Searching Far and Wide

[intricate_engineer]

Glen was creating a prototype for a new gate design. It was meant to be affordable and provide quick transport between individual homes. She tests several objects and a rat and everything seems to be working.

She steps through. Instead of finding herself in the room next door, she finds herself standing on a sidewalk in an empty city. The buildings are tall and perfect, colorless with doorways far too tall for any human. The roads have no straight lines and twist in on themselves. There is no life or sound.
Glen tries to stay calm. She begins to walk along the road, randomly opening doors and exploring buildings that are as silent as the rest of the world.

She opens a door that she hopes will lead onto a roof and is instead met with warmth, and soft noise, and color.

Comments

[the_very_best]

"Okay, have at it," says Bella, handing over her watch thing.

[intricate_engineer]

"Does it require physical input?"

[the_very_best]

"It's got wireless capabilities, if that's what you mean?"

[intricate_engineer]

"Yep! Are they always on?"

[the_very_best]

"Yeah, it gets news and phone calls and stuff."

[intricate_engineer]

"Is there any built in security?"

[the_very_best]

"Uh, some? You should be able to talk to it, just not install things unless I biometric you in. Do you need to install things?"

[intricate_engineer]

"No, but I think that makes it harder? At least that's what the instructions say."

[the_very_best]

"Well, lemme know if you need me to bypass something for you."

[intricate_engineer]

"I will."
Glen starts the program on her computer.
"I hope it works!"

[the_very_best]

"Me too! ...I might not have enough storage space on that thing, it's not really, like, a file server."

[intricate_engineer]

"I can prioritize, or you could buy whatever portable data storage is available on your world?"

[the_very_best]

"How much data are we talking about here? I can get it memory packs."

[intricate_engineer]

"About a library's worth of books? I have video and images too, but I don't know if you want those."

[the_very_best]

"Okay, I can get a whole drive, then, should be able to fit the images and maybe the video as long as there's not too much of it as long as I'm springing for that."

[intricate_engineer]

"Let's wait until we're sure it works."

[the_very_best]

"Suits me."

[intricate_engineer]

"So what's the general state of your world?"

[the_very_best]

"You're gonna have to be less general."

[intricate_engineer]

"How high is the average person's standard of living? How much does it vary? What is your world's overall population? What is your political system?"

[the_very_best]

"Average person has, like, an apartment or house, and one to three Pokémon, and - what are the usual benchmarks, here? Few billion, like, three, four? Politics is mostly local, most places elect a mayor, but there's regions of cities that agree on standardizations of this and that and cooperate on inter-town transit routes and stuff."

[intricate_engineer]

"Are most people literate? Is the wealth evenly distributed? How poor are the poorest people?"

[the_very_best]

"Near universal adult literacy, I don't know what qualifies as 'evenly' but some people are richer than other people, really poor people wind up sleeping in Pokémon centers or managed shelters..."

[intricate_engineer]

"In some worlds, a few rich individuals hold the majority of the wealth. In other worlds, the richest individuals have less than one hundred times the wealth of an average individual. Do the poor frequently die from starvation, exposure, or easily preventable diseases?"

[the_very_best]

"I mean, if they're poor because they can't hold down a job because they have some kind of mental problem and they wander out of town I bet they tend not to last long but I'm pretty sure the shelters and centers will feed them and public health would be after them if they were at risk for anything contagious."