"No, I can tell you whatever you want to know, where should I start?"

"I'd be interested in hearing what sort of treatments are favored for widespread ailments in your world."

So Annie can explain vaccines and antibiotics!

"I've read of variolation - how do vaccines differ, and do future developments make it safer, or is it just considered worth the risk? Also, do you have insight into how antibiotics work?"

"I think it's safer but I don't know how they do it and I also don't remember what's different about variolation. I think the first antibiotic discovered was a kind of mold but I don't know how it works."

Nod.

"Do you know what sort of mold or if there are any good ways to test molds to see if they would work?"

"You can grow bacteria in a dish with something they'll eat and see if the mold will kill them there. I don't know what the mold grows on or looks like in the wild."

"What are bacteria?"

"Tiny creatures that cause infections. There are also viruses, which antibiotics don't work on."

"Are viruses also tiny creatures?"

"Sort of. They act more like living things than like a poison or something, but they're not fully alive. You can still get them off your skin with soap and water, though, and they still die if you boil contaminated water."

"... are all diseases caused by things that can be dealt with via those methods?"

"No. There's autoimmune stuff, where the parts of the body that are specialized in handling things like that - bacteria, viruses, some kinds of fungi, parasites - don't do their jobs right. I think allergies work like that? Cancer is also different. And things that run in families are likely to just be - things that run in families, and look like diseases because they're bad, but are fundamentally the same as people having different eye colors - I can explain that kind of -" Genetics 101.

Lucette listens extremely attentively.

Well, Annie's not going to be the one to call it off if Lucette wants to talk to her.

"-I think this seems like it will help a lot of people, though we'll still need to figure out how to best make use of and disseminate the information."

"You'd know more about how to best do that here than I would."

Nod.

"- I'm confused about...your emotional state regarding having this conversation right now as opposed to later, though I don't need that to be remedied if you would rather not explain."

"I'm not tired or anything if that's what you mean. It was morning in Noregrsk, when the artifacts hit me."

"I-that's a portion of what I mean? But I don't want to pry."

"I don't think I understand what you want to know."

"...how you are... feeling?"

"...a lot. But it doesn't have to be your problem, you can just ignore it whenever you don't feel like hugging me, that's probably simplest."

"Can I know what it is I'd be ignoring?"

"Just that I'm in love with you."