Lawbook lady shakes her head. "The people who show up here," she mutters. "Is that all you do?"

"...Do you mean is that the extent of my powers or do I do anything with my life besides powers, because the answer to both of those questions as I have phrased them is yes. As far as I know, anyway."

Snort. "I meant the first."

"Yeah. It amounts to something that looks a lot like a very idiosyncratic telekinesis. Or so I've been told, anyway."

"Wasn't aware that was a thing with idiosyncrasy to it. My world doesn't have any magic."

"It is...technically not magic, actually."

"Well, my world doesn't have science fiction in real life, either."

"Fair enough. Although what counts as science fiction depends heavily on things like when you are and where you stand relative to baseline early-twenty-first-century Earth, but since the X-Gene showed up while it was still the twentieth century it qualifies more comprehensively than many things."

"I'm in 2015."

"I'm pretty sure that's earlier than normal for cloning technology to be developed, so kudos, you do have science fiction in real life. I'm from 2123."

"Cloning's been around for longer than that. I'm thirty-two."

"Congratulations! You are from a sci-fi world. Probably not as sci-fi as mine, though, it's true, my older brother's a hundred and ninety-seven."

"How is it decided whose worlds are sci-fi? Who gets to be normal?"

"I'm mostly joking. Milliways tends to attract Earths more often than anything else, and twenty-first century Earths more than most, and there's a sort of cultural and technological standard that you'll probably come to understand if you come in to Milliways often enough. I'm characterizing sci-fi as anything significantly more advanced than standard."

"Ah."

"But we're pretty exceptional even by that standard. Genetic super powers and rejuvenation tech and time travel oh my."

"Sounds nice for you."

"Yeah, I got decanted well after the nasty shit went down."

"...Bad guys wanted a kid they could brainwash who would hopefully have powers as strong as my brother's and fiddled with my DNA a bit to get it, so I'm arguably not a straight-up clone of my mom but whatever, but got caught before it was time to pop the lid."

"Ah."

"I mean, Mom and Dad were awesome about it, no harm done, they didn't have the opportunity to psychologically scar me even a little bit."

"That's good then."

"The actual nasty stuff I was referring to was...remember how I said my brother was a hundred and ninety seven? And it was 2123?"

"Yes?"