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a spark summons a secretary
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"Yes, thank you, that sounds great!"

"So what I am now expecting is to sit here in this room while a parade of people come by to offer me things and information that I've asked for. That sounds ideal! The only thing is, I will want them to stop when it's getting close to nighttime so that I can have some privacy and rest, and I will want to leave my room occasionally and wander through the castle trying to get a sense of the layout."

"Oh, that reminds me, if anyone is likely to have a map or diagram of the castle, the city, the whole world, or any of the above, add them to the list of people who should come and visit me."

"Anyway - I need some sort of sign or light for the outside of my door that indicates whether visitors are currently welcome. Visitors should still knock, even if the light is in the 'welcome' mode. Is that technology that already exists here or do I need to create it from spare parts found in this room?"

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He's taken out a beat-up looking marker-pen and is now writing things down on his forearm, already smeared with many layers of faded ink.

"You'd probably be better off creating it from spare parts," he says absently and without much attention while he's doing that, "instead of trying to figure out which button does what?  I sure don't know myself what anything in the Spark suite does."

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Opalyn's not quite sure how this world works, yet; evidently just wishing that the perfect door sign existed already doesn't do the trick; she'll figure something out.

"All right then! Thank you for all of your help. I've asked you for lots of things, I'll let you get on with it. Oh! By the way, what's your name? I'm, ahem, the Supreme Sultana, as the doctor already mentioned, but you can call me Opalyn if you like."

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"Tihomir, Supreme Sultana.  Tihomir Castillo, if it matters, though I think there's only the one Tihomir here."

He departs.

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And now Opalyn will look around her quarters looking for door-sign materials. She's looking for any of:

- very simple small lights of the kind where you push a button and a light comes on and you push it again and the light goes off
- simple standard small components like batteries, wires, light bulbs, and switches, such that you could trivially build the previous thing
- paperclips, brads, staples, little bits of wire, anything that you could use to attach two things but still let them spin freely with respect to each other
- paper and pens, which she already ordered from Tihomir but maybe there's some already in here?

She will explicitly not fiddle with things that look like they could open a door to a demon dimension, or shoot a freeze ray, or cause a cobra fork-bomb. She'll only play with things that seem too simple-looking to wreak havoc.

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There's definitely things that are already glowing, which could conceivably be diassembled to extract the glowing parts.  The light-containing gadgets do have visible screws, and there's plenty of screwdrivers lying around.

There aren't papers and pens immediately lying about in this room; does Opalyn want to check the other rooms in her suite, or start opening desk drawers?

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Yeah, she's not going to start taking apart the glowing things, though if she's supposed to sleep in here they are definitely going to need to stop glowing at some point. Why are hotel rooms always like this.

She'll start by checking out the rest of the suite, taking special note of:

- anywhere small and dark and cave-like, where she'll be able to sleep properly;
- the state of the current bathtub, to evaluate how important it is to improve it;
- books, looking especially for something like "A Beginner's World History";
- a mini-fridge fully stocked with Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi

After that she'll start looking through drawers, if she's not interrupted first.

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Wow. Not bad, not bad.

Taking these things in order:

- No, that is not nearly dark enough, good lord, this is going to be a problem.
- The bathtub is large enough and does not need to be improved. Her BATH TUB has a LADDER! Maybe Opalyn can put pillows in the bathtub and put a roof on it and sleep in there? It looks big and dark enough.
- Is that... a mini-fridge? Opalyn is scared to open it and find out. She'll wait until the next minion is around.
- This book looks like a D&D companion guide; she'll look through it when she gets a minute.
- Ooh! Paper and... presumably a pen? And assorted other little bits of metal!

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Opalyn takes the paper and pen and makes herself a door sign. She attaches the arrow to the main circle using a little bit of wire, and tests to make sure it will stay where she puts it even when it's hanging up. She puts "SILENTLY GO AWAY" at the bottom in case the arrow droops under gravity.

She hopes people even notice it. It doesn't light up. She also hopes they can read English, but everyone seems to understand her so far?

She hangs up the sign on the outside of the door to her suite.

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Knock knock!

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Opalyn almost says "Come in!" but realizes that doesn't match the protocol on her own sign!

"Yes?"

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Did the Supreme Sultana order a wide variety of pillows?  A wide variety of pillows are here!

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Why are so many of them... anemones?

She takes about eight of the most promising ones and sends away the ones that will give her nightmares, like why does one of them look like a lobster claw? shudder

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Knock knock!

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"Yes?"

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Tihomir is back, bearing paper and pens.  If he notices anything anomalous about this delivery given the implied prior existence of paper and pen to create the sign outside, he says nothing of it.

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"Oh good, Tihomir, you're back. Thanks for the pens and paper, you can put those down here. Can you help me with this object?"

She points at the potential mini-fridge.

"I hypothesize that it's a drink cooler but I'm afraid maybe it's a small nuclear reactor or something, do you know what it is or how to use it?"

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"Got no idea what a 'nuclear' reactor is, but I could buy drink cooler.  You'd... pull the door open and see if there's drinks inside, I guess?"

"Sultana, maybe you've got the wrong impression of me, I've got no Spark myself to figure out how any of these things work."

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Mostly she just wanted a friendly human around when she tried to open it and a thousand tiny mechanical spiders came tumbling out. She notes that he doesn't know about nuclear power; she rather suspected he wouldn't but good to have that confirmed.

She'll try to pull the door open.

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"Based on your implicit knowledge of living in this world for (I assume) your entire life, would you guess that these are beverages, and safe to ingest? Or could they possibly be, like, battery acid, or antifreeze, or formaldehyde, or something?"

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"Don't see how you'd possibly find out without a sniff and a taste, but those do look a bit like lab jars... oh hey there's a second side to this thing."

He opens the other door.

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"I bet those are the drinks, unless somebody's having extra fun.  Oh hey, pickled mouse brains, they mostly use those in automata but they aren't bad snacks either."  He points to one of the jars.

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