He smooths his face down into its polite neutral mask and makes up a few polite followup questions to ask her, mostly so he feels like he's doing his job. He doesn't remember what he says as he thanks her for her time and tells her to come back if she has anything else to say.

Here is the piece of gravestone she was clutching! She apparently brought it here. It's a granite cross that says "FORGOTTEN". Other than that, the follow-up doesn't establish much.

Before leaving, she hesitates. "So... what do you think? Do you think it was real?"

"It's difficult to say anything without followup," Lev says, "but non-digitizable statements are more likely than average to be confirmed, and I've never seen one that was conclusively disproven."

"...Right. Well. Let me know if you find anything?"

"We will," he says, and escorts her out, and then goes to find Martin.

Martin is at his desk! "Oh, hello! Should I... put on some tea?"

"...........Martin when you interview statement-givers do they just........ say things. Like, in paragraphs, in chronological order, without backtracking because they forgot a detail, without going on tangents, without hemming and hawing for three minutes because they can't remember whether they made a left turn or a right turn, without you having to prompt them or redirect them or ask for more specifics?"

".....N......o.........? I mean. They definitely go on tangents and forget things and backtrack and all that. I think? I mean, I don't really actually interview the statement givers themselves that often. Just, like, related people, mostly?"

"Okay because this statement-giver definitely did that and it was incredibly weird."

"Huh. You could... try interviewing another statement giver, see if the same thing happens?"

"Good idea, I shouldn't assume it's magic right away. Maybe she'd just practiced her story a lot ahead of time."

"Yeah. And you could see if there's a difference between statement givers whose statements digitize and the statement givers whose statements didn't? Or... I don't know, probably there's other things to check that I'm not thinking of."

"No, that's a good suggestion." Lev sits on Martin's desk. "Not sure how I can get access to a statement-giver with a digitizable statement without getting people to make faces about how I should be actually doing my job. --Does Research save their first drafts?"

"I don't know! You could ask? I didn't actually work with statement givers."

"Good plan. --My hypothesis is that the givers of non-digitizable statements do it and no one else does."

(Look at Lev. Lev is very cute. Clearly Lev should have forehead kisses.)

Oh no Lev is so cute.

Martin is going to hug him and not do anything else because they are still at work but he is also going to decide that as soon as they are not at work he is giving Lev so many forehead kisses (and top-of-the-head kisses and cheek kisses and) and he is going to stop hugging now because they are still at work.

"Huh! I guess that makes sense. Or... some sort of sense, if you look at everything a bit... sideways."

His face falls once he remembers what the statement was actually about.

"...the statement wasn't, uh. Great."

"...Do you...want to talk about it?"

"Statement-giver's fiance died."

"Oh.

....Do you want a hug?"

"It's-- worse--" He looks at a piece of paper, which looks like it is covered in cuneiform in Lev's typically messy handwriting. "She was always most comfortable alone, and then she met a guy who was unlike anyone she had ever talked to before because-- she could talk back to him and she wasn't scared-- and he was her first serious relationship-- and he had plenty of friends but didn't push when she didn't want to hang out with them-- and it felt like he completed her even though she'd always thought that was a stupid thing to say before-- and then she proposed to him and then he died--"

Yeah okay Lev is getting a hug. "I'm so sorry."

"And-- and she couldn't-- all her friends were his friends and she knew they wouldn't have minded but it was more familiar to be alone--"

He is not going to start crying in the office, he is not. 

....Hugs and kisses on the top of the head and rubbing circles into Lev's back, because ouch.

"Being tolerated sucks. Especially if they're only doing it because they pity you because your fiance is dead."