Cosima's about to take the proffered hoof, but before her hand makes it halfway there, the pony freaks out. Her hands shoot up in front of her, palms out and fingers spread in a calm, please, calm gesture, and she furrows her whole face at him. A meta-crisis duplicate? She has no idea what that means. Alien, all right, it's hardly weirder than talking ponies, but Cosima likes to know everything; she's going to be asking about what a meta-crisis duplicate is later.

For now, though, the pony's second request is sufficiently odd that it takes precedence.

'Uh,' she says intelligently, 'ok, right, sure.' It's like when someone asks you what you want for Christmas; even though there's probably a dozen things you want, in that instant, they all flee your brain. So it is now; none of the infinite silly, pointless little lies she could try to tell come to mind. Instead, she says, I'm a regular human being 'I'm a clone.'

Immediately, she claps a hand to her mouth. 'Shit, fuck, dude! How did that--' But Cosima thinks like a scientist, and multiple experiments are easily done here. I'm a vegetarian 'I totally love red meat,' I'm from Munich 'I'm from San Francisco,' The solar system is geocentric, 'The solar system is heliocentric.' None of the lies will come out; it's like the link between commands from her brain and the muscles of speech have been scrambled somehow, and Cosima exhales a long breath.

'Ok, so that's bizarre.'