[ He notes the pause, as well as the fractional formality of using his rank now-- maybe it's unkind of him, pushing against Miles's assertion that this isn't real, but he's never one to choose comfort over practicality. Hopefully the guy doesn't just, you know, flip out or something once he decides he's not drunk. ]

Either too many, or not enough. I haven't decided.

[ Seeing them is haunting, but not yet getting a dedicated count on every single person fills him with a tangle of negative emotions. Where are they? Are they absent because they haven't been taken in by whatever large-scale ruse this is, or because they haven't been saved from an event horizon he can't quantify? ]

This, [ he touches the vaguely triangle-shaped badge on his chest, ] is Starfleet. I've seen uniforms I don't recognize with this on them, either from other worlds with the same organization, or from the future. I've seen uniforms I only know from history class. Things I'm not sure my brain would supply if I were dreaming.