When Matthias noticed Ayanna approaching the table, he set the cake pop down and smiled. She expected bright veneers, but his teeth were the most normal thing about him. A normal person’s idea of nice teeth. They shook hands, and Ayanna introduced herself, recorded herself asking if it was fine if she recorded him and promised that this interview wasn’t going to be published, but would be used only for research. He was also more than welcome to request that his responses be anonymized. She set the extra cappuccino in front of him, but Matthias ignored it.

Up close, his eyes were very blue. One of Ayanna’s least popular bits was that blue eyes were overrated. It had gotten her booed on and off for two hours on a long bus ride home from a high school soccer match. Blue eyes were for zombies, wolves, and weird fish that looked like they had men’s souls stuck inside them. Blue eyes were invented by the sunglasses industry to keep people squinting; no one throughout time had them naturally, a time-traveling executive for Oakley Incorporated had genetically modified ancient people to have light-colored eyes to sell more sunglasses, then destroyed his time machine and all time machines when he returned to the future. Blue-eye propaganda had worked so well that you could stick a pair in the eyes of someone who had a terrible personality and looked like they were actively dying from a medieval plague, and still 50 percent of people would ask, “Is he seeing anyone?” Ayanna smiled at him as she sat, while wondering how much people bought into his “healing” because his eyes were blue.

“You’ve been through the door,” he said.

Ayanna nodded, a little annoyed.

“My dad was an Air Force officer, and my mom is German,” Matthias said. “We grew up in the Church of ParadiesTur. You’re Pathsong, right? No Jesus, just doors.”

“That’s not quite right. We didn’t worship the doors or treat them like God. We believed God made the universe and thus the doors, but we were concerned more about believing in a creator who wanted his people to be curious and brave.”

“Are you implying that most Christian faiths aren’t that way?”

Ayanna surprised herself by laughing. “Why are you grilling me?”

“I could tell by the look on your face walking up—you don’t believe me at all. You’re not here for a nice conversation.”

She sipped again. It took all her willpower not to wince. The baristas were listening to a country song, clearly ironically because of the multiple yeehaws they kept doing while heating up different sandwiches.

“What kind of face would have made you trust me?”

Finally, he relaxed. Matthias put his hands up in the air, waved them around like he was clearing smoke. “Okay, maybe I’ve just come in defensive.”