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Jim is . . . more or less himself today. He could easily drop into character if necessary, but he's recognizable enough to anyone who knows him.

In front of him on his table is a deceptively dated-looking laptop, with a small box of chocolates perched on top of it.

He might be waiting for someone. There's no guarantee, but Milliways tends to be good about these sorts of things.

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She smiles again, a little wryly.

"Not a day's gone by since I met that girl where I haven't felt somewhat out of my depth. I'm starting to worry that for once in her life she might be out of hers."

"Milliways has a way of looking after its patrons," Jim says, "especially the younger ones. Mother hen tendencies. It has to be slightly alive with a sense of responsibility, otherwise the entire system would have devolved into chaos a long time ago. I don't think it would allowed Matilda to meet me if I were a danger to her, and it certainly wouldn't have allowed her to bring me back here.

"I do think there are options she's going to want to explore when she's older that will be considerably easier without her father's record following her every move. The sooner she learns secure methods for dealing with that, the better."

Jenny's smile widens briefly. She glances at the ceiling, in the direction of Matilda's room.

"I think you're right," she says.

"I've learned a lot from her, but I think one of the most important things is this: you don't try to control a child like that. You teach her everything you can and then get out of her way. So just... try not to get her into any trouble she can't get out of, all right?"

"I won't," he promises.

Unless he happens to overestimate her capacity for getting out of trouble, but he thinks that vastly unlikely.

"I don't know why I believe you," says Jenny, "but I do."

She gets to her feet.

"I'll go tell Matilda we're done being grown-ups and you two can get on with the real work."

Jim does not mention the fact that he's extremely good at making people believe him, especially when he knows them better than they realize. Which he always does.

He just happens to be a bit more sincere than usual in this case.

"All right," he says with a laugh.

Jenny looks back at him and smiles again just before she steps out into the hall.

Very shortly afterward, Matilda comes bounding down the stairs and into the living room.

"We can do whatever we want," she reports. "I love Jenny."

That would be a dangerous thing to tell Jim Moriarty if it weren't for the fact that he does whatever he wants anyway.

"She doesn't give herself enough credit," he remarks. It's an unusual quality; most people, in his estimation, give themselves too much credit by far.

"I know," says Matilda.

(They can do whatever they want. The plural was an integral part of it. Jenny trusts Matilda to be as cautious and sensible as circumstances require.)

"Ready to get to work, then?" he asks cheerfully.

"Yep," she says just as cheerfully, settling onto the couch and beckoning to her laptop, which flies obediently across the room and into her arms.

He watches this display with interest.

"In the book," he says thoughtfully, "you lose the telekinesis once you start doing work that challenges you properly. I wonder what the difference is here."

Is it scientifically based? Or is Matilda's world one of those with magic hidden under a cloak of normalcy, accessible only to some?

"I thought that part was really silly," she says. "Why wouldn't I want to go through life as a miracle-worker? It's so useful! I like this way better."

"Of course you do."

Who wouldn't?

She grins.

"I think that writer guy just didn't think it through."

"They do get things wrong sometimes." Jim speaks from experience.

(A professor? Teaching the simplest of concepts to ordinary people who will never grasp them? He hardly thinks so.)

"I like you a lot better than I liked the book version of you," she offers. "He was kind of cool but you're way better."

He grins at her.

"I'm more fun."

Matilda nods in enthusiastic agreement. "And nicer," she says. "I bet I couldn't have got away with hugging him. I bet he wouldn't have done anything I'd want to hug him for."

"I don't think he'd know how."

Tragically underwritten as he was. Maybe he was only a professor because he was too dry to charm his way into a more interesting fake career.

She giggles. "Probably not."

He smiles, reaching over to turn the laptop on.

"This is going to be a bit experimental at first," he cautions. "I've never actually tried hacking with alternate universe technology from a decade and a half in the future before. There may be some differences in the technology here, but I'm sure we'll manage."

Jim adapts well.

"I don't know a whole lot about how computers work," she admits. "But I bet we can figure it out."

"You'll pick it up quickly enough," he says. "Would you like a walkthrough, or would you rather work it out for yourself?"

The first way is more efficient; the second is more fun.

"Walkthrough's faster," Matilda decides.

And she likes learning from people, anyway, if they're people she likes. Possibly because it's so rare these days that anyone has anything to teach her.