Microserfs

MONDAY

Melrose Place night tonight. We double-clicked onto the “BRAIN CANDY” mode. We’re all addicts.

We like to pretend our geek house is actually Melrose Place.

Tonight Abe said, “I wonder what would happen if we all started randomly going nonlinear like the show’s characters. What would happen if our personalities became divorced from cause and effect?”

“We could take turns going psycho,” said Bug.

Susan, writing the words D-U-R-A-N/D-U-R-A-N on the proximal phalanges of her fingers, said, “You already are psycho, Bug. That doesn’t count.”

Susan read aloud bits from the Handbook of Highway Engineering:

“‘Improperly installed or unwarranted signals can result in the following conditions:

—Excessive delay

—Disobedience of the signal indications

—Use of less adequate routes to avoid the signal

—Increase of accident frequency …”’

She paused and looked at the fire for a while. “I wonder if this guy is alive and if he’s married?”

I called to see if Mom was feeling better, and she was. She’s signed up for swimming classes at the local pool. But the big news occurred when Dad got on the extension line and shouted at me, “I’m employed!”

“Way to go, Dad. I told you something would come up. What are you going to be doing?”

“Oh — this and that. Michael is certainly one bright young fellow. Odd. But bright.”

“You’re working for Michael?”

“I certainly am.”

“At Microsoft?”

“No, he’s starting something else, a new company.”

“He IS? What are you working on there?” (*Shock*)

“And he’s living in one of the spare bedrooms — can you believe it?”

(Good God!) “Yes, I can. And your job description?”

“Here, your mother wants to speak to you …”

Mom chatted about being relieved with Dad’s salary plus rent money flowing in. But the job description never arrived. Nor any clue about this mysterious new company.

We have a new word for vaporware: Sea Monkeys, as in, “ScriptX is really Sea Monkeys!”

Susan said, “Remember when you were a kid and sent away for that little nuclear family with Dad wearing a crown and everything, and instead all you got was … brine shrimp?”

Reading a book about viruses. Went into Boeing Surplus again. It was Monday, so all the new magazines were in.

Karla and I were here in my room, lying on my bed — bare legs akimbo — and we made this really embarrassing observation that neither of us have tan lines — that we spent all summer in the crunch mode to meet shipping deadline.

Karla began talking all Star Trekky again — the best thing about her.

She said, “I don’t believe human beings store memory in our brains exclusively — there simply aren’t enough storage slots or interconnective possibilities. And so if not in the brain, then where? I concluded that another viewpoint on memory was to see our bodies as ‘peripheral memory storage devices.’”

Hence, *bliss*, shiatsu.

“You know yourself, Dan, that every sitcom ever broadcast is stored in your brain — that’s terabits of terabits of memory — as well as the details of Burt and Loni’s divorce. Brains just don’t have enough space to handle all these bits. And so I decided to learn shiatsu massage — as a means of thawing memory frozen inside the body.”

I thought about this. The concept of body as hard drive seemed very plausible to me.

I couldn’t believe we had been enemies for so long. Trek on, woman!

So Dad’s working — for Michael. Michael is hiring people. That is so random. The world is indeed chaotic.

* * *

Space Needle

1962

Mattel

C+++++++++++

silver lens sunglasses

Redmond

Schaumberg, III.

Interstate 80/287, NJ

Dallas Galleria/LBJ Fwy.

Torrey Pines/UTC Sorrento Valley, Ca.

Metroplex/lrvine, Ca.

King of Prussia/Route 202

Tandy Corp., Fort Worth, Texas 76107

relentless . . .

crispy . . .

fluids . . .

200 years from now

Ebola Reston

Marburg

Hepatitis non-A/non-B

Ebola Zaire

Sabia

Michelangelo

Machupo

Rift Valley

Hanta

TUESDAY

A FedEx pack arrived today with letters for everybody: Roommates@Geek House followed by our postal address. Talk about news. Michael’s offering all of us jobs at a start-up company he’s assembled down in Silicon Valley.

Excerpts from Michael’s letter:

… People our age are abandoning the tech megacultures in droves, starting up their own companies, or joining small, content-based start-ups. There’s a recruiting frenzy going on … multimedia craziness. and the big companies that aren’t minting money are hemorrhaging brains. It’s intellectual Darwinism.

… The five of you are rudderless at the moment. Is now not the time to take a risk and jump into the future?