The rest of his survey was rather uneventful: except for some small details everything was the same as he’d seen in the 3D view.
As he was leaving the engineering lab building, he was stopped by a red-haired, western-looking dude carrying a ton of stuff:
“Ah, excuse me, can you help me out real quick? I’m a new student and I want to reserve a lab room... Ah, um, ... I heard you can, even though the semester has not started... My ID is in the orange bag... If it is alright... Ah... Do you speak English?”
Up until now the guy had been speaking in Central, but he seemed to think that Alex had not understood him since he had not responded.
Alex decided to respond in English:
“No, I understood you. I can help you out, but I only enrolled myself.”
The red-haired guy seemed nice enough and kind of interesting, so Alex decided to help him.
“Firstly, there are trolleys students can lend out front and in the utilities station next to the elevator. Let me get you one.”
He immediately turned around, heading to the utilities station to get this guy a trolley.
Was he suddenly feeling altruistic today? Nope, but he understood the concept and art of making friends and had determined that this guy might be worth it.
Arriving at the utilities station, he quickly swiped his wrist on the scanner and looked in the quick-verify which quickly determined he was indeed the person on the student ID; then, he walked out with a little transport drone following behind him.
This little thing was called a trolley; and unlike the trolleys one might encounter at a 21st century train station, this one was equipped with sufficient AI to drive autonomously.
Alex did not think this was anything extraordinary, but that dude seemed astonished:
“Awesome, they are free? Like anyone can borrow them? Woah!”
“Yeah, just got to show your student ID and identify.”
“Woah! Thank you so much!”
As if suddenly realizing something, a look of embarrassment flashed on his face as he spoke:
“Sorry, I did not introduce myself at all. I am Werther Weber, but you can just call me Weite. It is my pleasure to get to know you.”
This was spoken in Central and the guy’s pronunciation was pretty good; but you could tell parts of it were memorized phrases and judging by his name, he was probably from Deizh Country.
Guessing they were back to conversing in central, he responded:
“Nice to meet you, Weite. My name is Alex Moqi, I am also called Alei. Can I ask what your plans are for all that?”
He looked at the mountain of bags and parts Weite had just finished loading on the trolley.
“Great name, I’ll call you Alex. Haha, I heard how great the facilities of Xin Uni are, so I couldn’t wait. This is my project...”
He looked a little embarrassed when he continued:
“I’m building a retro-style dance robot.”
If this continued, his face might soon reach the color of his hair.
While he was surprised by his direct and open character, Alex was actually a fan of this:
“A she-robot? Interesting. But why not just buy one?
“I don’t want one of the current ones that actually look like humans and the high-quality retro ones... The ones that money can buy aren’t actually dancers. So, I thought, why not just build one myself?”
He looked relieved that Alex did not get the wrong impression and at the same time hyped to have found someone to talk about his passion.
Alex on the other hand thought to himself that his judgement to befriend him was truly impeccable, this guy might actually be useful for his mission; because building a retro dancing robot was actually more complicated than building a modern one.
Back then, technology had not been so advanced, so people did not think about mass-production when it came to the complex ones; hence, they could focus fully on quality.
All the parts were built from the ground up one by one; while much of it could be printed nowadays, much of it could not and thus, required human touch and skill.
Even though one might think that this old stuff must surely be easier to learn than the more technologically advanced modern one, there were actually few accessible materials.
If this redhead was able to build a decent one, this likely meant he had searched through mountains of old, unindexed data; furthermore, this data had to be extracted from outdated, irregular, and often difficult to process file formats.
In any case, while most foreign students attending Xin University were either of a powerful background or extremely talented, there existed different degrees of genius even among talents; and as far as Alex was concerned, someone who enthusiastically built something like this in his free time for fun surely belonged to the top.
Thus, he responded:
“Sure! Then let’s rent a lab. Follow me.”
Then he walked the short distance to the counter on their left.
The counter was actually more a table with a touchscreen surface; he simply had to hold the smartwatch-like device on his wrist against it for it to change from black to displaying a map of a floor of the building.
“All the rentable floors have the same layout. Every student can easily rent a lab. If you need more, you have to write an application, but it’s said to be fairly easy.
“Simply click on the room you want, and then it will give you that room on a floor where it is free.
“Right now, all the rooms are green. Suppose a room has been rented on all rentable floors, then it would be colored red.
“After you select a room, you only have to identify, and you’re done.”
After he finished his explanation, he noticed that Weite looked a little stunned.
“Alex, didn’t you say you just enrolled too?”
“I like to keep myself informed.”
Following Alex’ instructions, Weite continued to rent a lab; while it was called “renting”, it was actually free for students of Xin University.
When he was finished, he asked:
“Thank you very much for your help today Alex! Are you by chance a local?”
“I am a Centraler, but this is my first time in Toi City. Why’d you ask?”
“I don’t know the area, where the best clubs are and those things. Perhaps, want to explore together?”
“Sure, got a Wristpie? Let’s exchange contacts.”
“Ah, um, I’m using a phone,” Weite responded embarrassed and pulled out a card-like device that must be his ‘phone’ from a pocket.
“That works too,” Alex said and tapped his Wristpie against the card, making it light up with a “Ding!”.
He understood why the guy was embarrassed; a Wristpie was more expensive than a phone, but virtually everyone with the funds to attend Xin could afford to buy one.
Was he perhaps a scholarship student?
But people from Deizh Country weren’t known for their poverty; on the contrary, while Deizh was significantly smaller than Central, they were right up there with Central in terms of average wealth.
Since Alex had already planned to look up this first friend of his as soon as he was home, he did not ask and simply said bye before leaving.
“Time to head back.”
