Okay! He'll bring the printer over so she can watch it do its thing.

The printer is a boxy thing a little larger than the twenty-first century Earth object by the same name, with a slot at the back for threading the end of a roll of paper into and a keypad on the front. He narrates what he's doing once he has it set up: he happens to already have the code for the kids' educational books section memorized - if he didn't, he'd have to start at the top of the categorization tree, which has the all-zeros code - and entering that gets him a printout of the subsections within that category, which he navigates until he finds the section he wants, at which point he gets a list of about twenty books. Some of them he dismisses as too old, or for younger children; of the remaining handful he picks one based on it having been written by an author he recognizes and thinks writes well. There's a code on the printout alongside his selection, and he enters that to start the printer going on the book itself; it'll take ten or fifteen minutes for it to print the whole thing.

Once it's done he'll be able to make her a copy to follow along with, if she'd like. In the meantime he can explain how the printer works, if she wants, or get a spare that she can look at the mechanisms of? Or something else, of course.

Ooh! If she can get a look at the mechanism and work out a converter, she can probably just download their whole library. She bounces a little at the thought.

"Second," she writes.

Okay! He seems amused, and goes and gets another printer (in hematite; a spare, like he said) to bring over. He enlarges it to double its size before taking the cover off, and points out all the parts: It communicates with the library's machinery via ansible, which is one of the the main restrictions on how many printers there can be, since they have to have one end of the ansible here and they only have so many receptacles for them in the machine, though at this point it's probably up to several thousand; people really like the library so they're under a fair bit of pressure to make sure as many people can use it as possible. The ansible communicates with the rest of the machinery by changing shape to press on different bits of it, most of which cause these press-plates to touch the paper - in this printer they emit light when they're pressed, and the paper is set up to react to the light by changing color, though some people make their printers do that part differently and the method doesn't really matter much. These bits move the printing mechanism across the page to start on the next glyph instead, and these bits advance the paper to let the printer print out the next line; this part of the machinery, which isn't connected to the ansible at all, keeps track of how much paper has been extruded and cuts it at regular intervals to make the book's pages. When it's in the mode where it communicates with the library machinery rather than receiving printing instructions from it, pressing the keys on the keypad on the front of the printer activates this machinery to press the ansible into the relevant shape; these other bits of machinery add standard instruction codes before and/or after the keyed codes, to help the library's machinery keep track of what kinds of instructions it's receiving. The machinery coding is very complicated and not really his area - his job is taking hand-written books and setting up the printing instructions to make printed copies of them - but the engineer should be able to explain it if she's curious - maybe later, though, she seems busy right now. (She's still talking to the other formatting team member.)

Weeping Cherry follows along, tracing each of the levers to see how keyed codes convert to ansible-squishing, and what the set of press-plates looks like.

She shows a picture of him taking out the ansible and setting it near her.

He's hesitant to do that; if she manipulates the ansible in the wrong way it might break the library's machinery where the other side of it is. He can make her another ansible that isn't hooked up to the library's machinery, if that will do the trick; is that good enough?

Hmm. What she wants is to be able to look things up without needing to waste paper, since she can't synthesize great quantities of it yet, and the press plates are on the inside of the machine where she can't easily see them.

She shows a picture of him turning parts of the center of the machine transparent, in such a way that the action of the press plates is clearly visible, and setting the machine next to her. Then she shows a picture of her pressing the keys and the flashes of light from the press plates being clearly visible.

Sure, that's no problem at all. Or if she's just trying to figure out how the ansible shapes relate to the press plate outputs, he can get her a sheet with that already written up, would she like that instead?

She shows a dark charcoal grey.

She tries to figure out how to show 'I want to read all your books but don't want to oblige anyone to stand there recycling paper', but can't quite figure out a graphic that would convey it.

All right, he can transparent-ify this one, then; he goes ahead and does that, shrinking it back to its normal size once it's put back together.

Cherry will slide over to the device, close enough to be able to depress the keys, and key in the code of the book that she saw him order so that she can read along. Once the device is printing, she'll turn her main 'facet' back towards her interlocutor.

...okay?

She displays the incoming glyphs on her surface as the device flashes, slowly building up the first page of the book by way of explanation.

Oh, that's neat! He's not going to be able to keep up with the printer, reading, but if she has a way to store what it's printing he can get started.

Most Crafters live a settled, surface-dwelling lifestyle. They have a territory, where they can do whatever they'd like and build whatever they'd like, and not have to worry about interacting with any other Crafters there. Most Crafters who live like this live nearby other Crafters, and they'll share some areas in common. It's nice to live near other Crafters because the neighbors might be able to do things you can't, and they'll probably be willing to help you out, or at least trade for things. It also means you can have hobbies that involve other people, like playing games or singing together. Some places with a lot of Crafters living there even have computers that let you talk to your neighbors from your own territory! Thinking animals tend to like being in places with a lot of Crafters, too, so that they can get help from the Crafters when they need it, so if you like having crows or parrots around to pass messages or mammoths or mastodons around to help with moving things, this might be the best way for you to live. It's also the best way to live if you don't want to interact with anyone else, since this kind of territory is the easiest for making sure you can get everything you need without ever having to leave it.

Some crafters live a settled lifestyle, but underground, in places where there are mountains or where it's very hot or very cold on the surface or some other reason why that doesn't work very well. Instead of claiming a territory all at once, they build tunnels, and line them with crafting material so that other Crafters living nearby can tell when they're trying to make a tunnel somewhere that's already been claimed. It's a lot more work to make a territory this way, and thinking animals don't usually like living underground, but it lets Crafters live in places they otherwise couldn't, and lets more Crafters live in a given area than would be able to live in that area if they were all making claims normally, so it's good for groups of Crafters who want to work together on a project, or who need to live near each other so they can all learn from the same teacher.

