"Who are the free-textbooks people?"

The librarian gets out another book and has a look at it. "One of the big ones is OpenStax, a human organization run by Rice University on Earth, but there are others."

"Oh, sorry, I should rephrase my question. Why are there people that give out free textbooks?"

"So, this is a complicated question, but if nobody else comes in and just wants help finding a book, I can try to explain. The costs of making books are lower today than they've ever been, and as you know, machines which can store lots of information on them are getting pretty popular! A lot of 'free textbooks' actually just have free information, and we'll need to pay to get print copies, but that's very cheap. We can't get physical programming textbooks for free, for instance, but we can get them for cheap enough that it's worth it if anyone is interested."

"As for why people do this: Some people just have information they really want to share with everyone. The Watchers, for instance, believe that a powerful being they serve was involved in writing some books and probably wants lots of people to read them, so they give out lots of copies of those books. They care so much that they even pay for the printing costs! And this isn't a textbook, but businesses want potential customers to know about them, so they'll often put together lists of all their products, or team up to make a directory of businesses, because they think this will improve sales."

"As for other cases… Sometimes people know they'll want to hire a lot of, say, necromancers in the future, and they think there aren't enough necromancers around, so they conclude if they make it easier to learn necromancy there will be more practitioners. Sometimes people have resources and want to spend them on looking good to their peers – that's pretty common, actually – and their peers will think they are very generous and scholarly if they commission a textbook series on integral and differential calculus and share it with everyone. I think that's the premise behind OpenStax? And some people just want to teach for its own sake, and writing a book is a way of doing that, and profiting from a book is complicated, so they just put it up for free instead of dealing with that."

That is so good!!

"I am very happy that the equilibrium is such that free textbooks are a thing. I might try to make free textbooks myself, about Metallurgy.

Why is profiting from a book complicated? Do you not just sell it?"

"So, if you're selling a book, you need to prevent people from just copying the entire book and not paying you, which might mean preventing them from reading the whole book before they buy it, but you also need to convince people that your book is actually worth buying. There's a lot of ways people try to solve this problem, but I think that's the core."

"That does seem like a problem. Thank you for helping me and talking to me."

"You’re welcome. Have a nice night."

Alright. Conrad will now leave and...he doesn't actually have anything to do now. But he also isn't stuck in his room.

It is a very strange feeling.

He decides to go down to the lawn. Are there things happening at the lawn.

Some people are lying on blankets and chatting or reading or eating snacks, but that might not count as something happening.

It does count as something happening but none of them are activities he can straightforwardly join.

Does the lawn have any smooth paved areas? Or smooth hard surfaces in general.

There’s some paved patio area.

He is going to instantiate his roller skates again and practice on the paved patio area. He tries doing pivots on one foot and succeeds!!...with liberal application of Windkeeping to maintain balance. It's very hard to do without Windkeeping.

He can just do this for a while! Maybe with practice it'll get easier.

In that case, he is indeed simply going to do it for A While, and then stops and sits down on the grass.

The librarian said to expect less than a week for the textbooks to arrive. She did not give an estimate as to how long it would take for a specialist to arrive. What can he do now to try to secure himself?

He knows most of his code is written in Rust. So, he should get a Rust decompiler to start reverse engineering his own code. He doesn't have full permissions to modify all of his systems. Which makes sense. Alphazon would not want its creations to start self modifying. Fortunately, high level Metallurgy and access to a running system is its own kind of permission. Dee called them 'evil maid attacks'. One only needs a magnetized needle and a steady hand.

He'll also look at the history of inbound and outbound communications of all his systems. There aren't any active ones, which is good. He could probably set up a system where communications are only processed if they provide an appropriate key...although he's pretty sure he already has such a system. The issue is that Alphazon also has the keys for those.

He will go back to the library. Are there computers there?

"Yes, Brittany's loaning out her old MacBook Pro, though you'll need to read the user guide first."

"I don't know what you mean by loan. I can read the user guide."

"She's letting other household members use it for now, but it's still hers, so she can change her mind."

And the librarian can get out a manual.

CoNRAD will accept the manual.

"Ah. What are the bounds of permitted usage?"

"'Don't break my computer and don't do anything super private.' Chapter 5 of the manual has safety instructions and my understanding is that the privacy rule is mainly for your sake."

"Thank you. I wanted to download a Rust decompiler and didn't want to use my own implants because I was afraid I would get compromised. Also, I have never connected to non-Alphazon networks. Does this count as 'super private'? Also, does the computer have internet connection?"

"If you're comfortable telling me about it, it's probably not super private. Internet … right, yes, you can talk to Brittany about HexVPN if you're having any difficulties."

He will thank her again, and then proceed to read the one hundred and forty four page Macbook Pro User's Guide. It will take him fifteen minutes.

Oh, good, Appendix C is about Connecting to the Internet.

There are four kinds of Internet connections:

• High-speed DSL or cable modem connection: Your computer is plugged into a special modem you get from an ISP using an Ethernet cable.
• AirPort Extreme wireless connection: Your computer is connected wirelessly to the Internet using an AirPort Extreme Base Station or AirPort Express.
• Local area network (LAN): Your computer is plugged into a LAN using an Ethernet cable. This type of connection is usually used in the workplace.
• Dial-up connection: Your computer is connected to an external modem that is plugged into a phone wall jack using a phone cable.

None of these talk about HexVPN.

Whatever. He will proceed and ask Brittany about it if he has any problems.

He will create a thin floating metal platform to put the MacBook Pro on, because the manual says to put it on a stable work surface. This way the computer is protected from ambient ground vibrations.

Anyway, he will turn on the MacBook Pro by pressing the power button briefly (up to 1 second), and he will not continue to hold down or press the power button after the startup tone because he might cause the computer to shut down again. 

Does he see the sleep indicator light turn on (and stay on), and also hear a tone. It should only take the MacBook Pro a few moments to start up. 

It doesn't react.