"Thanks! That does calibrate. Actually I'll just quote some common numbers from my own life if they interest you:

- Food delivery cost around 15€* per meal, budget conscious home cooking cost something between 1-5€ per meal depending on frugality and health targets

- A decent to good midrange phone costs 500€ (my phone and laptop cost significantly more because they were more expensive models my former employer paid for)

- My rent is close to 750€,

-1000€ is close to "maximum social support without a specific pension or other equivalent thing"

  - 600€ as "last line income support" (you were required to spend you savings before receiving it, and were not allowed to save much of it)

  - 400€ in rent support

- A normal waiter might earn 2000-2500€ / month

- A non-boss non-entrepreneur writes code programmer in my country would earn between 3000-7000€"

"Okay I guess that's as fine a reason as many others for naming things. Do you know what local scientists or people trying to stay on top of latest knowledge read, do they just read a ton of topic specific encyclopedias or do they have something more curated?"

*: (Euro)

"Strictly speaking, we actually have 2 zeros on the end of all price figures. So home-delivery food is, like, 300 zorkmids, or whatever. But we just use hecto-zorkmids in everyday life. Anyway!

The most interesting thing I've noticed, is the extra cost of delivery compared to home-cooking. The rest seems to... about add up to the same, relatively, really. Outside of seemingly not having basic income, is that right?"

"I don't know how scientists stay on top of things. Presumably, they use overlay journals?"

"In any case, you still need to go to the police station to start receiving basic, as well as a phone, and probably clothes. Don't worry about money; I'll front you enough for the phone to actually spend your basic, and some clothes. Tailors design phone-sized pockets, so it makes more sense to start with phones, I think."

"Yeah that's right. And the access to social support and such is highly dependant on citizenship and which country somebody's living in."

"Hm yeah that'd make sense."

"And thanks again, that order does sound sensible. Your clothes usually have pockets? In earth it is decently common for women's clothes to lack them entirely. Which is sometimes fine and sometimes sucks."

"Well, you can't really not have pockets, it's too impractical? At least sounds like it."

"Now, I'm very ready to get going and help you out. I'm kind of wanting to try a car this time, so we won't have to lug the clothes we're bringing home, and because I kind of want to see your reaction. Are you ready to get the phone, and clothes, and UBI, and see where you end up going from there?"

"Well yeah. I have a backpack whenever I'm outside which is some place to put the phone if I don't have pockets, some people use purses or small bags but I don't really prefer those. I think the reasoning for not having pockets is something like that they stretch the clothes out and make them fit less well, especially when the pockets have contents. But agree that it's not very practical."

"Sure, a car sounds interesting. I'm ready!"

"And I'm excited!" Cynthia heads down towards the parking garage beneath her building, this time heading towards a car that seems to be a hybrid between a bus and a minivan. It has 3 rows of seats, with vast amounts of legroom in both the 2 rear rows. She taps a few buttons on her phone before making her way to the car, opening the sliding doors leading to the second row of seats and inviting Viola to enter.

Viola takes a look around and then gets into the car, taking care to not hit her head (and looking impresssed if the door height is enough that not much acrobatics is necessary).

"Is this your car, a shared car for the building, or a rentable car? Pretty impressively spacious! Are you going to drive or is it automatic?"

The door height is high enough that Viola barely needs to crane her head in order to get in.

"It's partially a shared car for the building, and partially rentable. Basically, when nobody wants to rent it, anyone from the building can just get inside only paying for electricity. When someone does want it, you'll have to outbid whoever wants it. The idea is that the money from renting out the car pays for it, so it makes owning a car really cheap. Congestion taxes are really the big cost in driving, especially in a city as rich as this one. But it's early enough that I'm not too worried."

Cynthia makes her way out of the basement and rushes off towards a phone store. It only takes around 10 minutes to get there, with another 5 minutes for finding a place to park it while they're in the store. The streets are free of parked cars; they didn't build them wide enough for cars, people, and parking.

"Congestion taxes sound really sensible as well, I've never lived in a place where they were implemented. But we also have a lower population density in my home country than here, I'm pretty sure."

Is it multi-floor parking building, underground parking, or something else?

