This makes him look less indignant, at least.

"I've only ever talked to one human myself."

"I've never met one! They're harder to get than mice."

"I bet they are."

"I'm sure it'll work out someday."

"What will?"

"Getting a human?"

"I see. What are you going to do with them?"

"Ask them about how human societies work! See if we got their language right! See if they know any other ones! See if they can fill in the gaps in the human books we've tried to copy!"

"Why are there gaps in the books, anyway?"

"So there are a couple of places where humans copy a book - we're pretty sure it's the same book - their whole life, or close to it. And sometimes we drop by and see what page they're on and copy it. But we haven't gotten all the pages that way."

"- you can't turn the pages?"

"No? They're slow. You can't interact with slow people or animals or human-made objects."

"Human-made objects in particular? That's - weird -"

"Why?"

"What's the point at which an object becomes human-made?"

"When they interact with it in a way that changes more about it than its location."

"But just changing the location of something can change a lot else about it too. If you put a fruit in the sun it'll dry out, does that count?"

"Nope, not if that's all they did."

"I guess that explains why the hayloft I slept in didn't stab me. But isn't almost all interaction mostly about changing the locations of things? Even writing is just locating ink on some paper."

"Not reversibly."

"Drying out a fruit isn't reversible either. What about dropping something that can get soaked in water?"

"I haven't tried interacting with an object that a human dropped in water and didn't otherwise alter."

"Well, if you see one, let me know what happens. Isn't, hm, tearing something also just making it differently located, piecemeal..."

"Not reversible. I guess dropping something onto sharp rocks such that it breaks might count differently since all you did was move it and the irreversibility was the environment."