Oh, so he had heard him correctly. World War I. Raskolnikov’s pretty sure that he can guess at what that means, and it’s an incredibly unpleasant thought. And the other man had said that there had been two of them. Two! How many lives would two world wars take? How many people would die? He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out, so he closes it again. His head spins, and he puts a hand on the table for balance. He wants to lie down and not be here in this world with its two world wars.

With a valiant effort, because the other man is still watching him, he manages to force out, “ah. I see.” And then, in a desperate attempt to explain, he adds, “I am…not from around here. Where I am from, we did not, ah, have world wars.”

Because that’s better than saying I travelled in time, right?