It's a warm, fluffy, thick, and soothing blanket that weights her down as she sleeps.

"Get a weighted blanket" was one of the things she had procrastinated long enough that she just gave up on it. It's really nice, actually.

When she wakes up, she stares at her phone for a while (once again finding absolutely nothing worth doing on it) before getting out of bed... and then starts feeling very ticked off at her past self for making her go deal with things. Actually her past self handled things unusually well but she's mad anyways.

She manages to force herself out the door. Out of spite.

Is she going to have to resort to asking someone for directions to a store where she can get a new Thomassia-compatible phone? She is probably going to spend at least an hour hoping she can somehow luck into one without having to do that.

Well, the hour goes by without a phone magically appearing for her to use. Asking for directions becomes really the only step that's left.

Fine. Has she seen a police station or any other institution that seems like it might provide directions, or is she just going to have to flag down a random person on the street?

She hasn't seen a police station, no. She didn't see much on the subway ride over, or the trip to the local cafe. There are a fair few people enjoying a walk through the cityscape right outside her apartment, though.

Drat. After some internal anguish over the decision of who to approach, she walks up to someone.

"Hey, could you point me towards the nearest place I can buy a new phone? I'm, uh, new around here, and my old one isn't working."

"Well, it's not far! It's 8 blocks", she holds up a thumb and three fingers on her right hand, "straight down there, and then another 3" she just holds up three fingers on her right hand, pointing it to the left, "blocks to the left. It has a poster of an old-school phone in front of an ancient computer in front of it, you won't miss it."

"Great, thanks!"

She is not familiar with this finger counting system, but she does know what the words "eight" and "three" mean. She is desperately hoping that "an old-school phone in front of an ancient computer" is at all recognizable to her, because she sure isn't going to ask for more elaboration about that. That is the sort of question that will make you stand out a bit.

She heads off in that direction. What does the poster look like, will she be able to identify it?

The poster shows a huge brick of a phone, in front of what looks like a typewriter with a huge ream of paper flowing out from it, reaching out into a spool placed behind the typewriter. There's what looks like computer code written on the typewriter paper, with a new line of uncompleted code currently at the bottom of the page.

She... does not quite understand how that is a computer. How does it compute? But it's a near enough match that she will at least try glancing in the window, if she can. Or take a look inside if she has to.

There's a huge wall of phones along the glass window; the selection is just about endless. The main difference seems to be in terms of size: there are smaller phones visible on Meadow's right, getting slowly bigger as they get to Meadow's left. She can see that the phones next to the door have size that's somewhere in between, being around 5 inches diagonal in size, with next to no bezels.

She will spend a little time picking out one that looks good and that can rest comfortably in her fingers. She wants something with a longish battery life, but she's not gonna be especially picky.

Can she just like, grab it and take it to do self-check out somewhere... actually, she's going to need to explain the thing where she doesn't know how to pay for anything yet, isn't she. Ugh. She goes to find an employee.

The phones are made of all sorts of materials, designed to have nice sensory feelings. You can have silk-feel, velvet-feel, or several kinds of stone on the phone's back. Meadow can easily find one in her size, and the battery life of the phones is universally claimed to be 18 hours or more. There's a man standing behind the counter, clearly excited to talk about how awesome today's phones are. 

I mean. Yeah they're cool, she guesses, but like, it's a phone. She can access the internet with it. The extra details are sort of whatever to her.

(Okay maybe they're a little nice. But she'll get used to them quickly, she always does.)

"Hey. I, uh, don't have access to basic income or anything. I was hoping I could, uh, get a phone and figure out how to access that, and then pay for the phone using it?" She holds out the phone she picked out. "Would that be okay?"

"I'm okay with you paying for it like that, yes. I'll just make a quick note, and I'll get my money once you're receiving basic, no need to worry. Getting basic is just a quick trip to the police station, so I'll even front you the tiny sum needed for the fare to get there. Give them your biometrics, and you're put into the system instantly, no worries."

She'd normally be kinda fussy about the biometrics but it's objectively entirely reasonable and she's too tired to care. And it's not like she's gonna go figure out a way to avoid it. So fine. She wishes the man a nice day and makes her way over to the police station.

What is actually using the phone like? Can she go right ahead and start scrolling through wikis, while on her way to the police station?

Yes! The phone starts with an extremely stripped-down OS, but it already has the ability to download files from the internet. Finding one of the MANY wikis, loaded with fascinating information, is as simple as typing a command and waiting for it to download to her phone (it happens near-instantly.) Eventually, Meadow would probably want to download a proper web browser, which is as simple writing another terminal command on her phone, letting her fly through wikis.

She has, like, ever used a terminal, but she tends to find them frustrating to deal with. If she types "help" or something is she going to find simple instructions for downloading a web browser? She'll probably get started on that right away, if she notices it's an option.

Typing help lets her get a few URLs to download a web browser, app store, and some other very essential programs. Just typing those in gets Meadow a non-terminal UI almost immediately.

Ah, great. 

So, uh, what in the world do you even read about, if you now have access to another civilization's internet? Can she find like, an article about Thomassia itself?

More than one, as a matter of fact. She can find articles trying to explain thomassia to aliens, debating the history of thomassia, how well today's political systems work and how they might have ended up different, and a huge amount of geeking about skyscrapers and the new mobile ICU railcars that some cities are starting to roll out. Thomassians seem to have quite a few people interested in daycare and hospital design, Meadow notices.

I mean, daycares and hospitals aren't her special interest, but sure those are important things to get right.

She's totally gonna read the article trying to explain it to aliens in depth, given that she is at least kind of an alien.

This planet lives under such a bizarre ideology, it seems to be nothing but contradiction on contradiction: live close together, yet have plenty of space for yourself, stay cool and warm, yet live in the blistering heat or freezing cold, stay comfortable, yet wear heels and thongs. Its every goal claims to be luxury and prosperity, yet these creatures appear to take every opportunity to thwart themselves. 

Above all is the system of parent-cities, an adaptation that tries to marry huge cities of closely-packed people, with play areas and room enough to raise a family. The system must be said to work, they achieve a fertility rate far greater than such high population densities would naturally permit, but the question remains: why do they seem to take every chance to add a roadblock towards constructing the world that they consider ideal? Thomassians are such bizarre and confusing creatures: they cannot merely achieve something, they must try and fail to thwart themselves in getting it done as well.