"I remember buying it at a store in my original world, but I suppose I can't actually check." Bruce has read way too many stories about people getting instantiated out of simulations with heads full of fabricated or inconsistent memories. Okay, only like three stories, but that's still enough to creep him out a little. "This thing is going to run out of power soon, but a bunch of the other stuff I remember is potentially useful."

"...how can you remember something without checking it?"

"I mean that I can't show you the phone store to prove that I got it where I said I did. Some stuff I can check, like, I know a species of mold that cures certain illnesses, I could theoretically find some and give it to sick mice and if it works then I'll know that at least that much is the same as I remember."

"...I think Eli would say that that doesn't mean much because you'd expect worlds to be different. --Eli's my nondynamic brother."

"Yes, but our worlds are clearly a lot more similar than I'd have expected. We both have weather and humans and some of the same continents and the Roman Empire and stuff. So I think it's worth trying things that were good ideas in my world if they don't seem a priori likely to be bad ideas here."

"...That's very strange. --I'm sorry, do you mind if I ask a terribly rude question?"

"Go right ahead. I might refuse to answer but I really doubt I'll be bothered." Questions asked from genuine curiosity are practically never offensive.

"James said you're a sub but your body language is all over the place."

"Sorry for confusing you. It's kind of a confusing situation. My world doesn't have a distinction between doms and subs so I'm sort of neither. Also separately I have unusually hard-to-read body language even to people back home."

"...well you'll need to have a role so that anyone understands how to relate to you but I see no reason for you to be a sub. Terribly inconvenient role. I think you should be a nondynamic for now and perhaps you'll decide what to present as later."

"Nondynamic sure sounds more accurate, just from the word. But I haven't actually heard the word before; if I'm going to claim to be it, would you mind defining it?"

"A nondynamic is a person who is neither submissive nor dominant. They're pretty rare but they turn up every so often. They're usually intellectuals or artists."

"Oh, yeah, that sounds basically correct, let's go with that." Weird that it's correlated with certain professions but his physics class last semester had literally no women so who's he to talk.

"It seems reasonable enough, anyway, since I'm pretty sure you haven't presented, and in a sense all children are nondynamic. --James, I am going to take him off your hands, thank you."

The implication that he's in some sense equivalent to a kid is a bit sketch, but it's better than being expected to support himself immediately so he can't complain. He just nods and makes a "Now what?" sort of face.

James and Clarissa make some excruciatingly polite small talk and then they leave.

"...I apologize for your introduction to Anglia," Clarissa says. "It is not the one I would have chosen."

"Thanks? James was a kind host. How much did he tell you of what we figured out about the differences between our worlds?"

"Apparently you have a lot of technology, no roles, and something called... America?"

"Yup! America's the country I'm from, it's on a continent this planet doesn't have. I'm hoping we can reinvent some of the technology. It ought to work if our worlds run on the same natural laws."

"My brother's going to be so cross."

(Bruce is not sure how he knows this, because it sounds like English to him, but it is very clear to him that the word she's using for 'brother' means 'child' and also 'nondynamic.')

"She's going to think I'm bananacrackers even more than she already did" gets in a fight with "I need to know what just happened" and gets its ass handed to it. "Hang on, something weird just happened. Weird question, can you tell me the name of the language we're speaking?"

"...Anglian?"

"I think that might be less similar to English, the language I'm speaking, than I thought. You managed to convey a bunch of connotations on 'brother' that it doesn't usually have in my brain. I'm tempted to ask you a bunch of questions about how many letters 'brother' has and what it rhymes with and what other forms it has to see if I'm actually hearing the sounds you're saying but I suspect this might annoy you."

"...we should take a cab back to my house and you should talk to my brother."

"Sure thing." He wonders if this is why nobody has commented on his anachronistic speech patterns or if that's just them being polite, and also if they have internal combustion or if this cab is going to be pulled by a horse.