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in Milliways

Rich Brook enjoys filming for The Storyteller. He honestly does. It may not be the role of a lifetime, but he could do worse than to spend the day reading fairy tales to kids.

He's always liked fairy tales.

Still, when Milliways pops up during a break in filming, he doesn't turn it down. He glances back over his shoulder first; then, when no one else seems to see anything amiss, he goes in.

At the Bar, he asks for a club soda with lime. He could have something stronger if he liked - with time stopped at home, no one would be the wiser - but it seems wrong for the Storyteller to drink while he's technically on duty.

[OOC: For clarity, Jim is in character as Rich, and will be making a much stronger effort to remain in character than he usually does in Milliways. And yes, he really is coming in from filming. DVDs don't make themselves.]

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He grimaces.

"Ugh, me too. I'd have been afraid it might actually do damage."

He was a very conscientious child.

"I'd be more afraid of the telling off." Not from the school, but from his dad. "Even if I didn't break anything, I'd get an earful for trying it."

He doesn't see why, as he'd consider not breaking anything a success, if not the entire point of the endeavor. He nods anyway, though, because some parents are just like that.

Not his. He's got pretty laidback ones. But some.

It's an awkward subject, so Martin decides to change it. A bit awkwardly.

"So, are you, er, still in Ireland, or...?"

He shakes his head.

"No, I've been in London for a while now. I miss home, but there's more work here. I'm not really in a position to be picky."

Martin definitely knows how that goes. You go where the work is.

"I was just down in Cornwall today. I had a job down there, and it's a bit of a journey from Fitton."

He cringes. At least he's able to charge mileage on big jobs like that, or else he wouldn't make any money at all.

Rich winces sympathetically.

"Yeah, that's quite a haul. Do you get to charge extra for that?"

Because by now he's worked out Martin's actual job. No more embarrassing misunderstandings.

He hopes.

"I charge for the mileage," Martin says. "Well, technically, I charge by the litre. It's more accurate that way, and the formula to work it out is pretty much the same as the mileage."

"Oh," he says. "Well, that's good. Especially with the price of petrol these days."

He has a hard time imagining that not being an issue in every universe.

"I'd go out of business if I didn't charge for it." He has no doubt about it.

Rich - nods, very seriously, like he knows the first thing about petrol-price-based business decisions.

Martin has problems with silences, and all of them are awkward, as far as he's concerned. He feels rather compelled to try to fill this one, but he barely knows Rich, and doesn't really know which topic to settle on.

"So, do you, uhm... Do you do anything else, besides the, er, Storyteller thing?"

"Well, there is the performance art thing."

He sips his drink, which is more melted ice than club soda by now, and considers.

"I'm not meant to talk much about it, but I don't suppose it matters here, we're probably not from the same world."

Because really, what would the odds of that be?

"Oh. Well, if you're not supposed to talk about it, I wouldn't want to get you into trouble."

Even though they're probably not from the same world. Usually that's only the case if you run into someone that you already know.

Right?

(They're all but guaranteed to be from the same world now, given Milliways's sense of humor. Jim can work with that.)

"Well. Just promise not to tell?" he asks. "Just in case?"

He is sort of dying to talk about it. He doesn't really get many opportunities to.

And that's all Martin needs, on top of everything else. To start seeing a look-alike of himself showing up in the papers.

Oh well.

"I don't know many people I'd be able to tell it to anyway."

Between Icarus Removals and MJN, Martin doesn't have many friends. And the ones he does have are, well...

That's good enough for Rich. It's not like a just a few random people could ruin the whole thing once they've really got it going, anyway.

He explains about how he got the job, the meetings with Mr Holmes and so on, and how the story escalates a bit at a time.

"The hard part right now is getting all the permissions," he finishes. A fake break-in at the Tower is tricky to set up. Who knew? "We're all sort of on hold while he works it out so I don't get arrested for real."

"Wow," says Martin, genuinely impressed. "I didn't know the police and stuff would actually let people do that sort of thing. It seems a bit like the thing they'd want not to happen."

"I think he's bribing a lot of people," Rich admits. "He doesn't, um, really encourage questions about that. But all the stuff with the pretend bombings worked out fine, so I don't worry about it much. The worst thing that happens with this is someone tries a copycat theft and gets caught because it's not actually possible."

Really, a few lines of computer code? Even Rich knows better than that.

"Wait, bombings?" That sounds a bit...

"He's not playing around, is he?"

He vaguely seems to recall a few explosions being on the news or something, but that was over a year ago. He's probably mistaken and just confusing them for gas leaks or something.

"It was all very controlled," Rich assures him. "No one actually got hurt. There was one woman I supposedly blew up, but she was an actress. I worked with her a few years ago, on an independent film. It's all fake."

He's not talked to her since, but it's not exactly like they run in the same social circles. He didn't see much of her in the gap between the film and their being hired by Mr Holmes, either.

"Oh, well. That's good. I guess as long as no-one's actually getting hurt, and the police know what you're up to."

He's not even going to begin to mention how unwise it still all sounds. Lord knows Martin's taken a few foolish jobs just for the money.

Rich makes a rueful face.

"I know. I know how it all sounds. There are bits I'm not really that thrilled about, but I need the work. Acting is incredibly competitive, I can't afford to be picky."

He might have thought twice if he'd got the Storyteller job first, but - well, that's just not how it worked out.

"No, I—I get that," Martin says. "I really do. You have to take what you can get."

There he goes, being all honest again.

"Of course," Rich says. "I don't have to explain to you, do I? You must have to decide about, er, jobs in bad parts of town, that sort of thing."

Removals jobs. Of the legitimate sort. Being as that's what Martin does, as opposed to anything else that may have been inadvertently implied.

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