Once they get in the store Viola starts to look for spec sheets, and if none are available she'll first ask Cynthia and then a store clerk for info as needed. What are the phone options, what kind of tradeoffs are popular, what kind of battery life do the phones here have, what are the screen sizes like, and also what are the apps like. What's the mobile data speed like, what does it cost?

"Well, I feel like you're always paying the congestion tax, if you think about it."

The city uses underground parking; it seems like not stuffing cars in the basement is seen as a waste of space.

The phones don't have spec sheets obviously visible; they're just placed against a wall, with bigger phones closer to the entrance, and smaller phones further away. They're all efficiently placed on small shelves by the window to the store. Viola is free to pick one up and see how fast it is (none of the phones use any animations, they just instantly open apps or menus!)

All the screensavers of the phones have spec sheets as the phone wallpaper, but they all use the same chip, so there is very little variety. The main difference comes in the case, screen size, camera, and finally storage. It seems like the major difference is that you can get phones with huge camera modules, coming at the cost of battery life. The battery life claims to be 12-14 hours "video use", and years of "dumbphone standby" The screen sizes are large; but the phones take up nearly the whole screen, so it doesn't get uncomfortably big. The biggest phones are maybe 6.5 inches or so in terms of size. The apps are extremely utilitarian: a lot of them almost seem like train control panels, with many bright buttons, closely spaced and labelled with text.

There is no information on mobile data to be found.

Are there no advertisements in the shop in general?

"I guess. But if it's not something you pay per-vehicle then oftentimes people like public transport passengers overpay in time lost due to congestion compared to people who just use single cars. If you have road-based public transport that is."

"I really like the fact that the phones don't use animations by default for transitioning between modes / apps! That was one thing I often configured differently with my old phones. The apps seem surprisingly utilitarian design wise."

Are there gaming or other entertainment apps?

"How do you pay for connecting the phones to data, what we would call internet, here? I'm used to there being various options that have different monthly limits and maximum speeds for data access. Do you have crowdsourced video media services where I can watch things like video essays by people? This would affect how much data I need. And how much storage I will use."

Viola is now mostly looking at the 6" sized phones, with non-huge but decent camera and taking a look at what the storage options are and how much they cost.

There are indeed 0 advertisements in the shops, outside of sterile tables with specs for various phones. And there are gaming apps, either abstract rhythm games or history inspired RPGs or strategy games, it seems.

"Well, all the phones have e-sims, right? So paying for data is done through a special app. But every country has agreed to set-aside a few hecto-zorkmids each month for free data transfers to all the different e-sim modules, and the bandwidth is pretty great, so I don't think you'll need to worry about the hassle of paying for and dealing with a data plan. There is no monthly limit, only a pretty great speed, honestly. Like, 50 megabits? I think. It can get slower when it's congested, that's when the paid services are better. But congestion is incredibly rare."

"There are many services that let you watch other people's videos! But it works fine on just the free wireless plan."

A 6 inch phone with a more-than-barebones camera is quickly found. They all use ultra-light composite plastics, and they come in plastic with all kinds of textures and sensory feelings. Soft-touch plastic, brushed aluminum, glass, wood, the options go on and on! The storage options start at 32 GB and go all the way up to 256 GB. Going from 32 to 256 adds 30 or so hecto-zorkmids to the price.

That is pretty impressive. And also feels weirdly understimulating for a shopping environment, but probably Viola will adjust with time.

"Yeah okay that sounds very good! My home country has a unusually good price/data ratio for Earth countries and a reasonably good speed like 50 megabits didn't cost an expensive amount but did cost a nonzero amount there. And great to hear! I like videos."

It's probably going to be soft-touch plastic or brushed aluminium. "The material selection is nice, I'll be fine with something I'm used to like this plastic or aluminium one here. Do you have cases and/or screen protectors available, or are the phones durable enough without one? I'm clumsy enough that I drop my phone on my floor maybe once a month or so, and previously it has made sense for me to use those."

And Viola likes to have certain access to her music library and some entertainment in case of like. Being suddenly somewhere without internet access, so even with everything she has heard about Thomassia now she'll probably opt for the 256gb just to be safe.

