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[Well, this would mark the first time this Charles had used his device to actually try to broadcast to the others trapped here with him.

For the most part he's been down in the Vault of Knowledge and yes, he's been down there for days upon days reading.

It is just recently that he's surfaced to get clean, find a little bit of food, though that had not been a priority with him and poke around a bit. Today, his curiosity had taken him out of the old city and off on a bit of a look about.

Translation, he's gotten himself hopelessly lost.

So the video. It clicks on, to show a Charles Xavier who looks a bit bedraggled with a leaf or two in his hair and caught on his sweater but otherwise he seems just perplexed rather than frightened or dismayed. The foliage appears dense around him but there is the definite sound of fresh running water in the background, most likely the Silver River.

He'll keep this short and to the point.]

Ah, I apologize for this, embarrassing really but I rather fear I have gone and gotten myself lost.

Does anyone know if the rivers lead back to the Old City?

[He'd try to get back to the Old City by following your thoughts but he is close enough to the dome that the non distinct hum of the minds within, combined with the din of thoughts coming from the Old City itself, are throwing him off.]

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[The obvious question that no one had actually asked him yet, and the one without a decent answer when one couldn't disclose one's actual nature. Not over the network, like this, anyway.]

Nothing in the particular, and a great many things in the general. Though I do have a bit of expertise in the area of ovis orientalis aries.

[Give him a moment to translate and then look perplexed.]

Sheep?

[Looking just a bit weary, half-anticipating the kind of mocking he received the last time this conversation came up, Lyall nods.]

Yes. Sheep. I had quite a collection of embryos for study, at home.

[Before his Apha ate them all. Ridiculous werewolf.]

[Well, truthfully Charles had studied quite a wide variety of critters in his pursuit of genetic breakthroughs, so he had no room to mock sheep embryos.]

May I ask what you were studying? My own degrees are in genetics, biochemistry and I was in the middle of one in anthropology; I have some experience with the close study of various organisms.

[Well, hey, if the boy's willing to talk shop, Lyall will talk shop. He even looks a bit more animated as he does so.]

Procreative practices and gestational productivity, mostly. I've been working with a couple small herds for a few decades now, and have been attempting to work out increasing their yield. It's one of my more scientific pet projects. I've a couple papers on the subject.

[More than he has on most of his other pet projects, really. Maybe it's that the sheep breeding is approved of a bit more by the hungry werewolf pack.]

[Charles is more than willing to get distracted by shop talk!]

Are you attempting to manipulate certain genetic traits back into your breeding programs? For instance ewes that regularly produce viable twins and triplets?

[Oh the geeking that could occur here.]

Yes, rather.

[Though the term "genetic" is unfamiliar to him, he can at least guess what Charles is after. He has at least read the work of Mendel, then if "genes" are not quite in vogue in his time period.]

Selective breeding is my main methodology, but I have been doing a study of the stillbirths and miscarriages in particuilar to try and determine the causes. Or... I was.

[Back on his own world. Here, he hasn't even gone near the sheep, half-certain he would terrify them by scent alone.]

I keep forgetting the time you said you came from. [He is a bit sheepish ~~no pun intended~~ about that because methods of study he thinks of as old hat were probably not even theory back in Lyall's time]

The cause of such events, baring of course outside factors such as intense maternal stress or disease, usually do wind down to a genetic mishap in the sequencing of DNA.

It is all actually quite fascinating and a field of intense study, particularly in the management of livestock where I come from.

[For a moment, Lyall attempts to parse that, but in the end, he merely looks somewhere between amused and perplexed, and suggests,]

Perhaps when you are safely back in town, you can explain that to me. I imagine you are either speaking of something your Oxford has that mine never did come up with, or else it is something not yet discovered in my time.

[Because he is quite interested. Even if he has been a tad too busy to interest himself in the local herds.]

Oh.

Oh, yes! Of course, I apologize for getting carried away. There have been exciting new developments in so many fields of scientific study but I forgot the new part of that equation.

I would be more than happy to talk to you about what the future holds for fields such as your own, if you would like?

I believe I would like, yes. It might wind up being quite a helpful lesson. I have plans for tonight, but perhaps tomorrow or soon after?

[Tonight was a hunting night, and tomorrow... tomorrow he needs to sleep. Badly.]

Certainly! I do not believe we are in any hurry.

[Which is actually rather depressing if you think about it in terms of escaping this place but Charles is a bit distracted by everything he is learning here.]

No, you're quite right about that. I'm usually about in the early mornings and the evenings, but I'm sure we can set a time whenever you're comfortable.

[Lyall does like things to be neatly scheduled. Order, after all, must be maintained, even on a post-apocalyptic planet in a war-torn town.]

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