"A 'precog'? If that's what I think it is, that sounds pretty cool. Do you have a lot of people who can predict the future?"

Also, there's a mention of 'eclipses', which means- something. Eclipses give people magic?

"Some, yeah, it's pretty popular."

"What about you? Not your thing?"

"No, I work in virtuality."

"Do you mind telling me more about it? It sounds pretty sci-fi to me."

"Oh, uh, virtuality's where eclipsed who don't have magical control yet go. If somebody like me boosts a VR setup enough it can fool their magic, so it doesn't actually set anything on fire or whatever in real life, and they can like, go to virtual school and stuff while they figure out how to be safe."

"That's way more badass then I thought. So you're stopping a bunch on uncontrolled chanters- eclipsed, sorry- from hurting people? On my Earth, the only thing people want to use VR for is gaming."

"We barely use it for that, it's not good enough without a psion on it and with one it's expensive, but the government covers control training."

"You seemed worried, earlier, when you thought I was an out of control eclipsed. How bad does that get?"

"...like without precogs? Uh, millions of people could die."

"Millions? Right. Has that- right."

Dottie falls silent, trying to imagine a disaster of that scale.

"I mean I don't think it ever actually happens. Sometimes littler accidents slip in, like, Indonesia or wherever, but if Borneo were going to flash freeze our precogs would cover that."

It's not really less horrifying that it's so casual, but- sure. Kind of like hunger in Africa or coups in South America. Not like she can do anything about it besides feel sick to her stomach that the world is full of misery and cruelty.

Dottie would like to move to happier topics- speaking of video games, Dottie is curious how similar those are- and hey, what games does Jackson like to play?

"I don't really like video games much but Brian has Halo and some Mario games for playing with his nieces."

"Do they come over a lot?"

"Some weekends, yeah, his sister's a nurse and they go to school during the week but if she works a weekend they come here a while."

"They're not too much of a handful?"

"Not if Brian lets them eat junk food and play Mario and ride around on me like I'm a horse, nah."

"You and Brian seem pretty serious."

Dottie...waits to see how that goes over before asking what she actually wants to ask.

"Yeah, we aren't married yet 'cause we'll be able to have a fancier wedding after some more saving-up but yeah."

"That's nice. So you're- compatible, then. Your roles."

"Yyyyes? He's a dom and I'm a sub."

"Cool."

That's probably enough invasive questions for now. Jackson doesn't seem the type to want to deal with problems like "these aliens have a much more destructive magic system and I'm sad about that" or "if I go home I might be arrested" or "no one here has genders and I'm probably going to have a very long dry spell". Dottie politely inquires about various inane topics while they wait for this Isabella to show up.

Eventually Jackson realizes he has not successfully sent Isabella the picture, and he does that, and then promptly enough:

[Hello, Dottie?]

Dottie startles, which presumably Isabella doesn't see.

[Isabella! Sorry to interrupt whatever you were doing- it sounds like eclipsed who work Lockdown have their hands full.]