"Ooh, are you alright?"

"Hm? Oh, I'm fine. It's a long story."

"Did I mention Milliways freezes time in your world of origin while you're inside?"

Ivan snorts. "Well, the short version of the long story is that I was kidnapped and locked in a seawall and viciously attacked the walls, doing them no damage whatsoever and opening a few holes in my hands."

"Oh, dear. That's terrible, I'm so sorry."

"I'm all right. Got to medical in fairly short order, th'bastard who did it got a nerve disruptor to the - hm, I don't actually know where he got it to, but somewhere appropriately central - other innocent and dubiously innocent parties to the matter are all also all right."

"Well. That's good, anyway."

"Quite. And we stopped a plot to destroy the Imperium while we were at it."

"Ooh, nice. I can't say I've ever thwarted something so dramatic myself, but my father helped save the world once."

"And you only have the one, so extra points, what was wrong with the world?"

"Does the Cuban Missile Crisis still mean anything to future people?"

"...Nnnno? If it were not for context I could not even be confident that Cuba is an Earth location."

"Okay, well, this was back when nuclear weapons were a new thing, and the only reason the United States and Russia weren't at war was because no one trusted anyone else not to use them, so everyone was terrified that someone was going to start firing nuclear missiles and then everyone was going to start firing nuclear missiles. So, naturally, people started posturing about how good their nuclear missiles were and how they could totally hit the other guy with them so the other guy knew not to mess with them. And this is part of Earth Standard History, apparently, but in my world much of the really stupid stuff was because of the machinations of this one guy who wanted nuclear winter, and the grand finale was going to be at Cuba, but my father and his best friend who is also my best friend's father and a bunch of their other friends stopped him."

"Good for the good guys," applauds Ivan. "Why would anyone want nuclear winter? I mean, it does global cooling if you're doing a long-term terraforming project but Earth is already inhabited."

"Really, really terrible science. I don't know why he thought mutants were caused by the advent of nuclear physics, but he thought that it would make us stronger while it was busy killing off everyone else."

"Oh, right, most universes don't have them--in my world, some people are born with weird powers--or develop them at puberty, whatever. We're called mutants."

"Oh, we have mutants."

"That. Sure was a tone of voice. Care to share with the class?"

"I - look, you look completely normal, I didn't know - I am actually very progressive by Barrayaran standards for whatever that's worth?"

"I mean, I"m not one of the ones with nifty hair colors or blue skin or something, I just do this," she says, wiggling her fingers. A handful of loose change floats out of her shirt pocket and in front of her hand.

Ivan makes an undignified eeping noise.

"Magnetism. I can fly, too, when I'm on a planet."

"...That's not the kind of mutants we have."

"Well, lots of us do other things. My father's a telepath. But yeah, I am aware that most things that can be described as 'mutant' are...not that. Like, you know, blue eyes or lactose tolerance."