“Who are you?” Sherlock asked intently.
He laughed. “Benedict, you know who I am.”
“One problem at a time, John. Actor,” he corrected himself. “There are a lot of inequalities here, and the best way to solve them would be to sort them into partitions. Those would be you, me, the place, and the past. Right now it doesn’t matter who I am or where we are. Just tell me who you are so we can sort this out logically.” He said the whole thing quickly, his voice betraying his nervous uncertainty.
The actor-John stared at him, frightened into compliance. “My name is Martin Freeman,” he answered. “I’m an actor. Right now I’m working on two sets, the telly show Sherlock and the film The Hobbit. I won a BAFTA for being John, and I’m a crap typist.”
“Hello, Martin,” Sherlock said, still speaking quickly. “My name is Sherlock Holmes, the only consulting detective in the world. Some people would say I’ve a few screws loose, but I’d say those people have such a loose grasp on what a screw may be or what function it might serve in the human mind so as to render such a metaphor utterly ridiculous. I’m just about the cleverest man you’ll ever meet, so I think you’ll take it as a great and inexcusable ripping in the fabric of reality that I’m entirely flabbergasted at your existence.” He pointed upstairs. “That’s us out of the way. Next, the flat.”
