Ulp, Autor thinks. Maybe it would have been better to ask Mia instead? No, she attends the bar, obviously.

"I know I've said this before," he says, fidgeting, "but my condolences for your loss."

There's always a silence after that. Autor has to take a moment to rein in his horror and rearrange his thoughts.

"Given your observations, I was wondering, then, if you might entertain a theoretical question for me?" he says, shrugging. "Let's say you might have opened a trade route with one city--and really, the terms on that are so incredibly vague--and then you sort of, um"--and here he stumbles over his tongue a bit--"went sight-seeing in another one, as if you had enough resources to support both?"