"This renders my magical powers impotent."

"Zane-la, did anyone tell you the story of what made me getting to the New Smoke take so long?"

"I don't think there was much time for that."

"It turns out there's a circle, out in the wilderness, full of pre-Rusties.  They don't have high technology, or medicine, or a lot of things that even the Smokies do.  They're totally Stone Age.  When I ditched the hot-air balloon, I fell in that circle.  They were about to kill me, but then they saw I was pretty.  They brought me to their holy man.  He spoke English; he called me a god.  Turns out the cities are letting a bunch of anthropologists ring a big patch of wilderness in devices that scramble your brain if you go near them, to keep these villages in.  So they can study violence and human nature."  She goes still.  "Magic isn't real, Zane."

"...Well, sufficiently advanced technology and all that.  How did you get out?"

"Andrew - that was his name, the holy man - knew some anthropologists were scheduled to come soon, and I stole their hovercar."

"Sounds pretty tricky.  Do you think it would have helped Andrew if he'd told the city folks he knew they weren't gods, without actually having any way to counter high technology?

"Churro?" Cam asks, holding one out.

She recoils.

"Yes please."  Nomf.  "Whether or not you think it's literally magic, it seems Cam-la still has some sort of access to a portable, instant hole in the wall, which prints things not necessarily made of nanoframes including air between the molecules of my collar.  So, y'know, it seems best if we all stay on friendly terms."

"Nonconsensually printing a copy of someone's brain isn't friendly even if you claim it's somehow magically not a person!"

"I meant the offer in a purely diagnostic spirit."

She fiddles with a ring on the outside of her body suit, tattoos spinning.

God that's so creepy to look at. "So, uh, the whole stone age guys situation, is that still happening, I kind of wanna go mess with that situation, that's fucked up."

"As far as I know."

"Y'wanna tell me where?"

"...I think it's a bad idea to let them out into the rest of the wild.  They had a lot of ideas about 'outsiders' and none of them were peaceful."

"I'll take that as a no." Is "Andrew" conjurable...

Yes.

"It's not like I don't think the situation is totally random.  But they go back and forth taking turns at revenge murders between the tribes; if you want to actually help them you're going to need more of a plan than just taking out the scramblers."

"You're not making an amazing case for being a collaborator on such a plan but do let me know if that changes," creepy teenager with motile tattoos. Surroundings of Andrew, scaled so he can match with what's visible geographically out the ship -

Actually the creepy teenager is going to move very suddenly and very fast to ??gently punch-tap Cam in the side of the neck??

He falls over. "If you make a habit of that I'm going to put you off the ship, that's very rude."

"- I don't think you should do -"

Tally does something very quickly with her hands and then tries whatever she did again.