Jackson set aside a towel for him, and some of his own clothes to change into, sweatpants and a t-shirt from a raffle.

Wow.

He'll ask if they have a laundry setup such that he could benefit from their economy of scale at all.

[Jackson says they could throw your clothes in the washing machine but you might want to avoid it in case it damages them, you might be able to sell them for meaningful amounts of money just because they're from another planet.]

[...Okay. I guess.]

[They're your clothes, just, that's a thing you might want to know about.]

[I kind of assumed... you guys have a lot of things that... anyone on my planet who had telepathy would be able to wash clothes without damaging them. So it's weird. But I guess it makes sense.]

[Cleaning things is a physical effect! A mage could do it, but I don't know any socially who've picked it up. Washing machines don't usually damage our clothes but they're not very gentle, the clothes are substantially designed around the expectation that they'll be machine-washed and yours won't be.]

[You wouldn’t need to know them socially, it’s like how you can buy food without being friends with the farmer. Where I’m from, anyway.]

[I have an eidetic memory so if I had ever met one I would remember their name and address and last posted price for the service. Anyway, I don't think it's a common mage specialty, I'd be surprised if no one has it but it's something I'd expect them to have picked up for personal use or for... sterilizing medical equipment, maybe. Possibly even museum purposes, your clothes might wind up magically cleaned if you sell them to a museum.]

[Huh. ...I don’t know where to find a museum or how to prove I'm from another planet.]

[Yeah, if we wind up in a situation where you need to prove that I'd book you a lie detector.]

[We have those!]

[They're useful! I haven't picked it up yet but it's on my very long to-do list.]

[I got questioned once but they read my mind rather than use lie detection. I probably couldn't have talked anyway with the stuff they did to be sure I'd fail my save. Not that I was considering trying to fight them in the first place, they were just being careful.]

[...well, learning to read minds apart from what people are deliberately trying to say to me is not even on my to-do list, that's fucked up. Like, psions do it, but not ones who are me. What is 'failing your save' and what do people do to make sure you do it?]

[It's when you don’t fight them off, so the spell affects you? In that case they were torturing me very distractingly. Honestly they got worse answers than they would have gotten if they’d just asked.]

[Well, so you're aware, eclipsed magic doesn't really work like that, stuff affects you or it doesn't unless you are also eclipsed and have specifically developed defensive powers. Should I be offering you condolences, I'm not totally sure how lousy the torture situation is there but it sounds at least not unmixedly delightful for all parties.]

[It was fine. Thanks anyway, though. So I don’t suppose there’s any way for me to learn your style of magic?]

[Not unless the next eclipse is your eclipse. Which... it might be... if your planet doesn't have magic eclipses at all. So you'll need to fast then anyway and maybe you'll get lucky but it's really very rare.]

[Huh, okay. Why do I need to fast?]

[New eclipsed can't control their powers, and those powers run on calories, so you need to be running on empty to avoid accidentally, like, obliterating a city or something, if you do eclipse.]

[Huh, okay.] Or maybe it’s just to make it easier to kill them quickly if someone doesn’t want them to be too powerful. Regardless he’s not going to pick a fight about that. He would lose and he doesn’t mind dying.

[If Jackson's eating five times as much as a normal person that's why, he has to for his job.]

[I don’t think that’s normal on my planet.]

[Well, you don't have eclipsed, who knows what you guys's magic runs on.]