"If it's all good I can just pick something." She looks over the menu and selects something vegetarian.

Guy orders "The eighth item on the menu, whatever that is."

"I want to ask you what your Earth is like, but you've been here for... less than a day, and I suspect you don't know enough about what it's like here yet to identify most of the differences."

"That's probably true but I can answer specific questions. I just can't answer question comparing the two. If you want that you'll need to wait."

"Does your Earth have... the cold war? the protestant reformation? valentine's day? magic? I guess you wouldn't know about the source wall if you did have it... geese?"

"The source wall? I think we have everything else except magic but I don't even know what the source wall would mean."

"I've never been, but apparently, at the edge of the universe there is a wall made out of the petrified bodies of dead gods. And people say that on the other side is the Source, which created the universe. A lot of people have some kind of Source-based religious beliefs, although it's not as much of a big deal here on Earth. We're not completely cut off from the rest of the universe, but contact is limited, and it wasn't public knowledge until a couple of decades ago."

"I don't know if my old universe had an edge. People talked about the edge of the observable universe but it didn't sound like they were talking about a physical thing. I'm not sure how you would build a wall out of dead gods either."

"There are probably plenty of people who know more about it than I do, but it's mostly a mystery. But the kind of mystery that's too big to ignore, so people come up with a lot of thing to try to explain it."

"Anyways, uh, I'm curious what you were doing before you took a transdimensional trip in your sleep. I think you said something about going to school in Connecticut?"

Alright she'll let that drop. "I was studying to be a psychologist. I've always been really interested in understanding people and I also wanted, still want, to make people's lives better. It seemed like a good fit."

"Were you planning on an academic or clinical career? I suppose it's moot now."

"Oh definitely clinical. Sorry to change the topic but you asked earlier if we had Magic on my world... what do you mean by that? We had things people called divine miracles but people seemed to debate if they were real miracles or not. There were also people who said they could predict the future or talk to ghosts or curse people but I don't know if any of that was real. Is that the kind of thing you mean?"

"So, not only do I know very little about this personally, but a lot of magicians like to stay somewhat mysterious and secretive, so there are a lot of poorly-substantiated rumors about it. But magic is a real thing, it can have very visible, hard-to-fake effects on the world, and I don't know if there are any real limits to what it can do. There might be people who really can predict the future or talk to ghosts, but there are also plenty of frauds. Oh, and the really weird thing is that it doesn't function in most of the universe. Earth is one of only a few planets that has magic at all."

"Interesting, the thing about it not working most places is very weird. But I expect there's a reason. What other kinds of people with unusual abilities are there?"

"There are aliens, people who use alien technology, people who developed their own technological marvel which they can't or won't reproduce widely, people who were involved in a freak accident that somehow gave them powers, a lot of people who I have no idea how they got their powers, and probably more stuff I'm forgetting."

"That's a lot of different ways for people to gain extraordinary abilities. Do you run into people with powers often? I'm not sure what you do with your ring."

"I'm a Green Lantern, which is sort of like being a space cop. But cooler. There are three of us in this sector, responsible for keeping it safe, upholding certain interstellar treaties, apprehending criminals, that kind of thing. That does sometimes involve fighting supervillains."

"Is there some interstellar code of laws you follow for determining who counts as a criminal or do you just go by local law?"

"Um, honestly, it's pretty complicated and I don't know all the details. There's not really a uniform interstellar code of laws, but the corps does have rules of engagement, which sometimes involve following local law. Most of the time it's pretty clear cut, like if a supervillain is attacking people or the Guardians have issued a warrant for someone's arrest, and when it's not I usually just ask my ring what the relevant rules are."

"That makes sense, I already find myself asking my ring a lot of questions. It's like Google assistant but slightly pickier and more reliable."

"I don't think we have Google assistant... what year is it in your home dimension?"

"It was 2019, what year is it here?"

"2010. Today is July 5th. I'd ask you what the future holds but I imagine a lot of it won't happen the same way here."

"Yeah history sounds weirdly similar but I wouldn't want to rely on it."

Their food arrives. Both of them get the same thing: an eggplant rotallini with goat cheese, quinoa, and one of those obscure unidentifiable vegetables which is really popular in some foreign country, but never seen in the states.

"Well, I would have offered to trade if you wanted to try some of mine, but."

She laughs, "Oh well. It looks good."