An innocent robotics researcher's lab has been demolished, the roboticist is dead, the lab assistants range from dead to traumatized, and a pocket everything on one of the rioters shows a recent text exchange - innocent, but anything could be code.
The greys arrest the other party to the conversation.
He puts an arm around him. "I was married. He would not mind in the slightest, under the circumstances, but it seems like the sort of thing you ought to know about."
"I think Amenta has different norms about monogamy than here, probably because of springs."
"It's not taken less seriously, but it's less common, and having been sorta-widowed by inexplicable teleportation accident is not the sort of thing I'd expect people to bring up early."
"I wouldn't have expected you to bring it up if you were literally widowed but that's for background norm reasons and not because I wouldn't want to know it. Since he's alive and you might return as mysteriously as you appeared, or less mysteriously..."
Nod. "I think there's almost no chance we'll ever make contact with our world, for what that's worth, but I can see why it's not in the same realm of hypotheticals as 'but a widowed person could invent snake-alien resurrection'."
"I have an interesting backstory. I'm here, now, and this world has lots of amazing things, and I'm going to try to add more of them. I would like you to be part of that, because I think you're good at it and the thing I do best is noticing people who just need a bigger lever and a place to stand. I also like taking you out and kissing you, and if you know what you want from there I would like to be a part of it."
...self-disciplined colorful person who is maybe having a surprisingly hard time with that. "Yes. Thank you."
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