"Yup! Just write your name and the time here and I'll put you in the system." She offers a clipboard with a half-filled-out lined section on it.

She has learned from the previous Form-Filling Debacle how to put down her name. But she actually hasn't learned how timekeeping here works. The house they're staying at doesn't have a clock, and if this is a different world, then they'll tell time differently. Even though, at least from what she's noticed, the day lengths are similar. 

"Sorry. What is time now?" she'll ask.

She checks her watch. "Five forty."

She recognizes "five" and "four"! So she'll put down the numbers "5" and "4" on the sheet. Does Anne accept this?

...you know what, sure, she'll just fix that up herself. And then typetty type on the computer on the desk, and she writes a string of letters on a little card for Marina. "There's your password, you're on computer three. Do you need help signing in?"

She wants to try doing it herself, but since Anne is offering already, she might as well take advantage of it now.

"Yes, please. I want to use email."

"Okay. Hotmail, or something else?"

Ummmmmmmmmm. She knows the individual words 'hot' and 'mail'. But she guesses that's a name.

She will resist the urge to run away from potential embarrassment and go boldly into the frontier.

"Yes, Hotmail." And if it transpires to not be Hotmail, she will look very stupid but honestly she doubts she would have gotten far enough to even have tried Hotmail without help. 

Anne walks her to the computer and sits, and quickly has the familiar email page on the screen. "There you go." And she'll leave her to it.

Marina's instructions didn't account for this, of course, but she can probably find the right spot in them to continue from.

"Thank you!" She beams at her.

Alright. Yes, this is familiar territory now. She'll take out her paper and put in her username and password in the boxes, and then click the smaller rectangle below the two of them to confirm. Does that work?

Yup!

And there's a reply to her email to the PRT!

To: Padparadscha
From: Parahuman Relations

Hello, Padparadscha! We would be very interested in having a parahuman with your power join the Protectorate and suggest that you make your way to the nearest PRT headquarters to discuss the details of a potential contract in a more secure setting. If you need help financing such a trip, we can provide you with a travel stipend via mail or courier to the address of your choice.

Regarding some of your questions:

The Protectorate will not require you to heal only people it selects, but we do suggest that you arrange any work you'd like to do in-costume through our public relations department, so that we can provide you with support from other parahumans in case of disruptions.

You're welcome to work with the Protectorate as a contractor, though this option doesn't allow us to provide you with as much security.

If you do join the Protectorate, you're free to quit or retire at any time.

We don't require any documentation or tests from parahumans joining the Protectorate and you're welcome to keep your legal identity private.

Thank you for your interest in joining the Protectorate.

Joel Smith
Parahuman Relations

She really should have thought this through more, because now she's looking at a whole letter in English and she has no idea what two thirds of these words mean. She wants to try and look for a dictionary of some sort....but doing that would leave the computer unattended. There are other people here unlike last time. She definitely does not want people to see it.

She'll instead take ten minutes to copy out the entirety of the letter on her note sheet, underlining all the words she doesn't recognize. She's not planning on replying today. She wants to check in with Denice first so she can take a look at it, and help her draft another letter. Understanding a passage is one thing, writing one is another.

She is going to click 'X' to exit – does that get rid of the screen with the email?

It does, yes.

Great! In that case she'll take all her stuff and go to Anne to say "I'm done with computers now. Thank you."

"Thank you!"

Will she do anything else while she's at the library?

Yes! She'll try to look for dictionaries. Maybe learner's dictionaries or dictionaries for young people or those with illustrations? Once she finds one, she'll sit down and read the letter using the dictionaries as a reference. It's very difficult. A lot of the words the letter used aren't concrete, so even though she got an illustrated dictionary, well, only some of the entries are illustrated, and the rest have pure text. Which means she'll have to read those and not know the words there, and thus causing her to recursively look up more and more words.

Marina is a disciplined researcher who has participated in transcribing and translating Old Towan transcriptions from ruins, but it doesn't make it easy. At the end she's on the verge of running out of space on her note paper from all the things she's written on it.

