"Brian," says Jackson dreamily, pulling the plate out of the microwave and adding a fork before presenting it to Dottie.

"Someone's got it bad."

Dottie takes a bite; Chinese food is the same on any Earth, apparently, which is comforting.

"Ignore me if this is too personal, but is it common around here to mask at home?"

"To what?"

"To mask your pheromones. I can't smell anything off either of you."

"...we're not, uh, moths, or whatever it is that has phermones. Are you a moth? Or something?"

"I'm human. Humans give off- well, we still call them pheromones, although it's not really the same thing, I think. I'm not a biologist. They're pretty important, back home."

Star Trek, maybe, not Twilight Zone. Do they...not have gender? Or different genders, whichever.

"Humans don't do that. ... on Earth." Jackson grabs a rice pudding out of the fridge and starts eating it pretty quickly.

Okay. So they eat more than humans, they don't have the same genders...whatever eclipsed are, they have those. She'll save those questions for the...Lockdown officer.

Dottie does make small talk. What's Jackson doing later? Is there any TV they would recommend? What's Jackson's favorite food?

"I have a doctor's appointment later... I like cop shows and baseball. I'm not picky, I like most things, but my favorite's probably donuts, you?"

"I'm more of a sci-fi sort of girl. I can be kind of picky about food, but anything salty is a safe bet."

"You're a girl?"

"See, this would be one way pheromones can help. Yeah, I'm an omega."

"...I don't know what an omega is but you don't look like a girl."

"Is it- the clothes, the hair...I can change my presentation if none of you have working- sorry, that's. Sorry."

"The hair looks kind of - uh - dom but you cut your own hair, a little? It's more, like, your jawline and your shoulders..."

"Okay. It's going to be an issue if no one can tell I'm an omega, which...might not be what you mean by 'girl'. What do 'dom' and 'girl' mean to you?"

"Dom is a role, they like being in charge. Girl is having, uh, a vagina? And estrogen and stuff."

Okay. So 'dom' means 'alpha', except that 'girl' means...having a vagina. They usually don't get this nitty-gritty on Star Trek.

"So if I say 'boy', 'man', 'guy', that means...?"

"...having a penis? Uh, and testosterone." He gets another rice pudding.

"Thanks. You've been really helpful. It's a lot to adjust to, landing in a place where almost everything is the same- I mean, you guys have microwaves and rice pudding- but some things are completely different."

"Like you being a girl with a five o'clock shadow?"

"Yeah, like that."

Dottie will try some companionable silence on for size. Hopefully she hasn't just fucked up first contact for her entire planet- that's probably not a crime, but it seems like the kind of thing a trigger-happy judge could tack onto her sentence if she's getting arrested anyway.

"Oh, right," Jackson realizes after his second rice pudding, "I was supposed to send a picture of you to Isabella..." He pulls out his phone and snaps one.

Right. Dottie had managed to completely forget that in her haze earlier.

"So, this Isabella works in 'Lockdown'?"

"No, she's a precog, but Lockdown works with precogs on eclipses and I guess she's on their internal chat or something and was like 'sounds weird, I'll check it out'."