Sheldon

During the following four weeks Sheldon's correspondence with Ms. Moxie continued to flourish, and despite his initial reactions to Ms. Moxie's suggestion of anonymity, he found their unique relationship to be thrilling and challenging. He agreed with her that the anonymous nature of their correspondence had a unique fascination not to mention a wonderful social experiment.

If they could develop a friendship without knowing anything about each other, they could turn the idea of social interactions on its head, and if successful, the virtual bond would prove Sheldon's long-held theory that physical proximity wasn't needed for social relationships. If he could just figure how to get the rest of the world to stay indoors, he'd be golden.

In fact, Sheldon would have liked to avoid all social interactions in order to shield himself from harmful pathogens. If he could have persuaded Leonard to transport his mobile virtual presence device to work, Sheldon would never have to physically interact with the common horde again. But as usual, Leonard had refused to support Sheldon. However, if things went well with their social experiment, he would revisit that possibility.

As the weeks passed, Sheldon was unaware how much his routine had changed. Now, after his morning ablutions there would be a quick text to his new virtual friend with either the word of the day or question of the day, followed by an exchange of interesting factual data, and their early morning exchange would end with a game of his invention during his car ride to work.

There would be another witty text after lunch. Then before dinner, he would send another text in which he would expand on his overabundance of patience in connection with the plebs he worked with, though carefully avoiding any mention of Theoretical Physics, and whereas normally, Sheldon would ignore anything during his mealtime, once the response beep came through he would be engrossed, as he became adept at eating with one hand and texting back with another. He would then usually disappear to his room around 9:00 PM, from where the gang would hear his tittering and chuckles through the walls.

Every text alert would initiate a Pavlovian reaction from Sheldon. He would instantly smile and reach for his phone. The guys soon noticed this behavior and took to sending him random texts just to see his reactions. Tiring of their silly little games he eventually blocked their numbers after delivering a strike to everyone.

Sheldon never told the group anything about Ms. Moxie, and the only way the others knew he was still communicating with the mystery person was by the giggles that would emanate from him every time he looked at his phone.

Sheldon's circle of friends was more than content with how his time was now being occupied, happily telling him how thankful they were that the random trivial thoughts that flashed through his mind were now for the sole enjoyment of his virtual friend. He ignored their subtle insults knowing that they would rue the loss of his genius to guide them now that his intellect was directed elsewhere. But like the realist he was, Sheldon did not discard them entirely. Friends were like toilet paper: It's good to have a few extras under the sink.

Not only had Sheldon's routine changed, but also his demeanor. Leonard could have said that he appeared to be nicer, but that would have involved some interaction between them, as it was Sheldon was almost ignoring him in favor of this new texting relationship. Initially, Leonard had been happy that Sheldon was so occupied giving him some quiet time at home. Even more so during the short car ride to Cal-Tech as it alleviated some of the tedious games he was forced to play. But one Monday morning, having been ignored for the fourth time in favor of the constant texting, he had had enough.

"Sheldon!" Leonard yelled as he parked the car, "We're at work!"

"Oh darn!"

Sheldon grabbed his messenger bag as he got out of the car. He had wanted to continue his conversation with Ms. Moxie, but duty called.

Leonard shook his head and scowled, "You are spending an awful amount of time on the phone with this mystery person. Don't you think it's becoming a problem?"

"Not at all!" Sheldon finished his text to Ms. Moxie and put his phone away,

"My relationship with my new friend just fills in the voids of the day. On our drive to work, you are constantly complaining about the games I invent to play, so I play with her instead."

"So it is a she?"

Sheldon was annoyed about his slip up, but confirmed that his new friend was female.

"Well, let me tell you, anyone who spends as much time on her phone as you do has to be a weirdo." Leonard slammed his door to make his point.

"She's not a weirdo!" Sheldon slammed his door just as hard in retaliation, but made sure the lock was set before he started to march off to his office as he added, "She just bested me in naming that Fibonacci Highway! Could a weirdo do that?"

Leonard stopped in the middle of the parking lot; surprised at Sheldon's revelation. No one had ever beaten Sheldon at one of his own made up games before, least of all a stranger. "Really? Well that kinda proves my point!" Leonard continued to walk to his office but he was still astonished, "So… she beat you in that game?"

"I know... she's amazing!" Sheldon beamed all the way to the door. "She even got the Canadian one, King's Highway 144!"

"Sounds like I'm off the hook for while!" However, Leonard did not sound as happy as he should have been.

Sheldon was perplexed. Since their marriage Leonard was already sleeping most nights at Penny's and Sheldon had been bracing for the permanent move to happen at any moment. So why should Leonard care how Sheldon spent his time now.

Later that evening, as the group were enjoying the Monday night's Thai dinner, Sheldon interrupted the meal yet again with a belly laugh as he balanced his food in one hand and his cell phone in the other. Penny shook her head and asked Leonard, "Have you managed to get any information about why he's on the phone all the time?"

Leonard, watching her take a mouthful of food replied, "Yeah, he's texting his girlfriend."

Silence briefly followed Leonard's comments. While almost choking on her food, Penny screamed out,"WHAT!"

