Stephen takes another puff of elfroot and then does a thing he almost never does: he reaches out with his spare hand to lay it over hers, a grandiose gesture.

He keeps his expression straight-faced, so serious that it actually circles back around to shit-eating again, as he says with all somber gravitas: “Cosima Niehaus, with all my heart, never doubt this about me: I am always going to want to hear an objectively ridiculous counterexample involving weird clone shit.”