[Clarke's eyebrows rise and fall with the question, a soft pant of a laugh escaping from her lips. It's not amusing, it's just—it's so far removed from this. From this world. Though the people of this world let it go, let it become overpopulated, and they're struggling to preserve humanity—somehow it still lives. It thrives. They're trying to make up for the mistakes that her people would have made. (May have made more quickly, given the arrival of a violent AI much sooner.)]

My world is nothing like this one. ["From here, you'd see nothingness." Those words don't come out.] Most of the cities were gone by time I really got to experience it. I grew up in space, and it wasn't easy there. On the ground, there are hundreds of trees. Life is more nature, and it's managed to find itself again.

[Managed, and then was lost. Failsafes can only go so far. Clarke stands by her choice to lie to new people about the ugliness of her world.]

What was the quarantine for? Or—I guess, do you think things got worse where you were because of it?