"I dunno really," says Aegis, "but I've heard of it before, sometimes my best friend comes here when he dreams."

"I just opened a door, though, I'm not dreaming. What about you?"

"Also a door. Why do you look like a cheap knockoff of my sister-in-law?"

"Ooh! Ooh, have you got a one of me for a sister-in-law? Sue's met some of those here before. One of 'em had wings, stuff like that."

"My sister-in-law does not have wings. She looks like you, only older and more genetically engineered."

"Yeah, only the one of 'em had wings." Aegis sways. "Genetically engineered for what?"

"The haut don't go in for publication, so you'd have to ask her for the details. She's very pretty and has absurdly long hair; I'm given to understand those are standard."

"Define 'mutie'," he says, studying her. "And 'they'."

"I mean, I have a genetic gift," she woggles her fingers dramatically, "that does a thing more complicated than give me two different colored eyes. And 'they' are the various people with the decorations on their uniforms who make up the International Fleet."

"What planet, what year, and what calendar?"

"Eros is an asteroid, 2120, Gregorian."

"Sol system, though?"

"Yeah. What about you? And what's your name? Call me Aegis."

"Mark," he says. "I decline to name my current location, but I was born on Jackson's Whole in 2979 and grew up mostly on Earth after that, and my family lives on Barrayar."

"Okay, so you're way into space colonization in your world, lightspeed's got to be a bitch or have you got a way around that?"

"Wormholes."

"Oooh, cool."

"If you say so."

"Hey, compared to getting in a ship aimed far enough away meaning you never contact your original civilization again..."

He shrugs. "Sounds downright restful."

"Is anybody saying you can't steer around the wormholes and just plain fly really fast? If that appeals? For some reason?"

"The ships aren't built for it. And I was joking. Mostly."

"Which way around is your me your sister-in-law, anyway? Did you marry her sibling or did she marry yours?"

"My brother's wife."

"Some of me are dating some of Sue. Sue doesn't really look like you could be his brother, though, I don't think."

"Identical brother," he clarifies. "I'm a clone."

"Yeah, Sue doesn't look anything like you, taller, curlier, smilier."

"I'd be taller if it weren't for some unfortunate family history. And I have been known to smile."

"Sure, it's not the same thing as being smiley. Sue's not smiling a ton lately but he's still a smiley person."

"Oh? Why isn't he?"

"Well, I just recently got allowed to move in with him but before that they were keeping him in solitary because he's not showing up to his simulator times."

"What fun."

"You're such a ray of sunshine."

"Aren't I just?"

"So what's your me like besides genetically engineered?"

He shrugs. "The only substantial conversation I've had with her took place while she was tied to a chair."

"Eugh. Why was she tied to a chair?"

"It's a long story."

"I'm not in that much of a hurry to make it to Relativistic Tactics."

"So, the seven-century version, then?"

"If you don't wanna to talk to me, my mes have a room upstairs and I should go write stuff in their notebook," she says. "But I'd rather be able to write stuff about your sister-in-law too."

"...There genuinely is an argument to be made that this story starts seven centuries ago," he clarifies. "If you want everyone's motivations properly explained. But six of those centuries are very easily summarized in a block."

"Go for it then." She balances on one foot idly.

"So. Sometime between 2200 and 2250, humanity invented wormhole jump technology and started colonizing every semi-habitable system in sight. They got a few shiploads of people onto Barrayar, fifty thousand in all, and then a wormhole collapsed, cutting the planet off from the rest of the galaxy. My brother's ancestors had six centuries to lose hold of all the technology they no longer had the infrastructure to maintain and then start building back up from there. Then the system was rediscovered at the end of a different jump route, five jumps away from a planet called Komarr. Komarr's main resource is the number of well-trafficked jump routes that pass through its system; the planet itself is a barren rock without even a breathable atmosphere to its name, although they're working on that."

"Well, that sounds like tremendous political brouhaha waiting to happen."

"You could say that. Komarr neighbours one of the outlying planets of the Cetagandan Empire. The Cetagandans decided that Barrayar looked nice and conquerable, so they bribed the Komarrans to let them take an army through and conquer it. Barrayar fought back. Astonishingly well, for people who started out wielding swords from horseback against invaders with plasma rifles and atomic bombs. It helped that they stole all the advanced weaponry they could get their hands on, of course. Anyway, as soon as they were done throwing out the Cetagandans, they turned around and conquered Komarr. I'm sure you can see why."

