I would check how I checked last time to make sure I'm awake, but I don't have my knives, and I don't know if it's reliable. We thought we were awake then, too.

[That the simulation fooled not one but both of them is deeply unsettling. Fooling one person isn't hard. Fooling two, so well pain and fire and explosions felt real? That's an accomplishment, and one with implications.]

Can I help? With your research, I mean, and you looking into things. I don't want to be useless here. But I also don't know how else to assist anyone. [That's uncomfortable, too, this lack of direction, this inability to find a task to work at. How can she help people if she can't even figure out what to do from moment to moment? Li has never been a liability to others and she doesn't want to start now, but it's all so new...]

They might have multiple forms. The Inchoate, the aliens I have a little ancestry from, do. That might be why people can't tell you what they look like. They could be getting different impressions and not know what the 'correct' one is.

[She's grasping at straws and she knows it. This is the closest to having any idea what she's talking about that she's come, so she's offering up scraps in the hopes it'll be helpful.]