"Good god, what kind of woman would want to be Sheldon's girlfriend," demanded Howard.

Sheldon shook his head and chimed in the conversation, "She's not my girlfriend."

"Jeez, I thought he was just tweeting random facts to his non-existent followers." Penny leaned over trying to see what was so interesting on Sheldon's phone, but he shielded it from her.

"Oh, he still does that but now, only to her..." Leonard gave a strained smile.

Howard snorted, "That's 'cause she's the only one who cares about the history of the fork, right, Penny?"

He winked at Penny who rolled her eyes and sighed, "Oh god, not this again. The one time I forget to give Raj a place setting at the Cheesecake factory and I had to have a 20-minute lecture on the history of cutlery!"

Sheldon shook his head, "I don't see why you're upset. All I did was defend your habitual oversight! As you now know, traditional Indian culinary etiquette doesn't require a fork or spoon. Those are left to the kitchen."

Sheldon dismissed any further response the group made to his erudite factoid as he turned back to his phone and typed a new message. Within seconds the alert sounded and looking at the text he laughed, "She says if Raj was from Southern India, he could have used a banana leaf."

Penny had had enough of the fork conversation, "Sheldon, no one in the world cares about these stupid trivial things." Then trying to look uninterested, she played with her food and casually asked, hoping for an answer, "What does she look like?"

Sheldon shifted in his seat and answered with a mumble, "It doesn't matter...and speaking of stupid trivial things... Appearance is the forefront... "

Sheldon put his phone down for a moment as he added, "Besides, the world could stand to benefit from some of my knowledge. It's my gift to humanity."

"Some gift. I hope you got a receipt." Penny replied, and then added, "So how did you meet this girl?"

Sheldon pretended to concentrate on his food without responding and breathed a sigh of relief when his attention was caught again by the sound of another text notification. Picking the phone up, he giggled.

Leonard rolled his eyes again. Penny asked the group, "Does anyone know who this person is?"

Leonard explained how Sheldon had found a phone and since then had been constantly texting someone who they now knew was a woman.

Penny was amazed that Sheldon could hold someone's interest for so long, let alone a female or at least someone he thought it was female.

"What does she do for a living?" Howard leaned forward and raised his brow. Sheldon put his phone down again, glared at him, and gave him a curt reply.

"Something amazing, I'm sure… I bet she has a doctorate, which is more than I can say for some members of our social circle... Not naming names... Howard..."

"So fake then. I knew it." Howard added, "Oh... and does she have a sister? Raj's parents want to set up with someone real as well since Siri dumped him, right Raj?"

"She's not my girlfriend, and she certainly is not fake. She is as real as any of you." Sheldon's voice rose as he defended her.

"How can he be sure it's a girl and not like Glisinda the Troll?" Raj added, with a sneaky look at Bernadette.

Howard moaned, "Oh god, don't bring her up!" He quickly glanced at his wife for a moment as her burning eyes seared his soul. One could smell the smoke.

"It was a him, Howard..." Bernadette corrected him.

Penny thought that Howard had been lucky. His dalliance with an online player had almost cost him Bernadette. Penny now wondered if Sheldon would end up suffering the same fate, still at least he didn't have a real woman to lose over the liaison.

Sheldon looked up from his dinner and his phone for a brief moment, "I know she's a girl, her date told me."

"Her date? What the hell?" again Penny gagged on her food for the second time and reached for a napkin.

Leonard laughed and told her, "Well, not only does he have a girlfriend that apparently he's never met, but it was her date that told him she was female?"

"Is this some kind of kinky robot thing?" Penny asked, eager for an answer, but Sheldon just shook his head and Leonard answered for him.

"I don't know... it might be..." Leonard sat back in his lounge chair and beamed as he waited for Sheldon's inevitable snarky response.

Sheldon glared at Leonard, "I'll leave robot women to Howard."

Raj let out a sigh, "Great... Even Sheldon has a girlfriend and he doesn't even have to satisfy her."

"Slick, ain't it? But she's not my girlfriend." Sheldon looked back to his phone and added smugly, "Oh, and I satisfy her plenty."

Sound waves ceased as the entire room stopped all activity and everyone stared at Sheldon who seemed oblivious to how his comment had been perceived, until Penny finally asked, "Erm... how do you do that, exactly?"

"With my mind, of course."

"Oh I get it, like Howard, you just think you're satisfying her!" Raj added, and even Bernadette had to chuckle.

"So Raj, how's the wife search going on your front?" Howard snapped at Raj, who was suddenly sick of the discussion and tried to change the topic of the conversation,

"Terrific... Anyway, what are we going to dress up as this year for Halloween? Sheldon... any thoughts?"

Sheldon, who was already engrossed in his texting conversation again, just answered, "Sure thing Leonard, a grape nehi would be great."

"Raj asked you... oh never mind."

In what he thought would be the perfect way to get Sheldon's attention, Howard suddenly said: "Hey let's all go as characters from Babylon 5! Dibs on Londo Mollari"

Having just received Ms. Moxie's text in which she had compared trapping malodorous elements such as unwelcome comments to "Febreze the conversation", He could not contain his smile at the brilliant and timely pun delivered by her, and feigning ignorance, he adeptly ignored Howard's suggestion feeling he could use such a product now, he responded with a text about the hydroxypropylbeta-cyclodextrin content in Febreze.

