"I'm sorry to hear it," he says on autopilot, because he's not sure what else to say. He's not exactly satisfied with the state of his world either, but in his world's case it's because of human sin, so it feels kind of hypocritical to complain about. And in his world he could say something about everything being part of God's perfect plan and everyone except him would find it comforting, and presumably God rules over her world and all the others, but delivering fake reassurances to someone from a potentially very different culture sounds like a dumb plan.

"I mean, is yours?"

"No, it really isn't. Did humans Fall, in your world? We did."

"...Fall, like, the story of Adam and Eve and the apple?"

"Yes, that." Actually, it belatedly occurs to him that this should have been more obvious, because she's wearing clothes and Adam and Eve were naked. But maybe there's a universe where humanity didn't Fall and they still wear clothes for other reasons; clothes are pretty useful, after all.

"Yeah that didn't...actually...happen...people are just like that on their own."

"Wait, so people in your world were created already fallen? That probably has fascinating implications for your salvation but I suck at theology so I have no idea what they are."

"People in my world evolved, and then God panicked."

"Sorry, what does 'evolved' mean?"

"Okay, so you know how people will breed livestock so that the healthiest, most productive animals have the most children so that the next generation is better at what humans want them for?"

"Yeah, I've heard of that." He even knows that it has to do with minor variations in their DNA, but attempts to find genetic effects of the Fall haven't turned up anything conclusive, if only because they don't have gene samples from Adam or Eve.

"So, this happens in nature, too, only instead of 'whatever traits humans want' it's 'whatever traits lead to surviving long enough to have more surviving babies than the competition.' And over time this can lead to colossally staggering changes. And when an animal hits on a strategy of being smarter than the competition, eventually you can get people. And then God freaks out and invents immortal souls because people ceasing to exist is an awful concept They've never encountered before."

"Huh. My world's God is omniscient, so we had immortal souls from the start . . . How long does that sort of change from not-people to people take, though? Even changing one percent of the DNA would take, I don't know, tens of thousands of years? More?"

"Enh, there's omniscience and there's omniscience...knowing how everything is now doesn't necessarily lead to drawing all the conclusions you would have if you had more experience. Being literally the first person to exist causes mistakes and all that. Anyway, I don't know about percentages, but in species with especially short generations you can get visible speciation within a human lifetime, like, lots of geneticists like using fruit flies but finches are also a good example."

"Uh, I didn't mean any disrespect to your world's God or anything, sorry. It's probably the same God ruling over all the universes anyway, and He decided to do humans differently in different ones for some reason. And yeah, I've heard of speciation. Are you saying if you keep going you could get two kinds of finch or whatever that are as different as humans and apes?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely! I mean, have done, we have lots of kinds of finches. Anyway, they're probably different, and I don't mind the disrespect. I disrespect God all the time! For example, while being the first person ever and having to figure out ethics from scratch is a great excuse, the entire Old Testament is a giant series of fuckups!"

Bruce has no idea what to do with that statement, largely because he agrees with it. "Uh. I, uh. That's  blasphemy?" He looks around nervously. Neither of them seems to have spontaneously combusted or come down with hideous boils, and there aren't suddenly any bears in the room, or anything, so that's nice.

"Enh. I love God a lot. You do your loved ones no favors by pretending their fuckups aren't."

"Maybe God is different in different universes, then. Our Bible says God is perfect."

"Well, your Bible could be wrong," she points out.

Gaaaah she's probably a demon and whether she is or not this is not something he wanted to be talking about today. "Uh? No? It's literally the direct word of God? Say, about that evolution thing, do you know what's the farthest they've gotten a species to change from its original form? I think in my world it's dogs but I would have to look it up to be sure."

"And still remain the same species? Man, I dunno, I'm not a biologist. Probably depends on how you define species anyway. Dogs are weird, you have little yappy dogs and great big huskies that are practically still wolves and you've got greyhounds with their big barreled chests and tiny little waists, it's crazy. Lots of things in nature are crazy, though, not that dogs' craziness isn't entirely humanity's fault. Do you now how many different morphologies there are of oak trees, it's a lot. Anyway, the Bible comes from God but humans wrote it down and then translated it a bajillion times and as anyone who's ever played a game of Telephone can tell you just because the person at the beginning of the chain knows what they're talking about that doesn't mean the end result is infallible."

Bruce doesn't see why God would let anyone mess up the Bible, but he knows from Greek and Hebrew classes in school that translation is hard, and if God had reasons to confuse humans' languages at Babel then He might have had reasons to confuse the Bible too. Maybe if the Bible made too much sense humans would try to rely on it completely and never pray for guidance, or something. He shouldn't speculate.

"Yeah, dogs are weird, it's pretty awesome how many kinds there are. Um, if humans evolved in your world, did you evolve in the Garden of Eden or were you already barred from it?"

"The Garden didn't literally happen, the Bible has a lot of metaphors."

"Something that actually happened in my world getting used as a metaphor in your world's Bible probably means something really interesting, but I have no idea what."