"Hmm... it's moderately agonizing to be unable to express myself genuinely without horrifying people," he says. "This is probably the longest friendly conversation I've had while not actively pretending to be someone I'm not since... well, since I had Miles tied to a chair."

"I don't feel especially horrified."

"You are easier to talk to than most people I encounter."

"That's not actually a compliment I am regularly paid."

"I have breathtakingly low standards. The fact that I haven't managed to drive you to storm off in disgust just about covers it."

"You don't seem to be trying to drive me off, at least not very hard."

"I don't try. It happens anyway. It happens when I try not to."

"Walk me through a scenario here?"

"Hmm... I sit near a stranger on the tubeway. I mention that I liked the book he is reading. He indicates it's an old favourite of his and asks what my favourite part was. I recognize that mentioning the torture scene would probably be a bad idea, so I say it was the final battle. He asks why. I say triumphing over the forces of darkness is always more fun when it involves setting most of a continent on fire. He looks deeply uncomfortable. I find another seat."

"Okay, I begin to see the scope of the problem - although that sort of conversation could go over it's not really a safe tack."

"Yes," he says. "It is abundantly clear to me that nothing I fucking try is a safe tack, except for the classic standby of 'say one genuinely nice thing and then leave before I can fuck it up'."

"In the example you gave probably the safe thing is 'don't answer, find out what the other person's favorite part was instead' - but then it just branches further from there so that kind of thing is very short term - and I'm not actually remotely qualified to teach remedial social skills, sorry."

"It's fine. I'm sure I'll survive."

"...I might," he acknowledges.

"Okay, that might be low-hanging fruit on not making people profoundly uncomfortable."

"I'm not sure that fruit hangs as low as it appears to."

"You'd know better than I would, but: the smile's kinda creepy, dude."

"I acknowledge the point."

"That smile that you're doing right now is wry and not creepy, for reference."

"Good to know."

"Aaaaand that one is sort of borderline, I am not creeped but I might be creeped if you were talking about continental pyromania."

Mark cracks up.

"And there we have a nice friendly smile, suitable for appreciating someone's witty comment on the weather."

"Are you going to rate all of my smiles from now on?"