"A common affliction, really. Or that one or both of us will undergo some significant personality change, seeing as we are both teenagers."

"Exactly! But I can't condition on that, if I expected to change in any given particular way then I would already have. Modulo fooling myself."

"Not necessarily. We work really high-stress occupations and even people who don't sometimes change in ways you wouldn't want to hurry up."

"Like what?"

"Like, if you determined that you were going to wind up with post-traumatic stress, this would be pretty significant as personal changes go but you wouldn't start imitating the symptoms in advance."

"Oh. Fair enough. But I mean, if I expected that to happen then I would take actions to make it less likely, to the point that I no longer would."

"Sure. But it normally happens unexpectedly, and not necessarily - evitably."

"Yeah, but that's my whole point, I can't really act on unexpected changes to my personality. Or, really, predict the by-definition unpredictable changes and their consequences, amongst which potentially breaking up with you in a month."

"They could be statistically predictable without being individually predictable, but it's certainly reasonable not to preemptively break up."

"Right!"

"I'm glad we're agreed on that. I'd feel awfully silly telling my dad 'yeah, about that, we broke up for statistical premonitions.'"

He laughs. "I mean, if those statistical premonitions included 'huge fight, everyone's hurt, can't stand to see one another's face ever again, ninety-five percent confidence,' it might be a reasonable thing to say."

"Lemme know when a precog that interested in our personal lives comes along."

"Will do."

"I've emailed my dad, by the way."

"...that was fast."

"Bot drafted it, I do most of my editing through gaze-tracking stuff in-helmet."

"Is that... the kind of thing you tell him by email? I mean, I don't know much about your relationship with him—totally one of the questions in my list of personal questions, by the way—but it sounds like the kind of thing people prefer to tell in person?"

"We will certainly talk about it in person, but I don't see anything wrong with a written heads-up."

"...alright. Will this first in-person conversation be just you and him or will it double as a presenting-the-boyfriend thing, given that there's a heads-up already? I mean he knows me already, I guess, but. Also is he likely to react to the I'm-not-always-a-boy thing?"

"He already knows you're not always a boy, I will clarify how that interacts with me being straight if he's curious but I bet you he won't be, and I was planning to wait to discuss you in person until we're home and I can include my mom. Who I don't usually discuss in costume, I like to leave it ambiguous whether she's even alive."

"That was one of the other questions, yes, but let's get to that in a second, I want more info here. How does your straightness react to the gender thing, exactly? I mean, I kinda vaguely gestured and indicated not-a-problem at the start and then I guess today banished any doubts it would be, but in what ways is it not a problem?"

"I mean, I don't want to kiss you when you're a girl? You were not a girl when we were kissing."

"It's possible I'll wind up slipping into - careless brain habits and default to thinking of you as a boy at any time you are not actively being a girl right in front of me," she says. "I don't know how big a problem that is; it's not likely to emerge in how I talk, I've been policing that since I found out who my dad was."