"Well, either I'm trying to get something out of them, or I'm moved to comment on something for genuine reasons. First case, I am deliberately trying to be as unmemorable as I possibly can, and it works fine. Second case, I rarely get beyond five sentences exchanged before saying something that makes someone uncomfortable. Sometimes I don't get past one. It's rather discouraging."

"Okay, and what things are you saying that make people uncomfortable, I assume you're bright enough to avoid the desperately obvious pitfalls like bringing up cannibalism on the very first meeting, you need rapport to discuss cannibalism."

"Am I, though? I have an extensive source of social aptitude available to borrow, but my own understanding demonstrably falls short."

"I... don't really know the difference."

"If I felt like it, I could walk around as Miles and charm people every bit as much as Miles does. But when I stopped, I would still be the sort of person who wonders if he can order a glass of human blood at a bar. Miles does not have to deal with being that sort of person; I can't generate advice from him on the subject. I can learn not to talk about cannibalism, and learn not to laugh at anything that involves people getting hurt, and learn to lie creatively and innocuously every time my childhood comes up, and not to make any jokes about that either, and individually discover all the hundreds of things people aren't supposed to notice about each other or talk about if they do, and then move on to another planet and do half of that part over again because of the differences in cultural norms, and at the end of that I am just about capable of saying one nice thing to a stranger and then walking away before I do anything to make them regret meeting me. Most of the time."

"Do you have," Linya wonders, "a model of why Miles does the various charming things that he does?"

"They are the obvious thing to do, if you're Miles. Some of it is subject to analysis, some is raw intuition only accessible when I am immersed in the role, and some is the bare fact that he has a more palatable personality than I do."

"Thanks, I think," says Miles.

"What I'm getting at is that most of the basics of social acceptability - although not anywhere near all of it, admittedly - has logical reasons of some sort behind it, and since you have access to a socially acceptable behavior set it might be reverse-engineered, but maybe not."

"If I were to boil it down... I have trouble talking to people without horrifying them because there is almost nothing about me that's not horrifying. Pretending to be someone else - on whatever level - solves the problem, but at a very real cost. And it doesn't get me any closer to having what I would call an actual friend. So there's your answer to why it's meaningless to ask if I prioritize friendship, I guess."

"I don't mean that you should pretend to be Miles. I very much prefer if you do not pretend to be Miles. But people have entire conversations about things other than themselves all the time, and if you could figure out how to do that without scaring them away you might develop enough rapport to bring up cannibalism or whatever else is on your mind. Since most of the time you don't find a door to a magic bar with any of us in it and your availability of people informed about your horrifying childhood are thin on the ground."

"...Miles? Help?"

"That's... kind of a broad request," Miles says cautiously, trying not to openly wince at the lost and vulnerable look on Mark's face. "Do you mean I should try to figure out what you meant that Linya isn't getting and then explain it because you don't think you can?"

He nods gratefully.

"Yes. And not recently, no. Thanks for the reminder," he says dryly.

"I usually fall back on compliments. In normal social situations, I mean, with normal people."

"Yes," says Mark. "I did figure that one out. The 'drop one nice comment and run' strategy is effective as far as it goes."

"If you run it doesn't really get you anywhere. I'd suggest that you need to get laid, but..."

"It gets me to having had a small positive effect on someone. But do go on about how I need to get laid."

"...What," says Miles.

"NOTHING," squeaks Ivan.