"Well, we head down to the office, they take a DNA sample, it maybe takes a few days to process it, and... then possibly they realize they need to inspect it a lot more thoroughly. If you're genetically unusual enough."

"Hmm, alright. They'll do it through a... cheek swab, I assume? That's how we normally do it on Earth."

Celene finishes eating breakfast, if there's nothing else Summer wants to do she's ready to head out.

"That's what I'd expect. I think I've also heard of blood testing? I'm not sure what the tradeoffs are, but I could imagine you being a special case of some sort."

Eugh, blood tests. They are, unpleasant. She can handle them, although she might need some time to steel herself, but she still doesn't like them. 

It was significantly worse when she was younger. The doctors had to hold her down. Actually, that was for vaccines, not for blood tests. She does not remember what the doctors did for blood tests.

Summer'd help hold Celene down. If Celene wanted.

Oh my gosh.

That... probably won't be necessary. Not that she wouldn't be into it, but,

Anyways.

"Is there a specific time we're booked for?"

"I was planning to just show up and see how long the wait was. Probably we'll end up having a little time to wander around?"

"Hmm. Alright then.

I'm ready if you are."

They head out.

As in most worlds, the transportation system varies a little from city to city, in Eifwen. The first thing that Celene will probably notice is that cars are not nearly as ubiquitous. It's not super uncommon for cars to be used for navigating suburbs, but—you do not want the most reckless Nucleus residents to have access to fast-moving multiton metal devices. Someone would end up dying and getting their brain crushed, at some point. Someone other than the driver.

Mostly, it's gonna be trams and metros. Most tram stations work on a six minute schedule. (There are also taxis—one of the few professions that has meaningful licensing requirements, even in Nucleus.) And Celene will see ambulances pass by at something closer to typical Earth frequency than typical Eifwen frequency.

Bikes and motor scooters are also pretty common. And you'll see crazy mad scientist hoverboards and other such devices more often in Nucleus than elsewhere.

There aren't many skyscrapers around, but most buildings in this part of the city are a good several stories tall. You'd need to go to the outskirts of the city before you'd see single family homes or anything like that.

The architecture and such is... haphazard. And graffiti is just completely legal*—even for people who aren't very good at it.

*More specifically: you could purchase the property right of getting to veto people making art on your property, but in most of Nucleus it's not bundled with the property by default and it'd be unusually expensive.

Huh. And here she thought Earth city centers were messy. Well... messy isn't the right word for it; it feels both more chaotic, and more orderly than Earth's, at the same time. Messy in a contained manner, perhaps.

Probably it's largely the lack of cars allowing for actually sane street design. That, and also making an effort to have actually sane street design.

Guy who works the government office in Nucleus is a hell of a type of guy. Like, first of all, you have to have the disposition both to like the culture of Nucleus—in fact they want people who deeply appreciate it—and to be good at being a very highly reliable worker. But beyond that, well... most customer-facing workers will eventually end up with some interesting stories to tell, sure, but generally you won't quite have been the person responsible for actually dealing with them? But the government office is meant to be reliable, in the sense that it's rather unlikely to just kick you out. Unless you start doing property damage or harassing people who dislike it, or something like that, and can't be quickly talked down.

More often than that, though, you've gotta deal with someone who's going through a hell of an ontological crisis and who has started being confused about the role of the government in the universe, or something. Which like, valid, the particular office in Nucleus may really just be a handful of unusually skilled people, in the end, but it does in fact act on behalf of Providence to an extent, and Providence is a sensible thing to have some deep questions about? Like, if you work for a government office in Nucleus you have spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about what that means, given that it is one of those cities where lots of people will very much not just go along with whatever the big powerful outside force asks of them if they don't thoroughly understand the necessity. You're gonna be much, much less likely to settle for a simple handwave-y answer than most.

