Microserfs

“Jesus, Ethan — we thought you were going to the dermatologist about your dandruff.”

“I have dandruff?”

“It’s, ummm, nothing out of the ordinary.” I touched the bandages and they felt crackly, like Corn Flakes.

“You said I had dandruff?”

“Ethan. Discussing body malfunctions is like discussing salaries. You don’t do it.”

“Fine. Can you just remove them? They itch. They hurt.”

“Yeah, of course.”

He went into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide solution, rubbing alcohol, and old shirts cut into strips for rags. And so with him on the coffee table I removed chunk after bloody chunk, snipping away at his back and pulling scraps away, horrified at exactly how much of him had been removed.

We were talking. He said he can’t believe how far dermatology has advanced in the past ten years. “They can practically put a small video camera inside your body and the doctor says to you, This is how your zit sees the world,’ and they have a camera looking out from inside the zit.”

I asked him what his prognosis was, and he said, “Shhh, pal — it’s just the devil in me, but let’s hope he’s gone.”

In the end, after all of the plastic, cotton, and dried blood and rags were gone, his back looked as though craters of the moon had been stitched together, violet and swollen. I used a small hair dryer and dried off the stitches, and when I turned off the hair dryer, the noise was somehow shocking, and Ethan still sat there, hunched and breathing, and I felt sorry for him, which is something I would never have thought imaginable toward Ethan. I said, “The devil in you, the devil in me,” and I grabbed him as gingerly as I could from behind and he moaned, but it wasn’t a sex moan, just the moan of someone who has found something valuable that they had thought was lost forever.

We lay down on the couch, me clasping his chest from behind, his breathing becoming deeper and slower, and he said, “You and Karla do that shiatsu stuff, right?”

“Yeah. We do. But you’ve got a few too many stitches for that at the moment.” I told him a bit of Karla’s theories of the body and memory storage. He laughed and said, “Ow!—Christ, stitches hurt,” and then he said, “Well, if that’s the case then think of me as a PowerBook dropped onto a marble floor from a tenth-story balcony.”

I said, “Don’t laugh at yourself. Your body is you, too.” I felt like I had to heal here, or else something would leave Ethan forever, so I held him a bit tighter. “Karla told me that in other cultures, the chest is often thought of as being the seat of thought. Instead of slapping yourself on the forehead when you forget something, like a V-8, instead you slap yourself on the chest.”

Ethan said, “I guess that if you start young enough, you could actually consider your toes as the seat of your thought. If you tried to remember something, you’d scratch your toe.”

I said this is possible.

And then I simply held him. And then we both fell asleep, and that was six hours ago. And I have been thinking about it, and I realize that Ethan has fallen prey to The Vacuum. He mistakes the reward for the goal; he does not realize that there is a deeper aim and an altruistic realm of technology’s desire. He is lost. He does not connect privilege with responsibility; wealth with morality. I feel it is up to me to help him become found. It is my work, it is my task; it is my burden.

* * *

I am Bill’s machine

I may be the largest machine that will ever be built.

I may be the richest machine that will ever be built.

I may be the most powerful machine that will ever be built.

Raised with Cheerios and station wagons.

Diagonal-slotted parking stalls of the Northgate mall.

As a child I once drove in a sedan's backseat along Interstate 5 and looking out the windows I saw my city beside the sea, dreaming in airplanes and wood; metal and rock ballads ... better ways of living. Golden sun falling on this city that wanted for more; sailboats atop the golden water.

Pocket calculators

sneakers

cheeseburgers

Datsun

The challenge of newness

Saturday morning cartoons recycling programs crying Indians.

You think you can live without me, but just try.

You desire images of a better tomorrow; I feed you these images.

You dream of a world in which your ego will not dissolve.

I am the architect of the arena.

Reconsider your notions of what you think will rescue you from a future sterilized of progress.

4 FaceTime

MONDAY

Everybody’s decided what title to put on the business cards Susan designed.

Bug: “Information Leafblower”

Todd: “Personal Trainer”

Karla: “Who can turn the world on with a smile?”

Susan: “Her name is Rio.”

Me: “Crew Chief

Ethan: “Liquid Engineer”

Michael: “You’re Soaking In It”

We got in this discussion about the word “nerd.” “Geek” is now, of course, a compliment, but we’re not sure about “nerd.” Mom asked me, “What, exactly, is the difference between a nerd and a geek?”

I replied, “It’s tougher than it seems. It’s subtle. Instinctual. I think geek implies hireability, whereas nerd doesn’t necessarily mean your skills are 100 percent sellable. Geek implies wealth.”

Susan said that geeks were usually losers in high school who didn’t have a life, and then not having a life became a status symbol. “People like them never used to be rewarded by society. Now all the stuff that made people want to kick your butt at fifteen becomes fashionable when fused with cash. You can listen to Rush on the Ferrari stereo on your way to get a good seat at II Fornaio — and wear Dockers doing it!”

Todd, not surprisingly, added, “Right now is the final end-stage when God said the meek shall inherit the earth. Is it a coincidence that geek rhymes with meek? I think not. A dipthongal accident.”

Mom said, “Oh you kids! I guess I’m just not in the loop.”

Being “in the loop” is this year’s big expression. Only three more weeks remain before the phrase becomes obsolete, like an Apple Lisa computer. Language is such a technology.