Tom never trusted anyone. Never. Well, as far as he could remember. He'd been on his own since the age of fourteen and in that time, life had taught him a number of pointed lessons. One, that people often suck. Two, that people usually sick. Three, that people almost always suck. He'd accumulated this knowledge through a series of dead-end jobs, a host of lousy roommates, basic crowds on the streets and public transportation, the nightly news, and almost every book he'd ever read and movie he'd ever seen. Even the good people have their moments, he knew, and though he had a suspicion that Kandhi and Klehre weren't necessarily "bad" per se, he didn't trust them, not for a moment. His lack of trust was vindicated by his witnessing of Klehre's random tagging of nobodies, and from that moment on he kept his eye on his device.
More particularly, he adjusted the settings to follow any posts of anyone on the socialnet within one hundred feet of Kandhi and Klehre. He wasn't sure if this was strictly legal, but neither was his tagging technology, so he didn't worry too much about it. He had routed the tracking through any number of mazes to the point where he was certain he could not be tracked back into. There wasn't much going on as the women drove through the central valley, just some random passengers or drivers heading the opposite way who had lots to say about nothing in particular. People were texting out loud in private and public to such an extent that Tom felt compelled to work on what he called a "drown-out" tech to preserve the general sanity. He hadn't finished all the details yet, but he thought it would be something like a hearing aid that you put in your ear, only it would filter out all the stupid things people were saying around you. Whether or not it filtered out your own stupid utterings, that was another matter. While he tinkered on this in his home office, one cat on his neck, another on his shoe, he tuned in periodically to see if "the kays", as he called them, were causing any notice.
And he saw it. Someone with the handle "tiddlywinks" had broadcast something that could only have come from the kays:
"so i heard this chick just now saying she was going to change the world by talking loud in public. can you believe that shit?"
"Damn it", Tom shouted loud enough to drive the cats away temporarily. As they circled around waiting for a more propitious time to jump up again, he tapped his fist on his table rapidly, a sure sign that he was trying to keep himself from destroying anything of value. He had a really bad habit of doing just that, and he couldn't afford it, monetarily, so he tried to breathe, and breathe again, and take some positive action.
The thing to do, he decided, is follow that handle and all its fellow travelers (called FT's on the socialnet), and see what develops. Probably nothing. Most broadcasts disappear into nothing. He tracked back the last two days of broadcasts by the tiddlywinks and saw a parade of snarky remarks. Clearly a guy by the things he said about "chicks" and their "bods". He was a one-man freeway female-rating system, with his own refined standards and scorekeeping methodologies. Blondes dominated the ranks, but he had a definite thing for alternative hair. Twenty minutes later he circled back to "that chick" which Tom now knew to be Klehre, by referencing the purple on her head. He detailed her tight black top and how it revealed her "miniature water balloons", and lamented the looseness of her khaki shorts. He wondered where she was headed. He followed that up fifteen minutes later by responding to an FT, remarking that "the purple one" was accompanied by "a pink one" who was "nothing to write home about".
There was nothing else about them for awhile. Tiddlywinks was heading home to Marina Del Rey. He was a planning to party. Hardy. Pound some brews. Tom was pretty certain that guy presented no problems. At first he was worried that the broadcast might get picked up by somebody with substance or at least a brain, but there seemed to be no once like that in the tiddlywinks circle. Tom calmed down enough to allow the cats to resume their perches, and turned his attention back to the drown-out tech. Still he kept muttering under his breath about the kays and god only knows what they'd do next.
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