In Cherishing Loved Ones and Strengthening Bonds by Stuart Martha, there was a passage offering a small piece of advice for dealing with perceived snubbing. Red Tornado was not quite sure if he was being snubbed, but Kathy S. from the Cafeteria assured him that he most definitely was. And so, Red Tornado turned to his personal guide. Stuart Martha instructed him, simply, to shrug off the offending party and seek fulfillment elsewhere.
With such, Red Tornado was prompted to consider his allies. His was not a social circle that was well cultivated. The first acquaintance to occur to him was the Blue Beetle, who his records indicated to have been a formidable hero of the powerless variety, comparable to the characteristics that were Batman's forte. Red Tornado's records were out of date however, which only came to his attention after sending a message out to the older hero's replacement and receiving an enthusiastic reply from the teenage boy who now wore the mantle. The face that beamed at him from his computer monitor had looked familiar to Red Tornado, as if he had seen him before at some time in the past, but conclusively did not match that of the detective Red Tornado had hoped to enlist for his investigation. But he did not have time to place this new Blue Beetle. Red Tornado hardly had time to collect any new data pertaining to the young hero at all. Within the span of a thirteen second message, the Blue Beetle related that he would be immediately leaving for the rendezvous point Red Tornado had suggested in his initial message, all the while tripping over his own words in expressing his elation at being called on by a fellow crime fighter for assistance, and Red Tornado had set out to meet him right away. Stuart Martha cautioned against the callous implications of tardiness when cultivating a new acquaintance.
Red Tornado had had some feeling akin to relief when he flew out to the canyons near El Paso, where he had anticipated a rare landlocked meteor impact based on a report to Star Lab's observatory that he recently intercepted. But upon his arrival he found that neither the meteor nor the Blue Beetle came to meet him.
Kathy S. from the Cafeteria and Stuart Martha were in agreement that this behavior was rude, though the Blue Beetle never responded to Red Tornado's inquiries as to whether he had become lost trying to find the location, leaving the situation uncertain. Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had become red in the face when he shared the story in a civilian-suitable iteration. His inquiry as to whether it would be prudent to contact his acquaintance again was met with a look he did not understand.
Red Tornado was less inclined to call upon the next party to occur to him, although he had known the Green Arrow long enough to feel more certain of his abilities than the Blue Beetle's. He was more concerned about the hero's professionalism. The first time Red Tornado met the Green arrow, he had joked at length that Red Tornado was first a new gadget of Batman's, and then later that he was a glorified toaster. Lacking the ability to toast bread then as he did in the present, neither lines of merriment triggered Red Tornado's humor sensors. Additionally, they had wasted time.
Red Tornado sent the Green Arrow a message nonetheless, but did not particularly expect an ensuing reply.
He was surprised by the explosive reaction from Kathy S. from the Cafeteria when he gave an update to his current activities, seemingly triggered from nowhere.
"Why do you put up with that? I can't believe some of the things you tell me. Who can be so busy they can't find time for a simple phone call? I think your friends sound like some of the most inconsiderate people I've ever seen!"
Kathy S. from the Cafeteria was counting out his change for the lunchroom's soy chicken—evidently another of her specialties. She was snatching up the coins as if they might try to escape, and Red Tornado deftly over road the thought of correcting her accusation that she had seen his associates, when she had in fact only heard about them. He wondered if she would use such asperity if she knew he shared more ancestry with her cash registered than he did with her.
Red Tornado theorized that this would have been an appropriate time to clear his throat in human fashion, to signal an interest in changing the subject of conversation, but sadly had no throat to clear, nor any way of artificially producing the sound. A brief pause and the word "Ah" were the closest that he could come, thinking that he had read about people awkwardly shifting their weight from one leg to the other and noting that his were as resolutely sturdy as they were designed to always be.
Kathy S. from the Cafeteria didn't seem to be particularly interested in his performance though. She stacked the seventy-five cents that made up his change into a tidy cylinder between her fingers and appeared to release the muscles forming her frown with some effort. Even so, the look that she gave him resembled those that he had on file to reference anger most closely, though his scanners did not indicate a perfect match.
