"I think the vast majority of water heaters are gas?"

"Probably varies regionally, I think ours is electric but that's not even just a different city it's a different country..."

"And a different time, right?"

"Yeah, it's not even the same month."

"I think in Earth Aleph the dates match up exactly."

"I guess I'm... farther away or something? I don't know the mechanics here."

"I don't either - I think there's at least a couple of other Earths we know some things about but I'm not sure if know whether their dates matched?"

"It's weird to me that there's - enough contact to know things like that, but not more than that."

"There was a particular supervillain who communicated with two of his other dimensional selves so we can infer some things based on what we know about them, and there's the pinhole wormhole which he created and we can communicate with Earth Aleph through. And I think a few other portals and pieces of tinkertech I think - but none that were stable enough to stick around past initial encounters."

"I assume you haven't made any progress on getting in touch with my universe, or with whoever can maybe do that."

"Not yet - you could try asking Lorica's dad about the Eidolon route?" 

"...I should do that but it's hard to remember things right now. I can't write them down."

"You can't?"

"I can't focus on text like this. I think I'd be able to have a text conversation at a lower level but right now no way."

"If I could find something that can do speech to text and back would that help?"

"I don't think so. It's about the - immediacy, I think."

Nod nod.

"If I had this problem now maybe I would ask an Undersiders employee to act as a secretary but I probably can't loan you one even if it would work."

"Lorica's dad is looking after me, I just feel bad about being, uh, full force at any small number of people without trying to spread it around as much as I can."

Well, Lucien is happy to be an additional person! Even more so if he can schedule this for only parts of his days and work on Undersider stuff the other parts.

"Hey, the bakery is going to be up and running later today - want me to get you something?" Lucien asks the next day.

"...I've managed to lose track of what day it was when I started awakening back home but I think either today or yesterday would be time for a birthday cake, if you wanna let, uh, Transit, collect one for me."

"Oh yeah that can happen. Welcome to adulthood - I am sorry it turns out to suck so much but hopefully it'll get better. And have cake."

"I'll take that in the spirit it was meant. I like chocolate."

Lucien can hand over an address for Transit to pick up the chocolate cake.

He can find time in his busy schedule for this.