It makes sense to Ned that superior technology, without understanding, would seem like sorcery to the people Wallie is talking about. When the people who are keeping them here changed them into monsters, when they interfered with people like Elizabeth's powers so that she couldn't escape, it seemed like magic, to him and to others. But he believes it is only because they lack the knowledge and technology to understand how the scientists are accomplishing it. He thinks about that term, 'the scientists', that he uses sometime to mean whoever is keeping them captive. He could as easily substitute in 'sorcerers' or 'gods' and mean much the same.

Interesting the way Wallie says he couldn't have killed the sorcerers. Does he mean that he lacked the skills, or that he morally would never do such a thing? Ned isn't really sure. Still, he feels a bit easier for it. He knows killers, here. Is one, himself. But it's nonetheless reassuring to him that Wallie wanted peace, made peace instead. When he comes to the end of his story Ned looks up to give him a wry, lopsided smile.

"None of us do."

Whatever force had brought him here was stronger, then, than whatever protection he might have been given by the grateful gods and inhabitants of, as he called it, the World. It doesn't surprise Ned. They can pull in people from other universes, from across time. If they wanted someone they took them, no matter what.

"We've all had our lives disrupted," Ned continues, but he adds, "though I suppose some of us had less to leave behind." Ned thinks that he must miss his wife, and the world where he played such an instrumental role to political stability. It was a bit different for an unattached piemaker.