She lets them keep at it for several minutes, before: "Range is still a factor in modern versions; it wouldn't surprise me if it used to be less."  She offers her hand across the desk.

Sarham touches her hand.

Kyeo is slightly more awkward about it but imitates him.

"We'll come back to that later in case it just takes time - try angling specifically to take my version, so I don't have it anymore, instead of just copying it - "

Yoink?

Nothing doing.

She has them try a wide range of things over the next several hours, from having her attempt to give them things while they try to take them, to demonstrating several tricks, not all sleight of hand but all easy once you know how but difficult to derive, to having them try to guess specific numbers she's thinking of (citrelians can't do that one but she finds it worth checking) and answers to specific questions related to subjects she has expertise in, to having them try to copy the state of one of her fingernails.  On a few occasions she trots off and comes back with another person in tow; two with different citrelièses which she thinks the aliens' might be close to and a few with similar more-traditional traits - someone an inch taller than Sarham, another person with the same type of hair as Kyeo but slightly longer, and vice versa.  She has them try all of these normally, at touch range, and with several different mindsets, for a few minutes each.

None of them do anything, save what they determine to be a false positive during the number guessing.

"Well," she admits around noon.  "That seems fairly conclusive, at least on this time scale.  I'll want to try a few things again in a week or so, in case it's just that they take more time."

"Makes sense, I suppose if it could be environmental it could take years."

"I suppose so!  Hm, it could even be something that wouldn't show up for generations, if that's the case, couldn't it.  Although of course I hope it comes in for you before you develop any easily-fixable medical issues."

"Yeah, that would be convenient. We'll try not to develop any medical issues."

"I appreciate that.  Want to - maybe check the time conversion and then do lunch?  I'll treat if you'd like to do a restaurant; it seems like it'd be better if we also got to know each other as people, instead of just coworkers or," she makes a dismissive gesture, "however you want to label this."

"Co-workers seems fine and, sure, thanks."

"There's that place we saw when we got lost the other day."

"Sure, I think I could find it again."

"Delightful."  She confirms the relative amounts of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and a year relative to each other.  "And can you count out a minute or is keeping time something people are worse at if they can't copy it?"

"I'm probably worse at it but I haven't been running down my lens and it keeps time whether I turn it the rest of the way on or not, we can wait for the minute to roll over and then you can count from there till it does it again." He produces his lens.

She pulls out a stopwatch and watches the lens, counting along for redundancy.  It transpires that the difference is indeed what Lornell had figured it to be; she scratches down a few notes.  "Where was this restaurant, then?"

He can show her, it isn't far. They did not get very lost.

She sticks a note in the door such that when she closes it, the paper sticks out at eye level.  As they walk she dances a bit to keep her pace the same as theirs; some of it looks . . . plausibly descended from ballet, maybe?  It's hard to tell, she doesn't keep doing one thing for very long and seems to be pulling from a few distinct styles.

"Oh, this place; good choice," she comments as they approach.  "I usually just get one or two of the tasters, but the full meals are nice too; I can recommend the artichoke delide and the - I don't know what it's called, it's beef in sort of a peach sauce - and I've heard good things about their salads though I've never tried one."

There's seating both indoors and out, although a fair number of people loiter while they wait for their order before taking it off to eat somewhere else.

Kyeo will try the beef in peach sauce thing!

Sarham will take the artichoke dish.

They're delicious!  It turns out that when everyone can match the skill of the most-competent chef around and people generally don't have to eat, you end up with kind of astonishingly good food!

(Zarian tries a salad.)

"This is marvelous."

"I'm glad you like it!  I wasn't sure how it'd compare, if food is relevantly a technology . . ."

"Food's a technology, but cooking's a skill. There's high-end places on developed planets better than this but I'm used to less good for everyday."

"This is admittedly not quite everyday; I don't usually go to places like this more often than once or twice a season.  - Well, and maybe another couple times for tasters."