Microserfs

raw on the pavement, making sick red smudges along the neat and clean California State white lines.

Finally I booted them out at Pasteur and Sand Hill Drive, then drove a quarter mile up, letting them feel stupid and walk it off. I screamed out the window, “Stop the madness!”

Anyway, after “our coders” had their little walk, they were much better behaved. Then Todd yelled “Shogun,” not “shotgun,” to claim the front passenger seat, but then Susan said only the word “shotgun“ counted, and it turned all Itchy & Scratchy again, and Bug ended up nabbing the shotgun seat.

We drove to the Sand Hill Road exit (location of the dreaded venture capital mall) west off the 280, into the paddocks and oaks and horsey area, parked the bus, and walked across a Christmas tree farm to a Cyclone fence surrounding the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a structure that resembles a mile-long rear side of a 7-Eleven — sandstone-tinted aluminum siding with tasteful landscaping. Not much to look at, but let me say, extremity of shape certainly does imply extremity of function. And whenever you see no windows, there’s something scary or beguiling going on inside. No humans. Stepford.

Needless to say, there were FUCK OFF AND DIE warning signs from the Department of Energy bolted onto the wire fencing around the accelerator’s perimeter. Ethan said, “Why is it that everything I’m truly interested in has the words ‘Warning: U.S. Department of Energy’ stamped all over it?”

Today was one of those anything’s-possible days: blue skies and fluffy clouds; smooth-flowing freeways; all plant life on 24-hour chlorophyll shift after three days of rain. So alive! Two red-tailed hawks circled in the winds above, wings immobile for ten minutes on end (we timed, of course) hunting mice and gophers and squirrels. Serene.

And then we went into the mountains, into the greenery, so dense, with the sun dappling through, walking across a small wooden bridge and we had to remind ourselves we weren’t dead and not in heaven. We came away from it feeling that life really is good, and with our circadian rhythms somewhat restored to Pacific Standard Time.

On the way back we drove past Xerox PARC on Coyote Hill Road, and Bug swooned only mildly. He now no longer foams when he imagines how Xerox could be the biggest company on Earth if they’d only understood what they had back in the 1970s.

After that, we pulled into the Stanford Shopping Center mall to cool off and shop for short pants. Amid the Neiman Marcus, the Williams and Sonoma, the NordicTrack, and the Crabtree & Evelyn franchises we discussed subatomic particles. At Stanford Laboratory they’re hunting down the magic particles that hold together the universe. There’s one particle that’s still unfound. I asked the carload if anyone knew what it was.

“The Top Quark,” answered Michael.

“Duct tape,” answered Susan, scowling at Todd.

Stanford is so weird. They have bumper stickers like:

“I ¦ ANTARCTICA,” “I ¦ Cellos,” and “Calligraphy ¦ for letter or verse.”

The day taught us one thing: We all agreed we need to take a bit more time out for personal development and simple rest. Even Ethan conceded this necessity, albeit by asking us if we could take shifts to do it. We had to tell him that leisure, like intelligence, doesn’t scale.

Everyone immediately bailed out of work, but I headed to the office to play with Oop! for a while to work on my space station. Karla drove up to San Francisco to help Laura from Interval paint her apartment the same color yellow as Mary Tyler Moore’s Mustang convertible. Bug was going to go help, too.

Around 1:30 A.M. the door opened and I thought it was Karla, but it was Bug, saying Karla and Laura had gone out for a stag night after they ran out of paint.

Bug came in and sat down in the chair next to me and we had a conversation. The lights were low — Just a few monitors and a light by the coffee machine. Bug said — not even to me, I think, but to himself, “I was just in this nightclub downtown, Dan. I felt awkward. I’m not used to nightclubs and I don’t like cigarette smoke or the way people pose and get phony in clubs.”

I realized that Bug had dressed up for the night, or rather, had made an effort to coordinate his wardrobe. Also, Dusty has him signed up with a trainer at a gym, and he’s not looking so much like he was assembled from the leftover bits of the Lego box as he used to. For that matter, Karla and I are both looking better assembled ourselves, these days. The gym.

“And so anyway,” Bug continued, “there was this picture frame-shaped thing hanging from the ceiling — part of the club’s decoration — and I thought I was looking into a mirror and so I reached up my hand to move my hair, and of course, my image on the other side was doing the same thing. And then suddenly I realized— we realized — at the same moment, that we were two different people and both went ‘Whoa!”

“And?”

“And I realized that maybe it’s even possible, however briefly, and without even much say in the matter, to become someone else, or to be handed another body, in a blink of an eye. Is that called ‘body invasion’? Karla would know.”

There was a quiet patch here — just the hums of the computers; a blink sound from someone’s system receiving e-mail. Bug continued: “And so I met Jeremy.”

“Well good for you.”

“It’s not love,” he added quickly. “But we are going to see each other again. But tell me, Daniel — I mean, I knew you before you knew Karla. Did you ever think then that love was never going to happen to you?”

“Pretty much.”

“And when it did happen, how did you feel?”

“Happy. And then I got afraid that it would vanish as quickly as it came. That it was accidental — that I didn’t deserve it. It’s like this very, very nice car crash that never ends.”

“And where are you now?”

I thought: “I think the fear part’s leaving. I don’t know what comes next. But the love hasn’t gone, no.”

Bug looked perplexed and happy, but sort of sad, too.

He said, “I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I’ve realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.” He looked up at me: “Oh, not you and Karla and the rest of the crew. But people in general. My family’s from Idaho. Coeur d’Alene. A beautiful place as ever there was, but believe me, Dan, it’s hard to be different there.”

As usually happens in our office, he began to fidget with Lego bricks.

“It starts out young — you try not to be different just to survive — you try to be just like everyone else — anonymity becomes reflexive — and then one day you wake up and you’ve become all those other people — the others—the something you aren’t. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it’s too late to find out.”

I had no idea what to say. So I listened, which is often the best idea. And I realized Bug had driven all the way down from San Francisco just to find a person to tell this to.

“Anyway, I never talk about myself, and you guys never ask, and I’ve always respected that. But there comes a time when you either speak or forfeit what comes next.”

He got up. “I’m driving back up the Peninsula. Home. I just wanted to talk to somebody.”

I said, “Good luck, Bug,” and he winked at me.

Sassy!

TUESDAY

Day of coding. It felt really Microsofty for some reason.

Midday, Karla went walking with Mom and Misty, and the two of them returned absolutely comatose with boredom. I have never seen two people with less chemistry. I just don’t understand how I can love two people so