"I don't have my powers yet, they don't come in till the end of the week! And if I had them I wouldn't use them because they'd rack up backlash that wouldn't go away by itself and I don't even know for sure if this Martin guy is compatible! And even if that weren't a factor mind control is wrong though I guess this would sure be a strong test case for that belief since you have created a really adversarial situation!"

"I acknowledge that you allege this."

"I would offer to attempt to lie more convincingly to calibrate your spy thriller powers but this is a really bad condition under which to try to do that."

"Why so, exactly?"

"The pressured speech and also like I don't know what you'd even find plausible which I think is part of lying convincingly normally? I usually don't talk to people I'd want to lie to and if it comes up I like doing an exact words kind of thing because it amuses me with my own cleverness so I don't have practice."

"Mm.  How do you feel about the thought of me being tortured."

"I am against literally anyone being tortured ever but if I have to like, rank this eventuality versus other ones I need more information."

"Where would you go, if you had the choice?"

"Home."

"Even above meeting the other alleged esper?"

"There's espers at home and I think I can survive awakening without guiding, it's not like I can't breathe or anything. It'd be good if he got to go home too. Why, do you have a Send Interdimensional Visitors Home button?"

"No, I initially meant 'where on this planet'.  ...Or the moon."

"God, I don't know, I was doing tolerably with the folks you kidnapped me from but it's not like I really get their deal either. I asked the first person I met to call me an ambulance but they don't know how espers work on this planet and I'd wind up handcuffed to a hospital bed in Solipsism Hell probably. Directly into this Martin guy's lap, maybe, and perhaps between the two of us we could figure out not being kidnapped somehow."

"...My colleagues establish that he's likely to be lying about his name.  They have not pressed him on the matter, and it's not as if, if more of what he said is true, you would recognize his true one."

"Yeah I am not a social butterfly when I'm in my right mind. I guess there's names you could have said where I'd've been like 'from math class?' but I do not know a lot of people. If permitted to continue unimpeded from the beginning of my awakening without waking up in another universe I would presumably make a lot of friends for mental health reasons. I guess I might have taken up the practice of poking every young adult emergency room admit who wasn't obviously a trauma case? That would explain how I would've been acquainted with someone who was in five years awakening."

"Elaborate on how this would explain that."

"Esper awakenings happen within a certain age range and some of them wind up in the ER because they suddenly have really intense symptoms of some kind and not all of those would have to be awakenings, which are pretty rare in the general population. But espers can check by touch whether other people are espers. So in principle someone can just go to an ER, if they're an esper, and the nurses will be like, oh, thank you, I had my suspicions about the coma case in room four, while you're here can you also check out this weird psychosis presentation, and actually just everyone who is not literally full of shrapnel or something, and then the visiting esper can see which of those people has a magical problem instead of a normal one. If he's awakening and wound up in the ER and I-in-five-years have the habit of doing this, then we'd've met. But most espers don't do that because you get so many false alarms, people just come down with symptoms for normal reasons way more often even in the relevant age range, and even if you did do it you wouldn't be likely to find a compatible one because that's a whole 'nother layer of luck."

"Thank you for elaborating."

"Kind of suggests I'm gonna get lousy powers. If I get good powers I'd be pretty busy and would not want to be in the emergency room poking people all the time."

"If they were claimed to be something entirely useless I would expect to have been told this."

"Well I hope they're not like, usable for spy thriller shit and not for anything good, though I don't immediately know what that'd be."

"I know that there are measures in place to keep me from defecting beyond the ones I am regularly made aware of."

"I have no idea how you entered this line of work in the first place but I gotta tell you that sounds pretty fucked up."

"I was selected for it as a small child."

"Not beating the fuckupedness allegations."