Surprised at Sheldon's silence following Howard's outrageous suggestion, Leonard had had enough and couldn't believe what he was about to say, but he felt that someone had to say it.

"Sheldon, you spend too much time on that phone and you hardly join in the conversation anymore!"

Silence greeted the statement, as Penny punched Leonard hard his arm to chastise him for attempting to disrupt the peace that the group had enjoyed since Sheldon had started texting his new mysterious friend.

Rubbing what he knew was going to be a bruise later on, Leonard looked down at his Thai food once more and grumbled into his food, "At least he doesn't complain about the Mee Krob being too dry."

Without looking up, Sheldon commented, "It is, but I am trying to be nice about it and Febreze the conversation, so to speak."

Penny's chuckle caused Sheldon to look up and he beamed with pride at her smile as he added, "And Howard, it will be a cold day in hell before we dress up as ANY character from Babylon 5. You will have to find another lecherous character to portray. Might I recommend Harley Quinn since you already wear the tight red pants?"

Leonard shook his head, as another text alert caused Sheldon to return to the important message being received. Sheldon let out another chuckle which only upset Leonard even further.

"See, all you do is laugh at that phone! You're the one who makes us come over here for dinner every other night." Exasperated, Leonard put his food down and jumped up to grab some water from the fridge.

Sheldon raised his head to correct Leonard, "It was not a laugh, but a chortle. A word, incidentally, coined by Lewis Carroll by blending chuckle and snort."

"Sheldon, you are just saying that to sound smart."

Ignoring Penny's waspish tone Sheldon replied, "You're right. You should try it once in a while, Penny. Fake it till ya make it, kid..." Sheldon gave Penny a wink.

Pushing her dinner away she snapped at Sheldon, "And does she know you're a complete arrogant ass?"

"How can she not, she texts him every day!" Leonard added with a quick snort.

Sheldon ignored both the comment, and the self-satisfied High Five Leonard exchanged with Penny as he focused instead on his new friend, ignoring the conversation between his companions for the rest of the evening.

Moxie:

After the long drive home from her work on the Westside, Moxie returned to her apartment and was immediately hit with an awful stench. The entire third floor reeked of burnt popcorn. She wanted to gag, not only from the smell but she realized how much her apartment air system was connected to the other tenants.

As she spayed Febreze throughout her house, around the vents and in the hallway, a grumpy neighbor opened his door and wiping his greasy fingers on his stained shirt, he stared her down.

"Whacha doing with that? I don't want this hallway stinking up like some flower shop!"

"Well, better freesia than the popcorn you burned. You know overcooked foods beyond a temperature of 248 F can form the carcinogen acrylamide."

"Nah, I didn't get a flavored kind, It's fine, but that girly smell is not." He looked her up and down and said, "You know those air things cause cancer right?"

She shook her head and bid her neighbor a good night. As she closed the door, she whispered to herself, "And people wonder why I don't socialize."

That evening her scheduled text from Sheldon, told her that he and his friends were going to have Thai food. Moxie suddenly craved curry as well and hunted in her freezer for a spicy Lean-Cuisine. She texted back that Thai sounded amazing, but the auto-correct changed it to TRIG.

Sheldon wrote, "So you're craving math? That's my kinda girl."

Moxie blushed and wrote,

"Why did the mathematician divide SIN by TAN? Just COS."

That text received a capital

'LOL'.

She had been surprised at how quickly Sheldon had latched on to her idea about looking at their continued anonymity as not only a game, but an experiment. What had amazed her even further was that despite his statement that he felt that physical proximity wasn't needed for social relationships, he seemed to have so many friends. He would often reference something they said to him, or more often, what he said to them. Moxie both admired and envied his ability to maintain a friend group.

Moxie had just put her dinner in the microwave and as the machine hummed, Sheldon texted her:

"My friend is complaining about the time I corrected him on the use of a fork. I informed them that traditional Indian cuisine doesn't require a fork and they seemed unimpressed."

"Well, if your friend was from Southern India, he might use a banana leaf which is loaded with cancer fighting polyphenols."

She took her hot food out of the microwave and almost dropped it on the floor. She laid it on the counter and texted back,

"Make sure they don't substitute a rubber tree leaf. You don't want that to "bounce" back in their faces."

Another

'LOL'

However, the next few texts caught her off guard.

"My Friends think you aren't real."

"Oh really? Well, my burnt fingers from my microwave dinner say otherwise. "

"If they knew your real name, they might make a silly Portmanteau of our names, like Shoxy or some juvenile amalgamation of our names."

"Oh, I wouldn't like that."

"Neither would I."

"Well, you can chortle in their faces. I am just another Netizen (citizen of the net.)"

Moxie's smile faded as she poked at her bland dinner probably loaded with acrylamide, and looked around her silent apartment. She thought, maybe a portmanteau of their names wouldn't be so bad.

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