So, y'know, they've been interrogated by people who are deeply confused or have a new galaxy brain philosophical perspective or are somewhere between the two, a few times. They're competent to provide basic grounding info if it looks like that would be helpful. They are not actually read in on every piece of secret info which some random Nuclide would plausibly piece together, exactly, but they're read in on the classes of reasonable guesses and are familiar with the glomarization policies. They keep up to date on the sorts of pranks and other assorted shenanigans that might end up with them wanting to be prepared for a very strange conversation, to the extent possible. They can recognize all the troublemakers, save those they're kept in the dark about for decision theoretic reasons (as sometimes "when would the officers piece it together if not told" is the sort of fact Emergency Services wants to know.)

Anyways, the point is: they occasionally see a situation actively optimized for being as confusing as possible. They aren't, like, the Emergency Services group that you get forwarded to if you're making incredibly-weird-but-testable claims, but the Celene situation isn't going to throw them off.

Hello I have a new possibly-unregistered friend, y'all free?

The help desk person looks at them. Someone who might be unregistered, who somehow doesn't know whether they are registered? Is this someone with really weird parents who's never had the concept explained to them well, or someone who somehow... isn't sure... whether they went through the process of deleting their registration as an adult?

Registration often ends up being a mildly complicated process in the best of times: unregistered people are weird edge cases. It's more common in Nucleus than elsewhere, but "the government cannot give you money if they do not know who you are" is usually a compelling argument. And even if they will agree to wipe all the info from when you were a kid and couldn't make your own decisions about what to share, it's not like they won't be able to reconstruct the basics without that if they have to? So typically either you had very weird parents that were able to credibly promise to raise you well despite it being harder to verify this than usual, or you chose a life path that called for some very weird decisions. Or possibly you just care more about proving a point than about receiving UBI?

Anyways, that sure looks like the sort of situation that'll very plausibly not just be a six minute in and out. The help desk officer takes a look at the monitor with live information on their current and projected personnel and resource availability.

...Oh, here, run a fingerprint scan while they're making the scheduling decision? They toss Summer a scanner.

Catch! She holds it in front of Celene.

Ok, so, why is Celene feeling reluctant about this?

Oh. Right. Wasn't there something about how letting Emergency Services know about her existence was opening a door that couldn't be closed?

...and then she promptly opened that door. Because she didn't want to say no to Summer. Oops.

...she was not, very emotionally attached, to that particular plan? Is Celene just not going to indicate a preference aside from her suggested default plan literally ever? This is terrible.

Of course, Summer is not a literal telepath, nor is she anywhere near as close to being one as someone with the talent for it might become. So she's not going to understand exactly what's up. Probably Celene is just, slightly uncomfortable with procedures she's not used to, right?

So, the question is: 

Can Celene trust the authorities here?

Obviously not. Summer certainly seems to trust them, and last night's research session seems to point towards them being trustworthy, in a way that... Even accounting for the fact that all governments are going to make it seem like they're good and trustworthy, they seem moreso than Earth institutions.

Summer could be in on it, of course!

....in which case giving them her fingerprints voluntarily does nothing, if they're willing to do things like that. Or maybe they're allowed to lie, but not take her fingerprints.

Or, alternatively, they've been lying about their nature to literally everybody, in which case it's also likely giving her fingerprints voluntarily does nothing, if they're willing to do that scale of deception.

Or... Summer is just incredibly naive and has fallen for the surface level marketing? But that seems unlikely, based off of her impression of Summer.

So.... She's definitely made a mistake, by telling them she exists. But the damage is pretty much already done.

...and also she doesn't want to say no to Summer. And also she's tired and doesn't want to make a huge fuss now.

Whatever.

She places her hand over the scanner and gets it scanned.

She's still a huge idiot though. Why did she mess up like that. Oh well.

...Well, yes, you maybe should've verified anything at all was trustworthy using whatever methods you could come up with, we guess? But wow you don't actually need to feel bad for not being that paranoid.

...Is Celene visibly upset to the point where Summer will notice she needs a hug?

idkhowobservantisshe.

Celene looks a little upset but resigned. She's looking down at her feet a bit more than she would normally, and is quiet, giving one-to-two word responses to things.

...Yeah that girl totally is getting a hug.

That... feels nice. Although she is a bit startled. She tenses briefly, then relaxes and hugs her back.

"...thank you."