Microserfs

said it’s Top Secret, but she gave me a clue: his fingers are all red and sore at night. “Don’t worry about it, Dan, he’s happy, and so as long as the Feds aren’t called in, let him be.” So much for curiosity.

I tried looking at Mom’s rock collection today. They continue to perplex me. Beauty is absolutely in the eye of the beholder.

Todd broke the 400-pound mark on the bench press today and celebrated by making protein drinks for everybody, but they had a rotting protein odor. We pretended to enjoy them, then formed tag teams running to the laundry sink to dump them.

I looked at Dad’s hands and they are indeed all chafed and red.

Susan’s dating some guy from Intel, but I don’t think it’s going to work, because Intel’s corporate culture is so weird.

“They’re like Borgs,” says Susan. “They have one mind. They’re like this sci-fi movie I once saw where if one child in a village learned something, all the other children learned it simultaneously. It’s a hive mind. You get the feeling there’s a sub-audible tape playing that says, resistance is futile … you WILL assimilate …” And then Susan got thoughtful and said, “The more I think about it, it’s actually like Microsoft. In fact all huge tech firms are like Microsoft.”

Went out for a drink with Ethan at the Empire Tap Room on Emerson Street. He said, “There is no center to the Valley in any real sense of the word. There is no one watching; it’s pretty, but it’s a vacuum; a kingdom of a thousand princes but no kings.”

I know what he’s talking about — the deficit of visionaries — the center-less boredom of Valley life. I mean, if I really think about it, Valley people work and sleep — work and sleep and work and sleep and somewhere along the line the dream border is blurred. It’s as if there is a collective decision to disfavor a Godhead. It’s not despair; they just want the Real Thing. The Beast.

And the penny pinching! The nondisclosure forms! The extreme wealth of the high-IQ’ed genetic gift baskets who won on the Punnet Square of life! I suppose this is the birthplace of the new postindustrial economy here amid the ghosts of apricot orchards, spinach farms, and horse ranches — here inside the science parks, industrial areas, and cool, leafy suburbs. Here, where sexy new technologies are being blueprinted, CAD’ed, engineered, imagineered, and modeled — post-machines making countless millions of people obsolete overnight.

Palo Alto is so invisible from the outside, but invisibility is invariably where one locates the ACTION.

Worked until 3:30 A.M. Breezy night. Went for a walk down La Cresta Drive. So quiet. I got to feeling meditative. I felt as though my inner self was much closer to the surface than it usually gets. It’s a nice feeling. It takes quiet to get there.

* * *

The liquid engineers left the pool heater on too long, and at night, chorine vapors rose above the plant life of the planet, and I

imagined my flesh,

being inside the pool, being warm, and protected, feeling gravity, but able to mock it as I floated. Would you float with me now, if I asked you, would you jump in the pool and not even bother to strip? Could I strip you down, remove your clothing and we would fall inside the water together?

It scares me.

I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this strongly about anything or anybody ever again.

This was unexpected, my soul's connection to you.

You stole my loneliness

No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you would enter.

SUNDAY

Michael made us attend: “Interactive Multimedia, Product Design, and the Year 2000” It was at a Hyatt or something down in San Jose. Michael wanted us to have “a good overview of the industry.” We barely made it through the event.

The day after the seminar, I might add, Michael bought us all San Jose Sharks inflatable toys as penance. (The Sharks are *huge* here. I think I’m already beginning to bond with them.) If my ship comes in this year, I’m going to buy season’s tickets for next year’s games. Can’t wait for the season.

I e-mailed my notes to Abe.

“29 Steps: My Trip

to the

Interactive Multimedia Seminar”

by Daniel Underwood

1)

Some people believe that the suspension of disbelief is destroyed by interactivity.

2)

The people who attend “Multimedia Seminars” aren’t the same people who design games. Their shirts are ironed, they carry unscuffed leather attache cases, they’re infinitely earnest and they look like they work for Prudential-Bache and Kidder-Peabody. These suits are all bluffing now, but soon enough they’ll “get it” and they will become “visionaries.”

3)

Narratives (stories) traditionally come to a definite end (unlike life); that’s why we like movies and literature — for that sense of closure —because they end

4)

The stakes for multimedia may actually turn out to be embarrassingly small in the short run — like Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, or Hasbro cranking out board game versions of The Partridge Family, The Banana Splits, and Zoom.

5)

With interactivity, one tries to give “the illusion of authorship” to people who couldn’t otherwise author.

Thought: maybe the need to be told stories is like the need to have sex. If you want to hear a story, you want to hear a story — you want to be passive and sit back around the fire and listen. You don’t want to write the story yourself.

6)

This sick thing just happened: I had this moment when I looked up and everyone had been picking at the baby zits on their foreheads and everybody’s forehead was bleeding! It was like stigmata. So gross. Even Karla.

7)

“There’s an endemic inability in the software industry to estimate the amount of time required for a software project.” (*TRUE*!)

8)

Networked games, like where you have one person playing against another, are hot because you don’t have to waste development dollars creating artificial intelligence. Players provide free AI.

9)

The 8 Models of Interactivity (as far as I can see)

i) The Arcade model

Like Terminator: kill or be killed.

ii) The Coffee Table Book model

Enter anywhere/leave anywhere; pointless in the end; zero replayability factor.

iii) The Universe Creation model