I don't think anyone did while they were still in it.  What year do you say you're in?

2179.

And in the early 21st century there wasn't a petroleum plague that left Earth at 2% of its previous population?

...I don't even know what a petroleum plague would be.

It only affected oil, not people.  But it made it explode.

That does sound like it'd be very inconvenient. We did not have anything making petroleum spontaneously explode. But we did have what's called Revelation, where it became newly public knowledge that it's possible to summon beings like myself and trade with us.

I don't think it took very many people to make the oil bug.  If I take alternate universes as a given it doesn't seem very hard to have knocked that off course.

A century after that, the little cities that had formed in the wake of the Crash decided to try and figure out how to make sure no one ever busted the planet again.  So they invented and standardized the operation, the idea being that if we made everyone pretty and pretty much looking the same, we'd eliminate most of the causes of war that weren't already covered by the material conditions.  Or, that's what we're taught in school; presumably the brain changes did a lot of the work there.

Thanks, I hate it.

That gets a smile.

So now kids live with their parents until they're 12 and move into the ugly dorms, and move to New Pretty Town when they turn 16, unless they run away or Special Circumstances decides to pressure them into trying to find other runaways and threatens to withhold their operation until they do.  For normal people, eventually they get bored of partying and start working.  The city /has/ a cure; even they want our doctors and firefighters smart.

Okay, uh, is that something you could identify for me to conjure up?

He takes a moment to think about it.

That's really all I know about their version.  Sorry.

Alas. Okay, so, uh, I'm indestructible. I don't think the spooks can do anything to me. The risk would be if they could do something to you remotely or very fast or triggered in a way that would be hard to stop them from completing.

I won't ask you to prove your indestructibility.  He pauses.  Is there a way to cover up the wings?  They're way outside morphological standards and, while I don't think anyone is watching us now or very likely to start, it'll make a big difference if they do.

I could hide 'em in a coat. I could cut 'em off.

Don't cut them off!!  A coat might be a good idea.

A coat appears. I mean, I could put them back, I put them there in the first place, but sure.

You're saying you hole-in-the-walled them onto your body?  And they stuck?  And don't cause you any of the massive problems I'd expect?

Yeah. - you are not going to fly out of here, it takes a bit to learn and humans get tireder than demons do.

I just don't get /how/.  But it's less important than catching you up.  Specials... they want everyone to fit into the city ecosystem.  They're willing to let people die if they don't cooperate with this, but they try pretty hard not to.  Things they might trigger on me are trackers, which I strongly hope don't matter if we're in space, or - he ponders - back while my brain was getting eaten my girlfriend took me to the hospital because I'd had an episode.  We stayed outside until I woke up, but she'd rushed there really obviously and it would have been suspicious if we didn't go in, so I injured myself.  While they were fixing me up and I was unconscious, they noticed everything wrong with my brain.  They put a stop to it getting worse.  But they didn't fix it; they stuck the tracker in my tooth and had it give me fake headaches like the ones I'd been having, so we'd get desperate, leave the city, and lead them to the Smoke.  That being the name for the mini-society of runaways.

So really, they could have anything on me, but probably not something that would kill me at least on purpose.  Or they could just think I'm a useless pretty again, and only have the collar to keep me here.

I still really feel like I'm lacking context but if you would sooner live on the moon I expect to be able to do that unless they can like remotely explode your head or something.

Quite a commute, even if it'd work.

I can also do a space station but I don't know what the state of your orbitals might be, assuming that anything you've described to me is not bullshit and this is in fact a different timeline or something.

Unless my memory's gone again, you're the one who brought up that explanation.

It would be a good explanation in the version of reality where you aren't lying to me or insane, but so far all I've seen is a guy with slightly outré tats and shaky hands reading himself the Communist Manifesto in a room with screen walls, which is not impossible in my own universe.

I hope it doesn't come off the wrong way if I say that so far all I've seen is a guy with costume surge wings and maybe some sneak suit material which he's programmed to whip off of slightly weird custom technology and a book he picked out at dramatic times, or is maybe is very good at precisely interrupting my consciousness.  Which is not impossible here.