Part of that sounded like flattery, which is the part he deliberately ignores, not least because it slices at him somewhere inside—something in the phrasing, the way they're situated—

"It... yes. Yes and no. The fundamentals are the same, it's just... the complexity of it. The technology's function is unfamiliar, let alone what's inside. And some of these materials, I've never encountered. For example, this plastic," he says, and takes one hand off the cup to lift a wire connector. (It looks a little like the cap for a small marker.) "We don't have this. And some of these wires are made of an alloy I cannot identify. I have to take it on faith that they will behave predictably unless the manual tells me otherwise."

And it's hard to work with a glove. Hard to work like normal when his muscle memory is still adjusting for the strange fingers inside that glove. Can it even be called muscle? Bone? What is he now? He can't even practice without it in case someone like Grace comes along and sees—