Microserfs

me!”

We were soon down at El Camino Real. I had to go back to my car. I asked, “Are you guys driving? You need a ride anywhere?”

“We’ll walk,” said Dad. “But thanks.”

“See you back in the Habitrail,” said Michael.

Yeah. Right.

Karla was outside the house watering the herb garden with a can when I drove up. I told Karla that it was really unChristmassy of me, but I wanted to kill Michael.

“Michael? What on earth for?”

“He’s …”

“Yes?”

“He’s stealing my father.”

“Don’t be silly, Dan. It’s in your head.”

“Dad never talks to me. He’s always with Michael. Shit, I don’t even know what he does with Michael. They could be selling bomb implosion devices to the Kazakhs for all I know.”

“Maybe they’ve become life-partners,” said Karla.

“What?”

“It’s a joke, Dan. Calm down. Get a grip on yourself. Listen to yourself. First of all, Michael couldn’t shoplift a Nestle’s Crunch bar, let alone a parental unit. He’s not the type. Has it ever occurred to you they might simply be friends?”

“He knows about Jed. He’s trying to be Jed. And I can’t compete.”

“This is nonsense.”

“Didn’t I say that about you and your family?”

“But that’s different.”

“How?”

“Because … because it is.”

“Good logic, Karla.”

She came up to me. “Feel yourself — you’re lucky you didn’t get the killer flu. Your muscles are as rigid as a crowbar. You’re making yourself sick thinking like this. Come on — I’ll do your back. I’ll talk you down from this.”

As she plucked the knots from out of my body, removed the abandoned refrigerators and couches and sacks of garbage from underneath my skin, she talked in the way she does. She told me, “Bodies are like diskettes with tags. You click on to them and you can see the size and type of file immediately. On people, this labeling occurs on the face.”

Prod, prod, rub, poke.

“If you know a lot about the world, that knowledge makes itself plain on your face. At first this can be a frightening thing to know, but you get used to it. Sometimes it can be off-putting. But I think it is only off-putting to people who are worried that they themselves are learning too much too quickly. Knowing too much about the world can make you unloving — and maybe unlovable. And your father’s face is different now. He seems like a new man — different than when he first drove up to the old house in Redmond. However he may have changed, it’s for the better. So don’t lose sight of that.”

Grudgingly: “All right.”

If it weren’t for Karla, sometimes I think I’d just implode.

FRIDAY, December 24, 1993

Software fun: Work crawled to a standstill today as Bug shared anagram software that spits out all the combinations of words you can make with your name. Michael was mad, because we lost several combined people-hours doing it. Everyone’s faxing and e-mailing their relatives and friends their name-as-anagram for Christmas tomorrow. It’s the low-budget gift-giving solution.

Everybody’s also downloading shareware and scuttling about the valley cobbling together melanges of bootleg software programs to give as presents. We’re all broke!

It seems everybody’s trying to find a word that expresses more bigness than the mere word “supermodel”—hyper model — gigamodel — megamodel. Michael suggested that our inability to come up with a word bigger than supermodel reflects our inability to deal with the crushing weight of history we’ve created for ourselves as a species.

We got off work early (7:00) to shop, but we all came back in around 10:00 and started working again, until around 1:00. Slaves, or what?

Around midnight, December 25, Susan grunted, “Uhhh, Merry Christmas.” We all reciprocated, and then went back to work.

Christmas Day, 1993

We sat inside and opened prezzies over coffee. Outside it was Richie Cunningham weather — like from Happy Days when Ralph Malph and Potsie come over and ding the doorbell, and they’re wearing their varsity coats and they say, “Hello, Mrs. C.” and the weather outside is … simply weather.

But where is everybody’s family? Why isn’t everybody with their families? Nobody went home. Bug still can’t face his parents in Idaho; Susan either (her mother is in Schaumburg, Illinois; her father is in Irvine, down south); Karla — not likely. Only Anatole went to visit his parents, and then only because they’re three hours north in Santa Rosa.

Anyway, we’re all so broke this year that we agreed not to buy anything expensive for anyone, and it was fun. Gag gifts. Christmas really brings out the geek in tech people:

• From Todd to Bug: a brown Wackenhut security baseball cap

• From Karla to me: the IBM PC version of The $100,000 Pyramid

• From me to Karla: a Hewlett-Packard calculator with jewels for buttons

• From Ethan to all of us: CandyCaller toy cellular phone filled with candies

• From Bug in all of our stockings: Dream Whip, nondairy whip topping

• From me to Karla: a Play-Doh fun factory insect-shaped insect extruding device (“Look — softer, less crumbly Play-Doh,” she squealed.)

• From various people to various people: Ren & Stimpy screen-savers (“Screensavers are the macrame of the ‘90s,” Susan boldly exclaimed.)

• From Susan to all of us: HANDMADE Martha-Stewart-y gift baskets, which made us all feel cheap. Michael asked her outright: “Susan, where did you find the discretionary time to assemble these?” She looked guilty, and then told Michael to piss off, and it was funny. Michael whispered to me: “Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.”

For some reason, everyone gave Susan premoistened towelette-related products. It’s one of those jokes that went out of control the way sometimes things go out of control for no obvious reason. A spontaneous nonlinear event. She received:

• 124 klear screen™ premoistened towelettes, “with love from Dan and Karla” (I also mailed Abe a bottle of Spray-N-Clean so he can remove the nasal encrustations on his Mac screens)

• Celeste® sani-com 3205 premoistened towelettes specifically targeted for consumer electronics mouthpieces — from Ethan. (“‘Cleans and freshens communications equipment.‘ I stole a