Must be nice. Get the itch to get up and go, and you're off. [ that's not the case for anybody, even in the future, where the only way he'd been able to leave harlan's world was to join ctac, become a soldier, make himself useful. what he'd had to do for that, what he'd have to lose — none of it had been easy.

but then those words also make him think of quell, of her reasons for doing all that she did. the very reasons that stacks and sleeves came to exist in his world in the first place —

i wanted to be an explorer. see other worlds with my own eyes, but ... one life isn't enough time to see the stars, so ...

he briefly sees her face in his mind again, almost like she's standing in the room with them, but he blinks that image away when a mug of tea is set in front of him and he's asked a plenty strange question. ]

What? [ he raises his eyes to him, one brow tilted up curiously. ] Course I'm human. It's stack technology. [ he lifts a hand, giving a vague wriggle of his finger to the back of his neck. he's already getting used to having to explain this part around the station. ] Discs get placed in the base of the skull, download human consciousness, and you can pretty much put it into any body. Same soul, different face.