"Okay, you wanna fly to the Amazon overnight?"

"Very well, let's go try to fix the source."

"I'll make the shuttle in your backyard, shall I?"

"By all means crush my poor violets." She halfsmiles. "Is a shuttle much like an airship?"

"Faster and comfier. I'll make it nice and roomy so you can hang out there reading science fiction classics, it'll be nasty outside of it but the shuttle'll filter the air for you." He makes a small-house-sized shuttle, crushing the poor violets, and escorts her into it.

Into the shuttle she goes, after briefly stuffing clothes and such into a rolling case. "Other sorts of books are likely fine as well. I'm itching to - help plan for supply distribution or something, though."

"Oh, cool, what do you see yourself doing in that department?" he asks, as the shuttle lifts into the air and picks up speed.

"Well, I did inventory control for a furniture factory once upon a time, so perhaps collating up lists of population centers and what they might need and where one could deliver it, if I had source documents."

"Sounds good! What kind of documents d'you want?"

"I'll need - one of those," Gesture to computer, "I'm modeling it as the typeceiver of the future, because the 1890 census would be too big for this shuttle and also only covers America so I need to think of other documents that would list... Most people in the world."

"Sure. This model requires brain surgery."

"Urk. Perhaps not."

"It won't hurt and poses no risk, I'd just make a chip in the correct place in your brain."

"...No thank you, Dr. Frankenstein. Perhaps when I understand your technology better, but I'd like my brain to remain the way it is at the moment."

"Sure. Here's one that you cannot control with your mind." He hands her one. "With a tutorial."

She sets to work figuring out how to computer. Pauses to appreciate the view upon takeoff, though.

It's a good view! They go up up up up above the clouds and then go real fast but it's harder to appreciate their speed from so high.

They're really really high. And it's starting to sink in how absurd this all is.

She's being very still and quiet and not quite looking at her computer. And maybe having a little bit of a panic attack.

"Verona? Are you okay?"

"Mm? You've stopped feeling unreal and now I am above the atmosphere playing with this - computer that Babbage himself would sell his mother for. Hah. Hahahah."

"Do... you want anti-anxiety medication."

"By that do you mean booze. Or tobacco. Or opium. I've sworn off all three."

"No, benzodiazepines."

"Never heard of them, but it sounds very pharmaceutical. No particularly, ehm, sin-ish side effects?"

"No."