"Ayep, pretty obvious strategic move. They failed at Neighbor so they get to be Welcome Mat."

"Right. Well, the man who headed the invasion of Komarr was Aral Vorkosigan, my brother's father. Brilliant strategist, and a planet where everyone lives in sealed domes because they can't breathe the air is a pretty easy target, so he brought it off with almost no casualties... except that some bloodthirsty fuckwit in his chain of command decided to round up two hundred of the most wealthy and influential Komarrans and massacre them, for reasons that are lost to history because when Aral found out he flew into a rage and executed this numbskull on the spot."

"Ah, the military."

"Unfortunately for Aral, the Solstice Massacre ended up attached to his name, because he had a hard time proving that the dead man hadn't acted on his orders. A substantial portion of Komarr therefore hates his guts. One particular Komarran decided to express this hatred via a clone substitution plot. So he created me... the reason I'm so short and funny-looking is because of extensive surgery to make me look exactly like Miles, who suffered some serious prenatal damage in an assassination attempt on his father. Totally unrelated to Komarr, as far as I know; Aral was Regent of Barrayar at the time, so plenty of people wanted him dead for other reasons."

"You have got one hell of a complicated family."

"You can say that again. My childhood was pretty hilarious too. Fail at imitating Miles, get the shit kicked out of me as an incentive to improve; succeed at imitating Miles, get the shit kicked out of me anyway as the closest available proxy for Aral Vorkosigan."

"That doesn't add up to that much incentive as seen from over here, just a whole lot of shit coming and going." She switches to standing on her other foot.

"Most of the difference was in the surrounding rhetoric. Anyway, it was pretty obvious to me that out of my available role models, Miles and his family were vastly more stable and pleasant people than my creator. But there wasn't much I could do about it, because he managed to secure a functional kind of loyalty from me by being so terrifying that I had crippling panic attacks if I tried to substantially disobey him. So when Miles showed up unexpectedly on Earth and Galen decided to take the opportunity to activate me—" He shrugs.

"Does this end badly for Miles?"

"Happily, no. Galen meant it to, but - well, I'll get there. I successfully captured Miles and pulled off the switch, but his wife was on the planet and when she scooped me up as she would her husband I discovered I have a low-key panic reaction to friendly physical contact. It's possible I could've made the save, but it was easier just to capture her too, not to mention that I wasn't enormously keen on impersonating her husband to her in the first place. Then when I went back to the hideout and took Miles aside for a solo interview, I did the same with her, just out of curiosity. Hence why she was tied to a chair. And now I assume you'd like the rest of the story."

"Yes please."

"They were both rescued not long afterward. Galen hauled me off before anyone could track me down, and made me kidnap Miles's cousin Ivan to lure Miles into a poignant final confrontation. That worked as far as it went. His plan fell apart when he handed me a deadly weapon meaning me to shoot Miles, and I shot him instead. The crippling panic attack was very definitely worth it."

"Go you."

"Thanks."

"You keep saying Miles is your brother then referring to his cousin, his father."

"Miles personally claimed that relationship, to my face. None of the rest of them have. I haven't even met most of them."

"Huh. Okay."

"Anyway. Then Miles gave me a large sum of money and I fucked off into the galaxy at large, where I spend my time evading Barrayaran Imperial Security and having emotional breakdowns." He spreads his hands. "Happily ever after."

"More fun than a barrel of monkeys, sure."

"You bet."

"I'm in the IF, in Command School, but the 'school' part collapsed all to hell when they put me an' Sue in charge of the invasion force," she volunteers.

"And who are you invading?"

"Buggers. Insectoid hivemindy aliens. They invaded us first, we're invading back."

"No aliens to speak of where I'm from."

"Lucky you."

"If you say so."

"If I were a huge fan of buggers I wouldn't waste entire fleets of 'em, believe you me."

"Who's to say we'd get the same aliens?"

"Eh, maybe you'd get better aliens. But no aliens is a solid option."

"On the other hand, maybe they'd give the Cetagandans something to do besides periodically fail to conquer somebody."

"You'd think our aliens would have unified humanity, but they sort of did a halfassed version of that instead. Also we copied some of their tech, I dunno if you really want your enemies to have contact with aliens."

He shrugs.

Aegis puts both her feet on the floor and twirls. "What's your sister-in-law's name? What's she do, besides be married to this Miles character?"

"Linyabel Miriat Vorkosigan. Invented a convenient little portable computing device."

"Ooh, fun."