Microserfs

Dad’s job, Mom?”

“Well, I’m not sure. He’s never here. He’s driving with Michael up and down the Peninsula … picking things up. Fixing up the office, I think.”

“Carpentry?”

In a whisper: “It keeps him out of my hair all day. And he seems happy to be needed.” Resumption of normal tone: “So when will we be seeing you down here?”

“Next week.”

My body: Today I’ve been feeling angry all day, and I have to get it off my chest. I went to Microsoft for the last time to clean out my office. Our section, having recently shipped, was unusually empty, even for a Sunday. I was all alone there for the first time, ever, I think.

I got to thinking of my cramped, love-starved, sensationless existence at Microsoft — and I got so pissed off. And now I just want to forget the whole business and get on with living — with being alive. I want to forget the way my body was ignored, year in, year out, in the pursuit of code, in the pursuit of somebody else’s abstraction.

There’s something about a monolithic tech culture like Microsoft that makes humans seriously rethink fundamental aspects of the relationship between their brains and bodies — their souls and their ambitions; things and thoughts.

Maybe if this thing with Karla hadn’t started I never even would have noticed — I’d have accepted my sensory-deprivation lifestyle without a second thought. She’s helping me get closer to getting a life — and having a … personality.

I erased the office voice mail message that has served me well for the past six months:

“Thank you for phoning the powerful Underwood personal messaging center.

      Press one for Broyhill furniture

      Press two for STP, the racer’s edge

      Press three for the roomy, affordable Buick Skylark

      Press four for Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat

      Press five for Turtle Wax

      Press six for Dan

      Press pound to repeat this menu.”

Shaw, of all people, came in, and he made this awkward little speech about how he was going to miss me, but I just wasn’t in the mood. Shaw, ever the Boomersomething, says that he never got into Lego when he was a kid. “Too 1950s for me. I liked Kenner’s modular skyscraper kits. ‘If it’s from Kenner, it’s fun … SQUAWK!”

Shaw did point out that now that we’re off Microsoft’s e-mail system, we’re going to get to invent new log addresses.

I think when people invent their Net log names, they reveal more about themselves than their given names ever reveal. I’m going to have to choose my new name carefully.

I figure there must have been a time in the past, like the year 1147, when there was a frenzy of family- naming—Smith and Goodfellow and Green and stuff — not unlike the current self-naming frenzy spawned by the Net. Abe says that within 100 years, many people will have abandoned their pre-millennial names and opted for “Nettier” names. He says it’d be inspiring to see people use other letters of the keyboard in their names, like %, &, ™, and ©.

Susan asked me later how I ended up at Microsoft in the first place. I told her, “No big surprise: I was 22 … it seemed like a studly thing at the time. Microsoft got what it wanted and I got what I wanted, so all’s fair and no regrets.”

I asked her: She said it was to get away from her parents and having to visit either of them because they were both trying to rip apart her loyalties in some nasty custody war.

“I wanted to go to a place where loyalty wasn’t an issue. Ha! I wanted to not have a life because life back East sucked big time. So I made the choice to come here — we all made the choice to come here. Nobody was holding a carbine up to our temples. So us crabbing about our zero-life factors isn’t up for debate, really. Yet do you remember, Dan — do you remember ever having a life? Ever? What is a life? I think I once had one — or at least dreamed of having one — and now with going to Oop!, I kind of feel like I have a hope of life again.”

I said I remembered having a life, back with Jed and being a kid, and Susan said being a kid counted as life only sort of. “It’s what you do after you’re a kid when life counts for real.”

I said, “I think I have a life now. With Karla, I mean.”

She said, “You guys really like each other, don’t you?”

And I said — no, I whispered—“I love her.”

I’ve never told anyone that yet — except Karla. It felt like I jumped off a steep cliff into deep blue water. And then I wanted to tell everybody.

More body talk: Karla believes that human beings remember everything. “All stimulation generates a memory — and these memories have to go somewhere. Our bodies are essentially diskettes,” she says. “You were right.”

“Lucky for me,” I reply, “my own memories tend to get stored in my neck and shoulder blades. My body has never felt so … alive—I wasn’t even aware I had one until you woke it up today. Life’s too good.”

Sometimes I think my subconscious has bad days, and I can’t believe how mundane the stuff that I write into the file is. But isn’t that the deal with a pe son’s subconscious … that it stores all the things you aren’t noticing visibly?

* * *

I'm driving up Interstate 5. It is raining and I remember I have to pick up paper towels and decaffeinated coffee at Costco.

And how did you feel about that?

Mom. . .

Dad . . .

I'm okay. I am not being starved, or beaten, or unnecessarily frightened.

Dropshadow lettering

Granite backgrounds

Hand

Held

Game

This is the end of the Age of Authenticity.

Oracle

NeXT

Ampex

Electronic Arts

SATURDAY

Garage sale day.

It was a real “Zen-o-thon”—we decided the time had arrived to shake ourselves of all our worldly crap and become minimalists — or at least try starting from scratch again — more psychic pioneering.

‘This is so ‘Zenny,’” Bug said happily, as some poor cretin purchased his used electric razor (ugh!) as well as his collection of Elle MacPherson merchandise.

Also for sale: