"I guess you're - used to it -"

"I mean, actually I'm used to staying in one room believing things because I was told to - because I was literally ordered to - so no, not really, but it's cool in the abstract that science is real."

"Well, you're not used to it being an impossible fantasy conceit, at any rate."

"Yeah."

Sigh. "It sounds so nice."

"Do you want to visit?"

"Well, I don't think it'd be very safe to go home again after."

"...Because you couldn’t guess if something you bought there would break or something? How do you even avoid that happening anyway, if you can't test things?"

"Oh, it's easy, you just assume if you're not sure then trying it anyway might kill you, and sometimes you still do it and die. I'd be worried about habits of thought more than objects though."

"You can't mind-control yourself into not having whatever the habits of thought are that you'd be worried about?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to count on it, you see."

"...Why do you want to count on - should I not ask questions, does that somehow make it worse?"

"It doesn't make it worse, it's just, the universe I live in is like a cranky dragon with strong opinions on etiquette and an expansive opinion of its territory, the people who survive in its sphere of influence are going to have all kinds of superstition that may be unnecessary but may be protecting them from fiery death followed by digestion. I am not going to know all the answers and will be giving any situation where I'm not confident a really wide berth."

"...What've you got at home with the cranky dragon and could we get it out of there?"

"...you mean like, why not just leave home and never look back? Uh... well, there's my parents, they wouldn't know what happened to me, and they're not near my door. And I'm in school. Do you have subtle arts programs in universities in your world?"

"I've never heard of that but I've never heard of a lot of things. It's not like I have subtle arts or could study at a university."

She glances at Bar and gets a napkin.

"Nothing doing."

"How do you even study things if you can't do science?"

"Oh wow do you use science to just learn to do stuff that people already know how to do? I want to hear all about that, wow."

"I... don't know what most people do? A lot of what I learned was through - trying experiments other people had already tried and seeing that they worked out the same way, or seeing why exactly they didn't. And - like, I cook, and there are recipes, but they come out a little differently at different altitudes and in different weather and with different stoves or ovens, so you have to try everything in your own kitchen to figure out how to cook in your kitchen. Especially for baking. And when I've read about things like - the ocean, or mining, or that kind of thing - or this thing - " (the capsule summary of Edison's work) " - they usually explain how they only know the facts to tell you because someone did an experiment or went somewhere and carefully recorded the shapes of the beaks of all the finches on the different islands in an archipelago..."

"So - it's usually safe on my planet to - take note of what has already worked for people. That's not bothering the universe again. Cooking's safe, tweaking a recipe is safe, but - it would certainly be possible to do it recklessly, it'd be a question of, like, were you definitely going to make something to eat at this time even knowing it might come out badly, are you going down some yikes-y checklist of all the variants you want to try or are you just in the mood for more chocolate chips in the cookies today, are you actually out of nutmeg by accident or are you just trying to fool the world into thinking your obvious experiment is a necessary economy in your groceries. And usually, you certainly can't rely on this but usually, the scale of the problem if there's a problem is approximately scoped to what you were doing, so if you got cocky with your baking you'd burn something but more likely just the food, maybe your arm, probably not your whole house down."

"...If you want to be absolutely sure what attitudes the universe objects to so you systematically try every one that seems at all borderline does that annoy the universe too?"

"Ohhhh yeah."

"Rude. - Maybe my sense of how it's polite to go about making people do what you want is off. It's not like there's ever been any reason to punish me, I guess I wouldn't know, but it kind of seems like you should at least make it clear what you want from people and not punish them for asking?"

Shrug. "I don't know if it's even - a person - that's a useful handle to think about what does and doesn't get you struck by lightning or kidnapped by fairies, but for most purposes it doesn't act much like one."