Eighteen-nineties, in California, United States. [He shakes his head.] I was on Earth a hundred years after that, which of course is nothin' for us - a little over a vorn - but for brief-lived humans, that's a really long time. An' even then, most of their technology couldn't have fully pulled off a mech like The Spine.

I think it also has ta do with this stuff he says is called Blue Matter that's in his . . . well, what I'd call a laser core. It's not the same thing, but it's the closest equivalent I can think of.

[He nods.] Yeah, I think he's been shy about it before now, askin' for help, but what happened shook him up pretty badly. An' I'll make a point of checkin' on him regularly.