"Perfect."

"It's not far."

His laboratory is very stylistically different from any of the kinds either of them may be familiar with. It has fewer-but-not-none implements and more open space.

He will ask about his research!

He will expound on it in significant technical detail! Some of it is similar to what Imliss has been doing.

"We're working on lifespan extension. It sounds like that will do a lot for people here."

"Yes."

"We'll figure it out."

"Jarizana and I are still young, I'm not in a hurry."

"But some people probably are, I take it."

"Yes, but since I'm emotionally disconnected from most of the human race who isn't my sister I'm not the person for whom 'the anti-aging solution will come sooner rather than later' is an efficient form of reassurance? It would be different if my mother were still alive, I loved her too."

"All right."

"I am aware that other people are ethically equivalent to myself and my sister and act in ways which benefit them so I'm not sure that it matters that I mostly don't have emotional responses to their wellbeing or lack thereof. I function perfectly well as an ethical agent without needing an inherent morality.

It is lonely, sometimes. It would be nice if the pool of people I had genuine emotional responses to were larger. But being normal sounds exhausting."

"I wasn't criticizing, promise, I have a brother who hates everyone."

"I don't hate people. That sounds exhausting too. Your brother has my sympathy, to the extent that it's relevant."

"I will pass it on and he will disregard it because you unfortunately qualify as a person."

"That's fair."

"Anyway, I have no magic powers so I will just sit here and observe."

He requests several conjured items including an apple and a basement-dweller rat from Cam for testing purposes.

Cam provides. The apple is a Granny Smith.

Kanimir performs tests on it! And on the rat, and on the other objects. He records his results carefully.

They are an apple and a demonic rat and so on!

And accordingly he can soon pronounce them Definitely Not Dreamshaped, according to the very most comprehensive, modern, and legally-relevant tests! All this documentation he's been doing is liable to be useful for later vouching.

And then he would like to analyze the two of them magically, he promises it has no effects whatsoever on the analyzee.

"I'm game."

He does a thing! There are pretty lights. They swarm him.

Such prettiness of lights.