The Emoticon Generation
Hollywood-handsomeness. He was smooth shaven, had long, curly brown hair, brown eyes, and looked thirty-five. Then again, maybe the picture was an old one. She saved it anyway. Glynis looked up his address in the Yellow Pages. She then cross-referenced the address with the millions of stationary PubliCams in New York City. Ah – there were eleven in that section of the street alone. Thank god for overcrowded cities! She had the computer show her the locations of the PubliCams on a three dimensional interactive map of the street, with Steve’s apartment highlighted. There were three PubliCams on his side of the street, four on the other, and four more on the roofs. She chose the PubliCam in the cafe on the other side of his street with a clear view of the entrance to his building.
    She accessed the PubliCam’s records (these things were kept for 72 hours), and asked her computer to search for any person that bears a resemblance to the picture from his homepage.
    Glynis sat, riveted by the numbers that crossed the screen, as the computer relayed that it had gone 1 second into the past, a minute, an hour, and so on. Half an hour later, it reported that its task has ended, and it had five segments that included someone that resembled the image with 80% accuracy.
    Glynis watched them all. In the first, he was leaving the apartment. Still as handsome as his picture. He was leaving the apartment in a rush, a suitcase under his arm, smartly dressed. The next segment was a vid of him coming back. Then a vid of him leaving. Then another, the next day, of him leaving. The computer must’ve missed one segment. Oh, well, these things are never perfect.
    Glynis chose the clearest video segment, and played it again and again and again.
    Yes, she could see what her mother had seen in him. She liked the way he walked. She liked that look in his eyes. That haircut that said that he wasn’t altogether there, that some part of him lived inside his mind. Something that reminded her of those wacky professors from the movies. Or suicidal poets. Only a hint, though, no more.
    There was no doubt in her mind now. She put her hand on the screen, “Hello, Dad,” she whispered.
    A minute later, she had his home phone number. She reached for the button activating the phone in her computer, but her hand trembled, and she took back her hand.
    Not yet. Not just yet.
    As nice and friendly as he looked, there was a reason he had never been mentioned in this house. There was a reason her mother gave her the wrong name. There was something about him, maybe something bad. Maybe... Maybe it wasn’t mom that he’d hurt. Maybe this Steve Caspi didn’t like his daughter. Maybe mother was protecting Glynis. Maybe calling him wasn’t a smart idea.
    Change of plan.
    Now Glynis wanted to see who he was, what he was, to learn everything she could about him. In short, she smiled to herself, she felt like stalking him.
    Glynis looked at her watch: if there hadn’t been an emergency or something, her mother would be home soon. Just enough time to execute an ISpy (pronounced ‘I Spy’) program.
    ISpy has been around for the last few years, as the PubliCams became ubiquitous. All you had to do was choose a person from an image in a PubliCam from anything from a few minutes ago to as far back as 72 hours ago. The program would then save all images of this person until s/he left the screen. Then it would check for this person on any of the PubliCams more or less in the direction the person was heading. If spotted, ISpy would save the vids for later, adding them to the previous vids. If the person left the view of that Cam, ISpy would do its best to find the person again in the nearest Cam and save the new image after the old one. ISpy could access all PubliCams, some SeCams (security Cams), OnCams (which people wore on their person) and HomeCams – so long as the Cams’ data was stored in public cyberspace. The result would be a ‘movie’ of everything the

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