"...Well, I did some exploring in my teen years, and a few of the species I encountered hadn't heard of aliens before. We couldn't communicate very well, but I helped them out where I could, and tried to leave on good terms with their leaders and planetary protectors. But the more significant story, I think, is from when I was a small child.

"My real name is Kal-El. I come from a planet called Krypton. Krypton was a rather advanced planet, full of genius and technological wonders, but it had a flaw -- an instability in its core would eventually cause it to explode. My parents, Jor-El and Lara, were scientists who realized the death of Krypton was approaching, and tried to warn Krypton's leaders, but many people refused to listen and the few evacuation attempts failed. In a last ditch effort to save any part of Krypton, they placed me in a prototype rocket just big enough for one passenger and sent me in the direction of the first inhabited world they could find, a planet called Earth.

"Sometime after my arrival on Earth, I came to a rural town and revealed myself to the world as Superboy. I spent about a decade based there, performing good deeds and super-feats at home and abroad, and then moved my focus to a city called Metropolis a few years ago, where I've been operating as Superman.

"The press has always interested in me, of course, and I've told them just what I'm telling you now, but Earth has had its share of heroes and villains, people with remarkable abilities, and even with people from other worlds -- I was unique, I think, but not unprecedented. I've visited alternate Earths, sometimes ones where I didn't exist, but as often as not they were similar enough to my own world that I didn't realize what had happened until well into the visit, sometimes after I left. Not always, though. I think that may be what's happened here."

"Interesting! We don't have any aliens or people with remarkable abilities. I wonder if that's the point of divergence."

"That could be! The heroic tradition goes back to Hercules, so our worlds must have diverged long ago."

"I don't know who Hercules is, so it must!"

"He lived in ancient Greece!" Anyone's guess whether that existed here. "Let's see, what else do you want to know?"

"I don't know what Greece is either. --What have you found out about the logos? It's very exciting to have an independent source from which we can check our work, so we know if we're overlooking something or have been carried away by fads."

"...Well. A lot of people believe a lot of different things. I can't speak to the creation of the universe, since viewing it through any means would have terrible consequences, but scientists generally agree that it began as a single point and then rapidly expanded and cooled after that, and theologians generally agree that this was put in motion by some kind of Creator. I know a spirit from the reality next door to ours who's commanded to enact vengeance and root out evil by a Voice that he identifies as the same entity, and I, er, mostly take his word for that. As for guiding us in our hearts, I think most people would identify that with their moral center, and a lot of them would identify it with the Creator, but there are also pantheons that many people used to worship and some people still do, and they guide people too -- I work with a pagan hero, and whether or not her gods are the same thing as the one God that most people in my country worship, when Athena grants her wisdom or Hermes grants her swiftness or Hercules grants her strength I believe they speak to her the same way. And my people, Kryptonians, worshipped a god called Rao in much the same way. There are dozens of gods in India I could hardly begin to name, and things like universal oneness that I'm not sure I can do justice. And, well, even within all these traditions there's a lot of variation." He rubs the back of the neck. "I'm sure this must sound odd to you."

"It sounds like you have a lot of competing visions of the logos? Rather than just one," he says. "I wonder if the superpowers caused that somehow. --Oh, it's very important to check in on your farms and make sure the animals are okay, it turns out that farming that creates enough meat for everyone involves torturing animals. Unless it's beef, beef is okay."

"That wasn't much of an issue" growing up on the Kent farm "the last time I was around a lot of livestock, but there's been a lot of innovation in meat farming recently. I can look into it."

"It's possible the superpowers do affect that! It seems like it'd be a lot harder to argue that gods exist when they're not making people their champions or handing down blessings and curses."

"It's considered blasphemy to say that the logos performs miracles-- it arranged things the way it wanted them to be arranged at the beginning of the universe, and we don't know better than it how things should be."

"...That is a fascinating take. I suppose it's a matter of what you think a miracle is. And, er, what theory of time you subscribe to."

"The logos never violates the laws of physics. I confess I'm not a physicist myself and don't know anything about theories of time."

"That... might be true in my world. Scientists have never been able to provide a robust explanation for how physical laws produce gods or magic or divine intervention or the nature of other planes but there have been some recent discoveries about the fifth dimension that seem promising, and... and, well... I'm sure given time we will discover things that make the stranger things about reality fall into place." He can feel an understanding of cosmic events just beyond his reach but it's so blurred and dreamlike that it was almost certainly hidden for a reason, if it wasn't just a passing fancy. Probably one of those things he shouldn't talk or act on or think too much about, in case it momentarily snarls the timeline. Just like his entire understanding of chronophysics, unfortunately. "I don't know much about causality myself, just that the guys working the numbers tell me it's a lot more complicated than it looks."

"I'm sure your laws of physics are perfectly mathematically consistent and will be understood with time!" Brother Hope says. "Maybe we can have some monks help, if that seems like a good idea."

(This is a very normal situation. Visitors from other planes are normal. Everything about the world is normal and it is blasphemy to think it isn't; if you're the one who thinks quantum physics or alternate dimensions are weird, you're the one that's mistaken.)

"I'm sure they will appreciate the chance to collaborate." He kind of suspects based on the everything that Earth's scientists are more advanced but, who knows, maybe they're skewing things and this is actually a really poor area.

"All right, so you have more experience than we do in first contact. What are the best practices?"