Alright. What does she want to do now. She thinks...she thinks she wants to negotiate some sort of probationary contract with the PRT, where she won't be fully integrated into the system, but she'll be paid – and being paid earlier is better – and she'll get a better of idea of how the PRT operates and whether she wants to sink herself into it. See, Joel Smith said that she'd be free to quit or retire at any time, but she doesn't know whether there are conditions attached to that, such as say, 'she can leave at any time but then you have to pay money if you leave before this set duration'. 

She might reconsider later, but that initial plan seems good. She'll leave and go back to Denice.

She's walked several miles today and Flowers Practitioner or no, she's kind of getting tired. Not super tired, but moderately tired.

Denice is waiting when Marina gets back; she probably hasn't spent the whole time sitting in that one spot but there's no sign of anything else she might have been up to.

Yeah, she would get terribly antsy if she had to stay like that the whole time. Marina doesn't try to examine what Denice has been doing in the intervening time, or whether or not she left, but instead goes straight into recounting her experience at the library. Marina will show the email she received to Denice.

:What do you think about what the PRT person said? Do you think they're trustworthy? Do you think I should try going to the nearest PRT headquarters? I actually wanted to try to see where it was, but sadly I forgot to ask you how to access the map on the computer, and I didn't know enough English to get the computer to display it.:

:I'm not sure how to tell if they're trustworthy,: she starts, and then looks the email over again. :I think they're worried about something bad happening to you, see this part?: She points out where they mention providing her with security. :And this one,: where they mention disruptions. :That might be a threat, too, I don't know.:

:That's true. I didn't...I didn't think about that. Back in Kosofo I didn't worry about my safety – I had my knife and I had my Flowers spells, but here...it does seem like the average cape is better at fighting than the average practitioner. I suppose if I approached the place with a cape outfit on, someone might attack me.:

She thinks about it for a little bit.

:I think it's worth it for me to go, if the place isn't far, or if it's on the way to New York or in New York. Do you know if there's one there? If not, I'll go to the library again tomorrow to look at the computer map, or cast Be My Ears for you using animal bones tomorrow noon. Or wait, no, we were concerned that the computer map might track and transmit our location. Hm. I might ask the librarian for a paper map instead.:

:There's one in New York, yeah. I think we can get directions from the computer without too much risk - I'd have it give me directions to like ten places, and then they won't know which one we're really going to. A paper map is still better if you can get one without having to tell someone what map you're looking for, but I don't know if you can.:

:That's good. And yes, I agree. I think I'll try asking for a paper map first, of the surrounding areas here, that covers the nearby cities, and one of New York. In the case the maps don't mark the PRT headquarters, I'll try the computer misdirection plan. I'll ask you for names of places here later, so I know what to put in the computer as red herrings.

My other concern was cape costumes. I think that the PRT, if they accept me, will give me materials or money to sew or buy my own costume. But, they also said that they wouldn't require me to reveal my civilian identity to them, and I'd rather not do that. Especially since I kind of don't have one. I think what I might do is come there wearing just a mask to hide my face. It seems easier than getting a whole outfit, and also gives me most of the benefit of the outfit anyway. Where do you think we could get something like that? And materials for your cape costume too – since you won't be able to access the PRT's help, if you're planning on breaking the other kids out before I approach them.

What I mean is that, if I have a contract with the PRT already, I can give you some of the money I earn so you can buy costume materials. Or, I can buy them for you and leave them at a spot you can access.:

:I don't need a costume yet, I'm not going to be getting the other kids out this year. I want to be out for a year myself first so I know I can do it.: She's obviously not happy about this, but she seems set on it.

:I don't know where we'd get a mask but I'll listen around, maybe I can find some.:

She would be unhappy too, in her case! She's kind of impatient. She was less so before she awakened in Flowers, she remembers.

:Alright. And thank you for looking out for where we might be able to get a mask.:

:I'm not planning on going out again today, so I'm going to take a shower and wash my clothes too, and then hang it up. Hopefully it will have dried tomorrow, even though it will be inside.: And she will do so.

When she gets out of the shower, Denice asks her to wake her up at sunset, and curls up in the corner to sleep.