[hey what the hell is a cow and why does it eat candy, actually

Or: Palamedes thinks that sounds kind of wrong, but he doesn't know enough about cows (or candy, for that matter) to dispute it. He says,]

Huh! [and then,] Sure, if you say so. I've never seen a cow in my life. Honestly, I'm not sure they're still around.

[How could any farm-raised animal live on half the planets in the Empire, after all, except in very strict lab conditions? Palamedes has never bothered to find out, but if he learned tomorrow that all Imperial food never contained a single cell of real meat, he wouldn't be surprised.

You know, speaking of things that make him sound like he's walked out of a sci-fi novel, a concept that makes him laugh.]

I am an archivist, what else would I care about preserving these things for? [A gesture, at the statue. He'll have to learn about stone and marble preservation real quick, huh...] And I imagine they had constructs put the structure down first and pumped the breathable air in afterwards. I don't know; I was born a couple millennia after the founding. Don't you know what a spaceship is?

[This last part he throws in for the sci-fi novel factor, a little hook... he's been to space, wowie...]