"I think that you're being too understanding at this point, John. All you're trying to do is ask for help, but it seems like these people wouldn't care if you disappeared tomorrow. You really ought to value yourself more."
The books of Stuart Martha had nothing to offer on the strangeness of the encounter, and Red Tornado found himself perplexed in his attempts to analyze it afterward. As he sat in John Smith's den and tried to apply himself to his daily consumption of roughly thirty books to further his understanding of the human experience (free to process the text at whatever speed he chose within the private confinements of his own persona's home), he found the oddness of the interaction looping back to him as if there were a glitch in his software.
Kathy S. from the Cafeteria had placed his change in his hands and then suddenly shivered. Red Tornado had anticipated a comment to follow about the coldness of his hands, as was not uncommon when civilians chanced physical contact with John Smith's "skin," but instead she had wrapped her arms around herself and said, "Goosebumps just came out of nowhere. Do you ever feel like you're being watched?"
Red Tornado had no understanding of how one could feel a mode of examination that had no physical component, nor the nature of goosebumps and how they could relate. He supposed that this could be more of Kathy S. from the Cafeteria's old wisdom that was beyond his comprehension, but before he could ask for clarification she had reached out and closed his hand around the seventy-five cents and told him to have a good day. Her face was still a ruddier shade than was normal, and she refrained from looking up at him, which indicated the conversation had come to its awkward conclusion.
When the dawn hours found him, Red Tornado felt as if he had only logged a fraction of what he routinely did on most nights, laying stationary in his non-essential bed as the pale morning light filled his room and deactivated his night vision. He resolved to stop by the labs by the day's end and have himself scanned for deviations in his vital functions.
There was nothing to be had from the Blue Beetle or the Green Arrow when Red Tornado checked his answering machine, although he did find that Batman had left him a brief message explaining that he had been kept busy the night before due to training a team of ragtag young heroes recently converted to the side of righteousness after an ill-advised attempt at mutating the Gotham populous. Red Tornado followed through with his now customary habit of calling Batman back, but as usual, his call went directly to voicemail by the light of day. He briefly contemplated leaving the whole story on the Bat Video Answer Phone, the easiest and most direct way to bring Batman into the meteor mystery, but decided against it at the last. It was undesirable to upset the quirks of one's colleagues. Rather than leaving his normal message, Red Tornado sat mute before his camera for a long moment, twenty seconds, before turning the device off.
He was not certain of whether his drives had just spontaneously frozen, but found himself looking to other items on his tasks list.
Red Tornado went about his preparations for the day ahead more affluently than he recalled doing in the past. He selected the clothes to incorporate into John Smith's hologram, selected the food items in his kitchen that were suitable for throwing out (as his kitchen was often kept stocked in preparation for potential visitors), and activated the mundane four seater vehicle in the garage to drive to the university in normal human fashion.
As he drove, he remotely renewed his connection to transmissions that were outside his range when he was at John Smith's place of residence, checking for the most recent data on the number of meteorites to have come into contact with the general area, and then abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. Red Tornado crunched the numbers once, and then again to make sure that there had been no error—but he knew, as he did so, there had not been. The numbers had risen by 79% since the first substantially size meteor landed on the island. Red Tornado concluded that the numbers were wildly unlikely.
His car remained stationary on the side of the road for several minutes before Red Tornado put it back into gear. He followed the road for another six miles before reaching the next exit and turning into the nearest metropolitan area that would be suitable for temporarily abandoning his car—not wanting to lose John Smith's vehicle and be obligated to re-start the process of building toward what he had been told was an exceptionally satisfying experience, when one completed the human endeavor of paying off one's car.
He had come to the conclusion that he would have to abandon it though, as well as make the executive decision that on this one occasion, John Smith would have to wave his responsibilities as a professor in favor of allowing Red Tornado to confer directly with the world's supposedly greatest detective.
Naturally, he would wait until only five minutes before class time to sending out notification emails to his students, as in keeping with the average practices of his fellow college professors.