"Is 30 hecto-zorkmids around 10 meals if one meal was 300 zorkmids so 3 hecto-zorkmids? I prefer to have more storage over having less, so I'll probably opt for the 256 gb model."

"No, we don't do cases. The ballistics-grade plastic is very tough, and you can just switch it if you need to. But phones actually come with an extra screen protector layer built in, to try protecting the screen in case you drop it and hit the glass. You can buy a replacement contract for the case and screen if you wish; I guess it'd give you piece of mind."

"30 hecto-zorkmids is indeed around 10 meals, yes. And basically everyone picks the 256 gig-models anyway; we're thinking about just having 256 gig models, and making the 32-gig models a custom option. But there's really no good answer."

What does the replacement contract seem to cost. It doesn't seem necessary but if it's cheapish Viola might buy it for peace of mind, like predicted.

"Okay yeah that makes sense. Then I guess I'm mostly done, once I check the replacement contract price."

A case and screen replacement contract is 50 hecto-zorkmids, with high copays in the beginning and shrinking copays later on; in fact, after 10 years, the copay falls to zero and you can just mail your phone to get a case and screen replacement. But presumably, you'd upgrade by then.

"Yeah, I'll be ready to pay for you. I think it's really awesome how our phones can do everything here."

"Yeah! I'll take this 6" one, with a decent camera and the 256GB storage, and soft-touch plastic, and skip the replacement contract for now. Thanks!"

"Oh and about phones doing everything, do you routinely also connect your phones to bigger displays or play video through projectors, or do you use computers or internal software on the bigger displays / projectors for that?"

"We also use phones with projectors, and wireless keyboards, yes. Most people only own phones or maybe a tablet, and use it for everything. It's really only gamers and programmers and video editors that use more high-end computers."

Cynthia walks over to the shop clerk, placing her phone on a spiral placed on the counter. She's ready to pay for Viola's purchase.

Viola takes the phone-to-buy over to the counter.

"Will I also get assigned a phone number or whatever identifier is used to make calls here automatically? This is actually my first phone."

After the purchase is done Viola will get ready to walk out of the store with Cynthia, and also ready to start setting up the phone, but perhaps only do that once they get to the car again.

"Yes, the e-SIM chip comes comes with a number for you to use by default. You are allowed to change it if you want a vanity-SIM, but basically nobody does that."

When Viola tries setting up the phone, she sees that it just leads into a terminal instead of having anything like a launcher or anything else.

What's the virtual keyboard like? If it's pretty usual Viola will just try a bunch of commands until she gets some help text (presuming there are no instructions first):

<tab>

help<enter>

/help

list

/list

Nothing happens. Cynthia notices Viola tapping away and starts explaining how things work.

"All thomassian operating systems are extremely barebones, they're basically just a command prompt and a program that lets you download something else. You have to write dl basic to download the app store, and start adding on all the programs you'll be using from there."

She walks off to her car, taking it the few hundred meters to a street with a row of tailors of all kinds, including several underwear tailors. Cynthia parks her car in the parking lot under the stores and their skyscraper, before making her way to a fairly ordinary-looking salon displaying all kinds of skirts, dresses and leggings in the display windows.

"Oh I guess that makes sense as well. Are there different app launchers / "desktops" then as well?"

"Oh this looks nice!"

What are the prices like in the clothes store? Is a clerk / tailor visible?

"Yeah, we usually get them from an app store. There's an ocean of options, with Type 1 and Type 2 designs."

The prices in the store are higher than the very cheapest brands from Earth, but not by much, maybe 50-100% more. There is a tailor, wearing an absolutely amazing dark blue dress, who walks out to greet Cynthia as she starts entering the store.

"I'm Iris, nice to meet you! What can I do for you today?" She smiles and looks at Viola.

"What do Type 1 and Type 2 designs mean?"

"Oh wow your dress looks gorgeous! Um. Some things happened and I basically need a new wardrobe. Or start of one, at least. So I'll need something like a couple of tops, leggings, maybe a pair of jeans, another skirt, maybe a dress if you have something that'd fit me well? Maybe something black or dark blue, medium length. Oh and shorts and a t-shirt or something to hang out at my home with."