"We can... definitely arrange for you to drive out to the forest tonight."

"Thank you."

"So, uh, do you have any idea how you got here from the future?"

"No. Are my shipmates somewhere?"

"Nope, you're the only one here. A guy found you in the middle of Redwood Park."

"I appreciate his help very much."

"Okay. So, uh, my job is to help you get oriented to Cascadia and see if we can send you back-- which apparently we can't because you don't know how you got here either-- and talk to you about giving us any knowledge of the future you happen to have."

"What sorts of things do I need to be oriented to?"

"We're not sure, we've never made first contact before. --I was picked for this job because I taught a semester-long class on xenoanthropology which was supposed to just be an introduction to social science for freshmen with a fun premise but apparently that makes me the closest thing to an expert with a security clearance they have."

"I'm not an alien."

"Well, we don't have anyone who's made first contact with an uncontacted tribe either. --Are there aliens?"

"We haven't found any. What year is it?"

"2049, dating from the alleged birth of Christ."

"Oh, is that what Earth Standard counts from? It's 2152 in Earth Standard when I'm from."

"Oh, good, so not that far in the future. --You ended up fixing the fertility crisis with space colonization, I take it?"

"Pardon?"

"The... fertility crisis? The thing where we pumped lots of bitoxiphosphene into the air and it made women unable to conceive, or they miscarried, or their babies were born too sick to live?"

"I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it. I'm not a historian, of course..."

"It seems like it would have come up if people on your Earth still had trouble having babies!"

"I haven't been to Earth. I do know it to... exist... so they must have handled it somehow..."

"I... guess...?" he sounds doubtful. "Well, here most women struggle with some form of infertility. In Cascadia we've hit a TFR of 2 and we're working on reaching full replacement soon."

"The owl did not teach me 'TFR'."

"Oh, sorry, total fertility rate. Average number of six-month-old babies per woman."

"...six month olds in particular?"

"Yeah. Sometimes people want to keep their babies when they turn out to have disabilities incompatible with life instead of euthanizing them, so we have to count from a point where all the babies with those disabilities are definitely dead."