"It sounds awful."

"I like Toronto better than Grand Forks in a lot of ways but if I interlibrary loan some books to the latter before my plane lands it's fine. Well, whatever floats your... personality-clade's... boats, I guess. Are there particular best practices anyone participating in your temporary alternate universe guardianship should be aware of?"

"I trust Mr. Vogt to protect me.  What's a clade?"

"It's, uh... the wrong word for this situation actually, it means like, common descent in biology, like how dolphins swim like fish but are in the mammal clade."

"Hm...  Was it a metaphor?  I know what metaphors are."

"No, it was just the wrong word, I'm finding it hard to give myself enough time to think of correct words in my present state."

"Oh.  We call people with the same birthday geminis."

"Xavier doesn't have the same birthday, though, and I meant to include him."

"He counts.  Anyone from my world would call him my gemini."

"Fair enough."

"Quite a coincidence, if true, and if I'm the only one in this world.  Unless the thing pulling people from other worlds is picking and choosing in some way."

"I just landed in the place corresponding near-exactly to my apartment in my Toronto. Is Verona geographically matched to wherever Kennedy showed up?"

"I wasn't in Verona, I was in Rome.  In the city of Tenuis."

"Right, Rome. Rome is probably here as at home a city in Italy these days but the historical empire never reached this continent, I don't recognize Tenuis as a city name, but also I do not know where you in fact initially landed, besides somewhere friendly enough to Canada that you could get a look at a list with Xavier on it."

"It was also in Toronto."

"Kennedy, have you gotten a look at a map? Is Tenuis on the shore of one of the biggest lakes in the world?"

"Ummmm.  The lake is pretty big?  There are bigger ones I think.  I haven't looked at any maps."

"On Earth we're near a group of five really really big lakes. The one Toronto's on, Lake Ontario, is not the biggest one, but the biggest one, Lake Superior, is also in the group."

"They're called the Great Lakes, collectively."

"Oh, like the Magna Lakes?  Verona is next to one of them and Tenuis is on the other side of a different one."

"Sounds plausible that matches, then."

"We can look at a map once we get," he sighs, "somewhere."

"...ah, we're not going back to the house? I guess that... stands to reason."

"My house is extremely compromised, yes."

"Sorry."