1 - Video

[barewicked]

[Video clicks on, to reveal a skinny young man in his mid twenties. His eyes are wide and darting, and he wears an expression of deep concentration, right up until he realises he's broadcasting. Then, he becomes animated:]

Yo! I got some words for your Admiral here! I know I'm not dead, and I would remember if I'd been nicked, so you got no right hauling me in, man, no right!

[He keeps glancing off screen as he says this, as if he's expecting someone to enter his cabin at any time.]

Look, this isn't even my yard, all right? I was staying with a mate - a couple of mates, actually - so you've just gone and jacked their place out from under them, haven't you? Nicked right off with it and stuck it on your stupid boat! So where are they going to live, eh? You just made two innocent people homeless, mate, so who's the villain now?

[He puts one hand on his hip, apparently waiting for an answer. He manages to go about thirty seconds before giving an unhappy huff and putting his hand on his stomach.]

Bare starving as well. It's a fucking joke, this is.

Comments

[barewicked]

Well, it's a big ship, isn't it? I'm sure I can find someone who won't mind me crashing on his couch, yeah?

[Oh, did Zach say his couch? He meant their couch. Whoever the person he finds may be. Not that he's making designs on anyone, or anything like that. He nods cheerfully at the list of crimes though.]

Load of shit, getting locked up for stuff as small as that. It's not like anyone's hurting anyone by carrying drugs or passing shit on. They should just give you, like, community service, shouldn't they? [He says this like he's not even sure that they should do that much. Everything Lloyd has listed is just the harmless kind of shit you did to get bye.]

[babyfacedkiller]

I bet you could, but I'd be careful about who you spend the night with. We got all sorts here, some real heavy hitters. Bad guys from fuckin' comic books, if you can believe it. So don't go trusting just anybody -- you don't want to wake up with chunks of you missing.

[It doesn't really occur to him to offer his own room to crash in. They've only just met and Lloyd's not in the habit of lending out his surprisingly awesome couch to strangers, no matter how much effort they invest into disguising their body odor.]

Community service, Christ. [He gives a little chuckle.] That's what they give the movie stars who run over their neighbor's pooch. Guys like you and me, we're a hell lot less likely to get just a slap on the wrist, you know?

[He feels comfortable enough slapping them with the same label, since weed-smoking, former ward-of-the-state Zach reminds him a hell lot of the kind of guys he used to hang out with, the only real difference being the accent and the occasional weird slang.]

[barewicked]

[Zach nods, his eyes still darting around the corridor ahead, staying attentive to where they're headed.]

Ain't exactly new to hanging around dangerous people, but I guess in London there's more space to run when things go tits up and they're looking for someone to blame for it. [He gives Lloyd a sidelong glance, and a lopsided grin.] So yeah, trust no one. Advice for life, that is, my friend.

[Zach is completely full of shit, of course. He decided within about twenty minutes of meeting Lloyd, that he was going to trust and affectionately exploit the guy, and take whatever else comes, as it comes.]

Man, doing serious time for that kind of shit is purely an American thing. All that mega-prison, lock up the whole population bullshit, innit? [Zach clearly isn't offended by being lumped in with Lloyd as a petty criminal. It seems legit.] Nah, they can't afford that shit in England. They'd rather have the free labour out of you.

[babyfacedkiller]

No kidding? I didn't know that. Maybe I should've been born British. Would've made my life a lot fuckin' easier, even with the funky accent.

[Of course, there's no guarantee he wouldn't have wandered across a British version of Poke Freeman, gotten dragged on a British version of a robbery-killspree and eventually met up with a British version of Randall Flagg. It's an unfortunate idea that brings up a weird picture of Mick Jagger in an all-denim outfit, but also a giant furry hat, like those palace guards wear.

Maybe Lloyd's better off American, after all.]

Here we got the library, if you're into that sort of thing. [He says it in a pretty offhanded sort of way, briefly interrupting their conversation to play tour guide. He doesn't wait to hear if Zach is into that sort of thing, though Lloyd would sure be surprised if he was.]

In the good old U.S.A we got the best of both worlds. We got locked up and exploited for labor -- I spent two goddam' years on a Nevada workfarm. Not really that far off from the chain gangs you see in the movies, and hotter than hell.

[barewicked]

Oh that is rough, man! Two years?

[It sounds like an impossibly long amount of time to Zach, whose friends mostly get passed between juvenile facility to work release and suspended sentence programs, for periods of seven to nine months at a time.

Two years of working on a farm though? For free? Wow, fuck that shit.]

Couldn't you refuse, like? Or transfer to a proper prison?

[Y'know, the kind where you just lift weights, and slowly tunnel your way out of your cell?]

[babyfacedkiller]

Well there weren't any fucking transfer forms, man, I'll tell you that.

[And if there were, the warden probably had them hidden up his ass or something. He thinks Zach might be overestimating, a little bit, how seriously prisoner complaints are taken, in the U.S. or fucking anywhere.]

Two years go by faster than you think. Except the days where you're so fuckin' bored that time starts to stretch like a lady gymnast.

[He gives Zach a meaningful look.]

I mean those double-jointed ones, like in the circus.

[barewicked]

Doesn't sound so bad when you put it like that...

[Somehow, Lloyd, your comparison between long boring days and hot lady circus contortionists... doesn't make those days sound so boring.]

So, what'd you do when you got out? Or did you not make it back?

[babyfacedkiller]

It is fuckin' bad when all you get from the rubber lady is the rubber. [Lloyd gives Zach a mildly peeved look, unhappy that his comparison, which he thought was pretty fucking inventive, backfired.] Like a skin mag without the skin.

[But he figures he ought to move on from that subject before he gets lost in the wonderful world of metaphors and muddies the waters completely.]

I didn't get here dying of boredom, if that's what you're askin'. [Though it sure seemed like a possibility at the time.] Did the same thing you always do when you get out of the joint. Had a nice McDonald's meal, got drunk and got laid. Then the next day, it was back to business as usual.

[You know, just your typical small-scale drug and guns dealing, and tri-state-killsprees.]

Except the world ended a few weeks later, so maybe not so usual.