Some Crafters are nomadic; instead of claiming territories, they make their houses and gardens walk or fly, so that they can go wherever they like. Most of the time when a Crafter lives like this, it's temporary, because they're looking for someplace to settle that they like better than where they were, but some Crafters like living this way and do it permanently. It's harder than living in the same place all the time because you have to bring everything you need with you, and you can't count on anyone being able to help you if you have a problem, but it does mean that if you need a type of help that the community you're near doesn't have, you can go to a different one that has it, and you're likely to have things they haven't seen before to trade with them. Some Crafters also live this way because they want to live near something that moves, like a mammoth herd, or some animals that they're studying. It's important to know how to train animals if you want to live a nomadic life, since you'll need to have animals (usually dogs) guide all your buildings besides the one you're on.

Some Crafters live on the water; this is a lot like living underground, except that they build boats instead of digging tunnels, with the added complication that it's hard to get things to make into crafting material. They also have to use special machines to turn salt water, which can't be drunk, into fresh water. It's the most social way to live; Crafters who live on boats usually have very small territories with lots of nearby neighbors and have to work together to make sure everyone has the things they need. It is possible to live on a boat by yourself without neighbors, but it's very risky; if you get sick, or can't find enough things to make into crafting material to make food out of, you'll really have a problem. Parrots and crows aren't usually willing to live on the water, but dolphins are also thinking animals and are sometimes willing to pass messages, especially if you'll trade them fish for it.

She now has so! Much! Vocabulary!

Also, apparently Crafters can eat crafting material. That's good to know. She had been planning to make people thank-you chocolate bars, but maybe they don't eat non-crafting material objects. She'll have to ask at some point.

When the book finishes downloading for her, she keys in the code for the children's index, and then sets up an automated process to pull down the entire children's section.

When he finishes reading, she tries to put together an example sentence, referring heavily to the story that was just shared.

She shows a picture of herself in forb fragment form next to "not-Crafter", and then tries to string together sentence fragments from the story to form the sentence "not-Crafters tend to like being in places with a lot of not-Crafters".

That was quick, her picking up the language like that! He's not really that surprised that her species is more social than crafters, most of the thinking species are. Her best bet if she can't get home is going to be joining a school or a group project like this one or a boating group, probably, or befriending thinking animals if that does the job for her.

She thinks the Crows she met were lovely, and certainly intends to invite some to her planned moon arcology. But also, despite having many times more vocabulary than she did, she still has no idea how to say that.

"not-Crafter like neighbor Crafter. not-Crafter like Crows," she replies.

She's still not sure how to form questions, but makes an attempt at "not-Crafter not-crafting material food. Crafter crafting material food. Crafter if not-crafting material food usually willing if if if."

He puzzles over this for a bit, and then figures out at least the one bit of it: the book mentioned needing crafting material for food, but Crafters don't eat it directly; one of the things it can be used for is fertilizer that lets them force-grow food plants without damaging them, and that's where Crafters get most of their food. They also eat eggs and meat but they don't have any special tricks for getting them besides getting plant food for the animals the same way they get it for themselves. And domestication, if that counts as a trick.

Oh! That makes more sense.

In that case, Cherry will continuously pull in a little stream of air and extrude (over the course of the next three minutes or so), a 32-ounce bar of white chocolate (likely to be tasty, unlikely to be poisonous) in a hematite grey paper wrapper with "food" printed on it.

While she does, she tries to think about how to ask how to ask a question.

Eventually she settles for using her trusty question mark as a loan word. "not-Crafter talk. You help not-Crafter talk. Help talk (?). not-Crafter not have talk (?)," she writes. And then, to illustrate the meaning of the question mark, she draws a little dialog between two crystals:

"You sing like?"

"not-Crafter sing like. You water like?"

"not-Crafter not water like."

She's asking how to write the 'query' indicator, he thinks? That's a circle-marking, it looks like this.

If 'crystal person' is an okay way to refer to her species, he'd compose a glyph for that like this - there are a couple different ways one could do it but he'd expect most people to pick that one up just fine, and it's related to the old glyph for the other humanoid species they have records of.

Sure, humans can be crystal people. It won't be the weirdest etymology she's seen.

"Crystal person like," she agrees.

"You talk computer messages?" she asks. She hopes that either this will prompt him to read a second book and get her some additional vocabulary, or it will prompt him to go into more detail about what other queries she can give the library computer.

...he's guessing she wants another book? The glyph for book is this.

He's not sure off the top of his head what else is particularly important for her... maybe a book teaching about crafting? He's not sure if she's seen the glyph for crafting yet, that's this.

Hmm. What kind of book would be best? She's after enough vocabulary to express herself first, and then enough grammar to do so eloquently second. She'd really like to know how to say 'please' and 'thank you' and other basic etiquette.

"Crystal person like have book," she affirms. "Book of talk? Book of crafting if not-(book of talk)."

...they do have a dictionary but he doesn't think he can get through trying to read a dictionary.

"Not book of <vague glyph>, book of talk to your neighbors," she attempts.

Then, after a moment of thought, "Computer have book of <vague glyph>? Crystal person talk <shifting string of numbers> to computer have book of <vague glyph>?"

Is she looking for a book on how to make computers? They definitely have a few of those.

He also has the library code for the dictionary memorized and can share that in case it's what she's looking for.