jeejah

Overview

A jeejah is a hand-sized extramuros (outside the walls) device with a screen and built-in communications features. Inside a Math (walled scholarly enclave), communications are disabled per the Discipline (intramuros rules), but the device remains useful as a timepiece and media player.

Description and Use

• Screen-based personal device used for everyday tasks outside the walls.
• Functions observed: time display; media playback (including viewing a speely (screen drama)); audio output via earphones; phototype (photo) capture; audible alerts.
• In practice it can relay spoken guidance to a wearer listening on earphones, as observed when instructions were fed to a driver through his plugged-in jeejah.

Provenance/Ownership

• Ubiquitous among people living extramuros; visitors commonly carry them when admitted.
• Avout (monastic scholars) do not habitually keep jeejahs; when visitors bring them into a math, communications features are disabled under the Discipline, but other functions (timekeeping, offline media) continue to work.

Notable Mentions

• Early sightings include an artisan consulting a jeejah for the time while working in the New Library; later, visitors used jeejahs during public tours of the Hylaean Way to play recorded guides and take phototypes, and one emitted a loud tune before being silenced.
• In crowded Old Mahsht scenes, many locals were seen carrying jeejahs.
• A driver wore earphones plugged into a jeejah while receiving real-time guidance from a companion.
• A companion later used a jeejah to show a recorded speely to the narrator.
• At the gates of Orithena, Sammann used his jeejah to take a picture.

Status/Access

Common and widely available extramuros. Permitted inside a math only under restricted settings (comms disabled); other basic functions remain usable.