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.

She... supposes, that there might be some aliens somewhere, who might be confused about stuff like "if you want space why wouldn't you simply not live in dense cities?" She is not one of them. She's similar enough to Thomassians to have a model of their behavior which is detailed enough to figure out why they'd do it like this. Listing some specific hypothetical confusions aliens might have isn't how she'd introduce Eifwen—how would she predict which things aliens would be confused about? Though in retrospect it's probably really hard to cross the inferential distance without two-way communication, so it was kind of a doomed task from the start.

She doesn't quite understand why you need particular cities for parenting? Like, yeah, some cities will have laws and institutions that are slightly more favorable to parents, there's gonna be some feedback loops there and stuff, but—why a binary distinction, rather than a spectrum? 

Q: Why do thomassians have entire cities dedicated to the convenience of parents?

A: They try to always start from scratch, and have everything put together in order to make sense. The ability to have every part of a city's layout and design aimed at a goal not only makes the city a better place for its residents, but city planners love the sense of optimization, perfectionism, and coherence that it results in. There are never any awkward interfaces between competing needs, and many people get to enjoy a city that's perfect for them, which is better than one that's only good for them and everyone else, too.

Yeah no she gets that, but like. Choosing one specific things to optimize a city for isn't quite the way to maximize the number of people that have a good place for them? You wanna like, space cities out along the pareto surface of different priorities.

Is there maybe like, a pretty bimodal distribution in the number of kids a family has, here? Like, Eifwen's governments do try to get a lot of families to have more children than there are parents so as to stay above replacement rate even though there are childless people, but it's nonetheless not at all uncommon for there to be a couple with one child or whatever.

That is a big difference! Thomassians families are big, consisting of groups of 4 or more parents caring for a relatively large group of children, often unrelated ones, and there is extensive use of surrogacy as well.

Ah, yeah, that'd do it. Families like that certainly exist, on Eifwen, but they aren't ubiquitous.

Does she stumble upon any other interesting Thomassia facts to consider, before she gets to the police station?

Cryonics being universal might or might not be interesting to Meadow. Or how they have a week where everyone pretends it's a pandemic, and people wear masks and try out and show off pandemic mitigation strategies.

If she'd learned cryonics wasn't universal, she'd've... well, probably mostly been unable to actually grasp that fact, it's too big and abstract to deeply disturb her unless she actually makes an effort to internalize it. (Which she would probably end up deciding to do when she was already having a bad day, because sometimes she is dumb and just decides to make things worse.) But learning that it is universal? Yeah, that's just expected.

She's familiar with the "drill for possible civilizational challenges" concept but she usually hid at home and didn't engage with them much. Which is actually fine for a pandemic but it might've bitten her a little if some sort of severe natural disaster had hit Nexus and required an evacuation. But that was, y'know, pretty unlikely, and they do make an effort to make the instructions easy to follow even if you haven't practiced them, so whatever.

There's quite a few other things for Meadow to learn, but then she reaches her station and has to walk out to get the biometrics scan.

It's fine, it's fine, biometrics are really gonna just be about her physical body and won't say anything about her as a person, she should just stop freaking out.

"Hi. I was told I need, uh, a biometrics scan, to access basic income?"

The man working behind the counter nods at Meadow. He points towards a machine with a pair of flat, square sensors that work to take the fingerprint of several fingers at once, together with a wide-angle camera that can take an iris scan. A biometrics scan is as simple as putting both hands on the handprint sensors, and letting the camera get a good iris scan, and then Meadow will receive her very first basic income payment, just like that.

Oh, nice. She has money now. That's pretty useful.

Okay. She's been walking around for like at least two hours now, and did not have any breakfast. She is very hungry.

She could probably find somewhere to eat close by, but instead she's going to go back to the exact cafe she stopped at last time. She can starve on the way, whatever, that's easier to deal with than trying somewhere new right now. And also she'll be able to pay off her tab.

The barista happily accepts the payment for Meadow's previous meal, smiling and congratulating her on receiving basic income and starting to live in thomassia as a citizen. He's excited to hear about that Meadow's thinking of eating.

If you're a he then wouldn't you be a baristo

She'll have another coffee (and this reminds her that she should try to use her new phone to figure out precisely what drugs are in the coffee), and... is there anything sandwichesque that sounds good, on the menu? She'll settle for something pretty basic unless she stumbles upon something that's a super close match for a favorite from home.

The coffee here comes with another mild stimulant, meant to make the energy come somewhat less suddenly; coffees tend to have somewhat less caffeine, with this new, stimulant here in thomassia doing some of the work instead. Meadow can order food from nearly any cuisine, because the cafe permits outside food, and there's an enormous selection of places accepting delivery. Some pita rolls seem particularly tempting, if she likes the carbohydras coming from someting made of bread.

She doesn't normally experience coffee as giving sudden energy? Really, this coffee felt more sudden... this is probably because she has a big caffeine dependency.

Sure, pita rolls seem good.

The food comes to Meadow, riding on the waiter-bot, 20 or so minutes later.