the computers, and someone with a wheeled cart full of books putting them back on the shelves, and someone reading a book to a group of children in the children's section, and a few people behind the big desk near the entrance and someone else seated behind a smaller desk by the computers. Almost everyone is dressed casually, and the exception - if Marina can tell that he's an exception without having seen a suit before - is reading a newspaper in the periodicals nook; nobody is obviously guarding anything.

Yep! That does look like a library. She notices that what the man is wearing is something she hasn't seen before. She doesn't know what it signals though – this world's clothing styles and norms are wholly unfamiliar to her.

It doesn't seem like things are laid out such that you have to get advance permission to use the computers. So...she will approach one of them. Does someone stop her? If not, is the computer already turned on? Is the screen glowing or is it dark?

The screen is dark with a few words of text floating gently around it, bouncing when they reach the edges of the screen.

This was not in her notes. The teacher did not cover this material in the lectures!! Most unfair exam ever!!

Okay. She will...move the mouse. Denice said that's how you move the cursor at things. Does that do anything?

The screen lights up! The screen is different from any of the ones in her notes; she's expecting a plain rectangle with a little bit of text and a single long rectangle inside it to put the password Denice gave her into, but this screen shows a taller, thinner rectangle with two rectangles, one big one with some fancy text and then a long thin password-entry-like one under some more text.

Goodness gracious. Does she want to ask Denice for help again? Maybe she could ask the librarian.

Hm. It might be that Denice didn't remember super accurately? She doesn't have super-sight, after all. What if she types the email address on the password-entry-like one and presses 'Enter' like she was told to?

A small rectangle appears over the big one with some text and two even smaller rectangles in it.

Okay she gives up. She'll remove the text that she entered by pressing Backspace repeatedly, and then stand up and go to the people behind the big desk next to the entrance.

"Hello," she says. "Can I use the computers?"

(Pressing backspace doesn't work with the small rectangle there; the computer chimes at her if she tries it. If she noticed that Denice was able to remove rectangles from the screen by clicking the X in the corner, though, that does work on this one.)

"Sure, go talk to Anne at the computer desk and she'll set you up." The librarian points at the woman behind the smaller desk near the computers.

(Oh dear. Well, she can pattern-match and will click the X. She'll leave when it doesn't resolve the problem.)

She will go to the woman the librarian points to and says, "Hello. Can I use the computers?"