"...How much do you value my word?"

"I'd love to come to a consistent stable opinion on that soon."

"You may have noticed there aren't any visible cameras about.  I can tell you circumstances under which the effect we use for recording is off, but there's not any visible indication associated with it."

"I figured it was something like that. But I don't know if, say, you have anything that works retroactively. Demons can get stuff about positioning, not the sounds of a conversation, but there's things that are not demons."

"This pocket dimension is really quite secure, and to a first approximation I feel comfortable saying that you basically don't have to worry about any threats from non-production sources.  So - and here I'm stuck by you again needing to take my word for any way I could continue that sentence."

"Will my audience alt have opinions on your reliability I can take into account?"

"You can ask him."

"Maybe we won't even have anything sensitive to talk about."

"Maybe not."  Journey claps twice.  "Cam, Kib; Kib, Cam."

Someone appears.

"Oh, that hasn't happened in a while."

"...what hasn't, meeting an alt?"

"Ostensibly."

"You wanna give me the introduction to what the subtext is there?"

"Absolutely nothing could possibly bring me greater fucking joy. I was taken prisoner by an evil god who likes to liberally season the god-caliber torture and the tactical amnesia with immersive hallucinations of things more or less bullshit happening."

"And it's been a hot minute since the bullshit looked like a mirror?"

"You look older than me but in essence yes."

"Why do you look that young, what decided where you'd stop?"

"Happened to be this old-looking when anti-aging was invented. I don't remember the present excuse for that persisting."

"You haven't requested that you look any older."

"There you have it."

"How old are you actually?"

"Good question, depends on lots of things only some of which I know."

"Three hundred forty-seven."

"Which might be subjective or objective or a mix depending on the kind of distortion involved, might include my previous incarnation or not, etcetera."

"Wow. What is your long term self-prognosis?"