"My department classifies us as Quendi, humanoid, native to Earth, non-hostile, no innate magical abilities, declined to participate in further testing. On the more boring end of all the astonishing things out there, which is good, workplace diversity initiatives work best when they don't start too far afield."

"You're a token hire, huh?"

"My career has gotten more interesting over time."

"Well, I hope the lecture was a pleasant highlight."

"It was delightful. We'll see how quickly we can start putting it to good use. I take it we're just very lucky that you happened to land on us, of all places."

"I'm sure if I'd appeared in Japan the medicinal advances would be translated sooner or later. I'm actually really worried the FDA's going to pitch a fit."

 "For long enough to be sure they're not making thalidomide-shaped mistakes, probably. A year or two."

"That's not as bad as it could be."

"Remember it as worse?"

"I've never interacted with it directly but I've talked to people with very poor opinions of it."

"I mean, there's some reason to think it's different from how you remember it."

"It might be, yeah."

"Do you want to help me out a little bit with what future you're coming from? I can't really imagine the mind-boggling amount of nonsense all around us never finds its way out into the open."

"It's just a different set of nonsense on the same background of sense. Hits public eye in March 2007."

"So, different dimension with an alternate Earth, not many of our demons, some of your own?"

"Just, uh, three kinds, by local convention about what things are demons."

"The local convention is that everything's a demon. In their defense they were putting a lot of this together in the 12th century and if holy water turns your enemies to dust you take your church very seriously."

"On my Earth English speakers call apsels demons and the other two kinds angels and fairies."

"Huh. Are they better at PR?"

"Yes."

"In the market for advice?"

"Maybe, do you have some?"

"Probably, but I'd need a bit more to work with. From what I know it sounds like you could earn a lot of goodwill with that Mars terraforming thing but I take it there are barriers to that."

"There are, it's very frustrating."

"How does that work?"