"...Ah. Yes, I don't actually stay out of politics debates on the nets, but free speech laws or no, I don't want it coming home to roost."

"I get that."

"I'm not going to turn you in."

"I figured. But thank you."

"You're welcome." Pause. "Do I now get to know what other things you told me were cover for your age?"

"Oh - anything about family is either a flat-out lie or actually meant successive imaginary generations of me. I won the Harlequin in a game of poker the year she was commissioned, for example; I'm older than warp drive, let alone that ship. But the book's real, and it really has been with me since childhood. I can show you if you want."

"I'd be interested to see a book that old."

He gets up and goes to where he put his belongings and brings back the case.

"Interesting illustrations," says Isabella.

He laughs. "Aren't they just? This book was my favourite thing in the world as a child."

"The standard history don't suggest that any of the augments from the 1990s survived. What happened with you, if you don't mind my asking?"

He shrugs. "I ran away, what else?"

"What enhancements do you have?"

"Just about everything. I learn faster, think faster, move faster, react faster, heal faster, I haven't aged since I was thirty, my memory's almost perfect even coming up on three hundred years - I never looked it up and the records are long gone, but I'm half convinced genetic engineering is the reason I'm so pretty."

"Wow."

"That will be no problem."

He smiles.

"You must have led a fantastic life."

"Oh, I have," he agrees, laughing. "Want to hear about it?"

"Yes, please."

"I've been to see a Klingon opera," is the first thing that comes to mind.

"On a Klingon world?" breathes Isabella. "I didn't think relations were ever that good."

"Between the Klingons and the Federation? No," he says with a slow grin. "Between the Klingons and me? Oh yes. Or should I say - between a Klingon and me. Her name was Shenara."

"Ah. It's still not obvious how a human would manage to get into the audience of an opera without trouble, but an escort would help."