So she actually has the energy to confront the fact that she does not particularly have an Internet to ameliorate her boredom, while she sits around her apartment.

And also probably that's the easiest way to make a bank account. Which she needs to do.

Meadow really really dislikes adding items to her todo list. She always procrastinates them and it makes her feel terrible. But she does actually need to have a way to communicate with institutions.

This train of thought is what leads to her actually collapsing in bed. She does not want to deal with any of that.

Turns out she can actually sit around panicking and doing nothing else for several hours, if she doesn't have any way to access the Internet. She moves around the room a few times, lays on the floor, probably punches her bed.

Meadow's parents were somewhat below average, but "do not bring your socially anxious child to a social event while you think they're too young to have a phone and then give them nothing to do" is not a piece of advice that it is easy to ignore, in Eifwen. So she has not, actually, ever ended up having to hide in a room with literally nothing to do. It's not the worst thing she's had to put up with, but it isn't fun.

Eventually she reheats some more of the pizza and eats it. Part of her says she should space it out more, to avoid having to go get more food, but... well, the food seems really appealing, and she lets that part of her win because actually she's not going to be any better off if she's able to procrastinate leaving the apartment for longer.

She finds that she is invigorated by the pizza enough to actually spend some time trying to plan out a strategy for dealing with any of her problems. She has, at this point, had the thought "I should remember, when I am feeling terrible, that food might help" enough times that she has moved on to mostly just feeling kinda pathetic about how she hasn't managed to do it by now.

Anyways. The getting a phone thing. She has to do that. She is probably not going to end up feeling more up for leaving the apartment than she does right now, given that she no longer has any food, so she should probably go do that.

She should probably go do that...

But what if, instead, she did it first thing in the morning? First thing in the morning Meadow is sometimes able to do things.

Oh no. She's having that chain of thought again. In the abstract, she knows it's nonsense and that's never actually a good idea. But it feels true enough that she cannot actually get herself to ignore it. She never learned the critical skill of actually, on the emotional level, rejecting thoughts that say she should put things off.

There is a lower-level technique that she occasionally manages to implement successfully. Let's compromise. We can put off leaving the house until tomorrow, but... only if we go take a bath, now?

Okay maybe that was a stretch. She manages to take a shower, though, which is pretty good for her actually. And then she climbs into bed.

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."