"He has reason, it seems like. And how did you end up rescuing him, exactly?"

"Okay, now this is the interesting part, and I'm not completely sure you'll believe it."

"Spit it out, Ivan."

"It involves time travel and I am really not sure how to start!"

"...At the beginning?" suggests Miles. "Before the, um, time travel happened?"

"Right, before that I had a completely ordinary work day, this was a few months ago, I opened the door to the office to leave and there was not a hallway there. Instead: time traveling bar - Mark, help, you are the only other witness."

"I was five years old at the time," says Mark. "I went to sleep just after arriving on Earth and woke up standing in the middle of an empty bar. Ivan walked in soon after, and I went up and was very rude and belligerent at him, and for reasons that elude me he was very patient and kind in return. When it came out that I was your clone, he promised to rescue me. Then I woke up back where I started and forgot it had ever happened, until he made good on his promise - later that same day, from his perspective, a dozen years from mine."

"You were five, what was I going to do, yell at you? Anyway, yes, that, that was a better summary than I could've produced, thank you. Nobody else knows this part, I came up with other excuses to give to Galeni and I think he was very distracted by the involvement of his father and didn't nitpick too closely."

"And you are serious about the time travel and this is not some kind of elaborate joke," says Miles.

"I am not making an elaborate joke. Someone may have played an elaborate joke on me, but it came with an actual adult Mark who remembered the same events at the other end of it, and I don't know how in the world they'd go about pulling it off."

"Well, 'adult'. You're what, seventeen, eighteen?"

"In number of years lived, yes. Other questions may yield other answers."

"You're cryptic and weird. Ivan, have you told him he's cryptic and weird?"

"Not in those exact words."

"'You confuse me.' 'Well that's bizarre.' 'Ooookay then.' 'Say that again more intelligibly?' 'Does time travel at a young age cause that sort of thing?'," recites Mark in flawless imitation.

"...My brother, the impressionist," snorts Miles.

"Obviously it's less effective when he's doing me, but yes."

"Thank God for that. Imagine if he could do it to anybody. Now there's a substitution plot."

Mark cracks up.

"He could just sort of wander around, switching identities when no one was looking."

"Sounds like fun."

"Somebody get this kid a hobby."

"Mostly he reads. And cons my raspberry cookies out of me. He isn't technically confined to the embassy but it's more convenient for everybody that way at least for the time being."

"Hm," says Miles, looking at Mark.

...Mark grins and bounces excitedly.