"Huh — now that you explain it, it's pretty obvious."
"That's my job — figuring out the obvious way of doing something."
And we fall to talking about my job with V/DT, and the discussion branches into the theory and practice of UE, only slowing a little when he picks the crud out of the scrape down my jaw and tugs through a couple of quick stitches. It occurs to me that he's just keeping me distracted, using a highly evolved skill for placating psychopaths through small talk so that they don't thrash while he's knitting their bodies back together.
I decide that I don't care. I get to natter on about a subject that I'm nearly autistically fixated on, and I do it in a context where I know that I'm sane and smart and charming and occasionally mind-blowing.
"…and the whole thing pays for itself through EZPass, where we collect the payments for the music downloaded while you're on the road." As I finish my spiel, I realize *I've* been keeping *him* distracted, standing there with the tweezers in one hand and a swab in the other.
"Wow!" he said. "So, when's this all going to happen?"
"You'd use it, huh?"
"Hell, yeah! I've got a good twenty, thirty thousand on my car right now! You're saying I could plunder anyone else's stereo at will, for free, and keep it, while I'm stuck in traffic, and because I'm a — what'd you call it, a super-peer? — a super-peer, it's all free and legal? Damn!"
"Well, it may be a while before you see it on the East Coast. It'll probably roll out in LA first, then San Francisco, Seattle…"
"What? Why?"