"It has been around three hundred Years - Valian Years, anyway - since we awoke on the shores of Cuiviénen. Ten non-Valian years are one Valian Year. I don't know how you measure time, so these numbers might be meaningless?"

"We do have years that we measure time in, but I don't know if they match up…"

"Well, how long are your days, and how many days are in a year?"

"Twenty-four hours and three hundred and sixty five? There are sixty minutes in an hour and I can try to give you how long a minute is, but scaling that up sounds annoying…"

"It probably will be, but I can just get paper and a pen and figure it out, how long's a minute?"

He has a phone! His phone has a timer and he can set it for a minute.

"… Do you have electricity, I think you said no but I don't recall."

"We do not have electricity! What is that, how does it work, it looks like it does more things than just display minutes what are those how are new things added -?"

"... Eru, I sound like my uncle, I'm sorry if that was a bit too strong, that's just very cool and exciting and I want to know how it works."

"No, no, it's fine," he says. "Electricity is really cool – uh, I do not know much about the lower-level details but I know quite a lot about higher-level things, how you'd go about adding more functionality. The clock is standard for the device, there's a standard bundle of programs for it – they're higher-level things, there are lots of them and you can make your own if you read up on how – but they all run on the same hardware, the same physical device, you just have to change some of the data stored on it so it does different things."

"I... think I understand. It's like it has a certain set of abilities - the glowing screen that can change its colors? - and then you teach it different things to display and how to display them?"

"Yes, and it can do calculations of things, and it can communicate with other devices and store information, so – it's quite versatile, especially when it has a lot of other devices to communicate with."

"That's amazing," she says sincerely, about to ask several other questions, then winces and continues, "and I probably do not at all have time to figure out the ins and outs of it right now, fascinating as it is. I can have eternity to figure out the details of it when you are not slowly dying. ... Possibly I could figure out a way to use it to help with song or artifact design, what are some of the calculations it can do?"

"It can do basic arithmetic extremely quickly? Uh, if you need to plot graphs or solve equations, it can do that using various techniques, either numerically or analytically… You could buy a laptop from Bar and find some information on modelling of systems, that sounds like it might be helpful if there are a lot of factors that go into the artifact design and you know some details about how they impact the final result."

She nods. "Bar, could I have a laptop, and maybe borrow an instruction manual or something for it? ... Also how do I pay for things, I am from a utopia devoid of currency exchange."

I have no objection if you run up a tab. You may also return objects, provided they are not damaged. Laptop. Instructions.

Calassúrë begins investigating the astonishingly pretty laptop, reading the instructions and occasionally giggling.

Bizarrely pretty laptop! Sure.

"… What's so funny?" he asks, after one such occurrence.

"It's not so much funny, as it is the absolute most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life! Look! I can input and then sort information! I can color code it! I can have it color code itself! I can have it do math for me and input formulas for it to follow! This is amazing, I love it, I take it back, I'm not from paradise, I'm from a very close facsimile that lacks key elements, paradise would have Microsoft Excel!!!"

She resumes giggling.

Aww. "Have you found out about the Internet yet?"

"No, what's that, is it better than spreadsheets, because I find that highly unlikely, but would be really thrilled to be proven wrong!"

"I doubt you can access it here but you might be able to get an offline copy of Wikipedia –"

He asks Bar if they can somehow get access to Wikipedia in here.

I can provide static instances of Wikipedias from specific worlds and times.

"One from my world, then? … Or I could get a headstart on what might happen, are there worlds that look like mine?"

I can only evaluate world similarity based on published works.

"Are there ones that have the same published works as mine except for future publications?"