A Warm Welcome

After I finished the second task to initiate self-destruction, the droid started to shake.
"RUN!" shouted Noname, but there was no need. I didn't know that I could be so fast! 10 seconds later I was behind the nearest building, peeking around the corner.
But there was no boom. Just one little click and the robot simply fell apart.
"Now listen to me very carefully." Noname's voice calmly resumed in my head, "If you look at the building across the road, you can find the number 23 on it, written in blue paint. Right under the number, you will find the stairs. Go to the underground floor. Tell whoever you see there that Noname sent you. They should know. You will be given another chip, some new clothes, and a USB stick with a virus. Do you understand me?"
"OK, this sounds really easy."
"Oh, wait, one more thing: There will be no connection to me when you are more than 3 meters underground."
"That's great, Noname. Do you mean to say that I'll be on my own when I get in there?"
"Exactly. But not forever, it is just a little break. And you can trust the people there."

It wasn't hard to find the stairs. Going down them was a little harder.
I'm telling you, they were re-e-e-e-ally long.

At the bottom of the stairs, I found an old soda machine that still worked. The display told me: "Choose your drink."I looked at the drinks, and everything was normal, except... Except number 23 was empty. The number painted above the stairs was 23, but it would be stupid to order a drink that wasn't there. So stupid, that a machine wouldn't do it, nor calculate that anyone would. Only a human would think of doing something so illogical. As soon as I pressed "23," the floor — with me and the soda machine — rotated, and I saw that I was inside a room with a guy standing within arm's reach, staring at me.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm new in the resistance. Noname sent me. My name is Teo."
"Very nice, and I'm a machine king! Ah-ha-ha-ha!" he laughed. "Prove to me that you are one of us. Sit here, and write code! Sit here or you will never sit again!"
"Be calm, Teo," I thought to myself, "things could be worse. This is definitely not a good time to panic."
"OK, OK," I answered in a more or less calm tone. I sat in the chair he was pointing at and read the task on the screen.

"Create a variable, i_swear, with the value "I am one of resistance" and output it 5 times, each time on a new line."
Shocked, I blurted out, "Hey, wait, I don't know how to assign strings to variables."
"Then I have all the reasons to assume that you are not one of us, and..."
"No, wait! I can learn!" It seemed this was a perfect time to panic after all! "I just started an hour ago, I haven't got to string variables yet, only integers. You know, like x = 5. Give me a chance, please! Remember when you didn't know about strings?"
"I remember," he said, "and a machine wouldn't ask to learn as humans do. OK, listen..."

Data Types

"So you already know about the variables?", the guy asked.

"Sure, they are like named boxes, and I can retrieve the value, or put something there," I answered.

"Great! But how does Python know, how much space your box should occupy? And how to operate with the value inside?" he continued with questions.

"I have no idea, it just works..." I mumbled.

"Ok, so what you are missing is data types. When you operate with variables, Python treats them not just as some arbitrary values, but as typed values. And the type it assigns to each of them is called a "data type". For example, when you create a variable like this:

x = 10

an integer variable is created," he pointed on his computer screen, showing me his one line of code, "And here - a string one:"

x = "My first string variable"

Try creating one yourself!

"I see, so I can assign string to variables. Is it only integers and strings, or there are other types of values?" I wondered.

"There are quite a few data types in Python, but we will focus on string and integers for now," he said, and briefly showed me this picture:

And by the way, you can use print command to output string variables same as you did with integers and string constants as many times as you wish. Watch here:

name = "Teo"
print(name)
print(name)

Outputs:

Teo
Teo

"Now you can try your task again — and you'd better not fail this time!"

"Is that good enough?" I asked. "Do you believe me now? I am human! I want to join the resistance!"

"Hmm" You are learning quite fast. Perhaps too fast." He was staring at me with suspicion. Then he relaxed a bit and continued: "But here, inside this resistance base, you need to work with strings all the time, and do more than just create and output simple strings. You won't even be able to open a door without knowing what string concatenation is."
"Concatenation?"
"Yes. Sounds scary, huh? But actually, it just means "joining strings end to end"."
"Are you stringing me along? What exactly does that mean?"
"OK. Maybe you are not learning as fast as I thought... Imagine two strings:" (He typed as he spoke so I could see exactly what he meant.) " "I am happy to see you here," and "Teo" "Their concatenation is also a string: "I am happy to see you here, Teo". The command or operator for string concatenation is a simple plus sign: "+"."
"You mean that concatenation of two strings is just adding one to the end of another? Then it is pretty logical to use a plus for it."
"Python is very logical. Here is how our example would look in code:"

begin = "I am happy to see you here, "
end = "Teo"
result = begin + end
print(result)

Outputs:

I am happy to see you here, Teo

"Wow, I like it! Can I concatenate several strings? Stringing more strings together?"
"Absolutely. Look here:"

begin = "All you "
middle1 = "need "
middle2 = "is "
end = "love!"
result = begin + middle1 + middle2 + end
print(result)

Outputs:

All you need is love!

"I've got it now. When you explain, it makes total sense!" I said. Maybe his explanations were not all that great, but he had wanted to kill me five minutes ago, so I decided it would be wise to get on his good side. He responded warmly.
"That is awesome. Here is a little task for you to practice on."

"Can you explain to me one thing: why would I care about the types if my code just works when I assign the value to a variable?" I still was confused about this new concept of data types.

"Depending on the variable type, the operations that you perform will have different effects. For example:"

x = 2
z = 3
sum = x + z
print(sum)

Outputs: 5

x = "2"
z = "3"
sum = x + z
print(sum)

Outputs: 23

"This means you should be careful and not confuse "2" with 2. Now solve this task to prove you got it right":

He concluded, "That's enough about strings for now. I'm sure you'll learn more in the future." Then he waved his arm in a gesture showing me I should pass into the underground resistance camp.
I hesitated. "But... Noname told me that you have something for me. Clothes, chips, you know."
He just repeated his gesture. I decided it would be best to trust and not be a pest, and moved in the direction indicated. There was a hallway that curved so that I couldn't see where it went until I was near the end.

I entered a big facility with multiple rooms, corridors, several levels, etc. Many people were running around and working on their computers. They looked very busy, and nobody paid any attention to me. There was a door with a sign saying "Teo" at the opposite side of the room.
"Strange," I thought, "how long have they been preparing for my arrival?"
I went to the door and opened it. There was a wooden table to the left of the door, with a chair and a little bed in the corner. Minimalistic, but I liked it.
On the table I found a note saying:
 "Dear Teo, welcome to the resistance base! I hope you enjoyed your journey with the program 'Noname' that I created to get you here from the time vortex. Take your time, get some sleep. You have so much more to learn and do! See you tomorrow!"
I lay on the bed, getting drowsy as many different thoughts whirled around in my head. "Noname is just a program? Does that mean I shouldn't return to him? Is all this a lie? How long have I been awake? Or is this all a dream? How long can a person stay awake? Who is stronger: a lion or an elephant?" At some point, the thoughts became dreams, and I was sleeping like a child.