"That definitely helps! Not completely, and some countries are too poor to get the benefit of it, but it helps."

"He'll be excited! --He's going to ask you so many questions."

"That's only fair, I've got dozens for him!" He bounces in his seat a bit in anticipation. Maybe finally someone he can talk comparative tech trees with! Hopefully he isn't too disappointed by all the areas where Bruce's state of knowledge is "I know X is possible but I don't know how to build the tools to build the tools to actually do it."

"Here's our house. I'll let you two get acquainted."

"Thanks." Bruce disembarks from the cab, pets the horse, and takes a look around.

The horse sniffs and nuzzles him inquisitively for carrots.

A guy in brightly colored men's clothing hurries outside.

"So what scam artist did James get taken in by this t-- oh hello."

Huh. He looks like Bruce's really clever lab mate Lev, the guy who knows loads of psychology facts despite being a bioengineering major.

"Hello! You'd be . . . I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name already. Clarissa's economist brother? I'm Bruce Banner."

"You can call me Mr. Maturin. --Are you not a scam artist or an unreasonably talented scam artist?"

"Not a scam artist, would in fact be unreasonably bad at it. I can understand all your world's languages and I have an implausible device, and I can give detailed descriptions of an alternate history." He is happy to demonstrate any of this.

"Ooh, let's test it. I'm a purple horse. Chocolate is made of trees. Spiders fall off rocks in Hibernia. There are no teapots in the shoal. What did I say?"

He repeats it back as best he can. "I have no idea what languages you said any of it in, though, I hear everything as my native language. Oh hey, what do you hear if I say 'Sprechen sie Deutsch?'"

"I hear 'do you speak Germanian?', is that not what you're saying-- stop laughing, Clarissa, you'll spoil it."

"I was asking if you spoke a language with a similar but not identical name to the one I heard back from you just now. What's funny? I bet it's my accent, I learned out of books and don't get much chance to practice with real people."

"No, I was talking in a language Clarissa and I made up when we were six. Am talking."

"You invented a language that comprehensive when you were six? I'm impressed. Does it make any sense if I say 'I can haz cheezburger?' What about 'all your base are belong to us?'"

"...what's a cheeseburger."

"Uh, meat and cheese sandwich on a specific kind of bun. I was attempting to deliberately pronounce a misspelling of it but you appear to have gotten the correct pronunciation anyway. Man do I wish I could read lips right now, this has got to be doing something incredibly weird somewhere between your mouth and my brain."

"...I am going to be so embarrassed if it turns out the gods exist."

"Me too, honestly. My world never showed any sign of having any right up until I fell through a hole in reality."

"You two are very cute but we should go inside."

(Bruce gets that "cute" is a term used to refer to children, nondynamics, and submissives you're having sex with.)

That's a weird package of connotations but English is a glass house. He'll go inside, asking Maturin "Do you have any books on recent discoveries and inventions? Or periodicals?"

"I could show you the journal of the Imperial Society? It's full of bullshit though."

"Language."

"I thought we decided he's not a sub."