Uhm. Let's start with why he's here.

In the kitchen metaphor it's probably going to be... there, on the counter. There is a bowl of some silvery liquid that has his pod floating in it. He points to it, and to the charred piece of metal that's sitting on the stove and smells of burning space stations and failed experiments (how can that be a smell?).

The Tender carefully puts a finger in the silvery liquid and Mark experiences a flashback in fast forward of the descent. From the panic in orbit, to the impact of the surface, to the long stretch of boredom to the interactions with various otherworldly creatures. The flashback ends and Mark can see that the Tender's eyes in real life are closed.

The mental representation then puts their hand on the space station fragment and Mark experiences those hectic last moments on the station again, but again quickly, and with some distance to the experience.

The Tender expresses understanding and sorrow and empathy and reassurance.

The Tender touches a specific part of the fragment again and Mark experiences a part of the memory again.

"Okay we gotta GO! To the escape pods, NOW!"

Then picks another and Mark can hear a memory of his own voice.

"Roquefort is the pinnacle of human food, you heathen."

Finally they walk over to the pod in the bowl and Mark can hear the initial bits of his improvised lyrics:

"There's a starman falling from the sky

He'd like to reach the ground safe

But he fear he'll blow up fine"

The Tender expresses confusion and interest and inquiry, and again gestures to the surroundings.

(Throughout, their eyes very carefully seek to only the bowl, the charred remains, and Mark's representation of himself, ignoring the clutter of other symbolic items, images plastered on surfaces and other more abstract representations.)

Bowie or food first?

They say music is universal, right? He remembers something about whales singing.

Roquefort is definitely not universal. Yet!

He looks around... there, door. He beckons Spooky Eyes to follow him. He moves into a relatively empty corridor, then into a metaphorical room.

And the memory of Bowie should be... there, he can see the record player. He grabs a vinyl and starts the player. The music fills the small cabin.

The Tender listens to the abstract amalgamated representative of every time Mark has heard that song, merged with his emotions and experiences of it, sprinkled with some of the associations of other Bowie music. They can not do much else but enjoy it to a significant fraction of how much Mark enjoys re-audiating it.

The real life face is shaped into a fairly close facsimile of a smile of enjoyment, and the mind representation is swaying along in a very human fashion.

Then the song ends and they are awoken from their reverie. They communicate appreciation, but also misunderstanding.

Uh. Misunderstanding. Maybe they would have wanted to know about Roquefort instead.

Ok, that's totally not how the real TK is... was structured but he can probably open a door from the corridor directly to the command center.

Come, Spooky Eyes, if you want to understand more about the station we can do that better over there.

The command center is an unassuming place. The station mostly ran itself, so there was rarely a need to be there, but he knows that it is where the manual overrides where, so based on the whole mental metaphor the plans should be easier to view here. Plus it has big screens, so there's that.

He tosses up a 3d model of TK.

"This is where I lived for the past... I don't even know how many years now. I was running at first, mostly from my past but... I found something here. Research, pushing the boundaries of what humans know about the deep structure of the cosmos. Curiosity, bold experiments far away from any inhabited places.

"Then... something went wrong. Some days ago now, I've lost count of how many to be honest, I could check it but that would require leaving the mindspace. A routing experiment and... it was probably my fault."

"Damn."

"I hope I was the only one to sink and the others will all get rescued."

"Would serve me well."

As Mark gets a hang of manipulating his own mindspace, the environment quickly stops being cluttered with random deeply private things, and instead symbolic representations appear when he wants to refer to them. The Tender picks up on the intention to _show_ the command center and unlocks their eyes from his face and starts to curiously look around the room, pausing to inspect the 3D model from several angles. Mark is still new to this, but the Tender is not, so when the big screens flicker with faces of people who may or may not be lost, reflections of guilt, and unrelated thoughts, they don't look. They express curiosity, but again misunderstanding.

When he starts speaking they intently stare again, every now and then reproducing some repeated sounds. "Ai". "Ww". "Me".

They look confused and focused, then shake their head and hold up their hand, palm up.

Floating above it appears a glass sphere slightly larger than Mark's hand, which contains a number of small, odd... fungi? floating around, with ethereal connections between them.

The Tender mimes touching the sphere, points to Mark, and extends the item toward him.