Microserfs

doing some really hot Object Oriented Programming, but I think my space station is going to be truly killer. The injustice of it all — especially after Abe made us liquid.

Michael was trimming his finger nails and nudging the keratoid crescents into his shirt pocket, and I was getting so PaRAnOld.

We arrived and were sitting in the Swift Water Cafe, and Michael ordered a decidedly non-two-dimensional piece of apple pie, flaunting in my face his betrayal of his Flatlander eating code. He seems to be abandoning it of late. It’s like an alcoholic going off the wagon. He’s changing.

And then, from nowhere, he asked me, “Daniel, do I seem alive?” I was so taken aback. I think this is the oddest question anybody’s ever asked me.

I said, “What a silly question. I mean — of course you do — a bit machine-like at times, but …”

He said, “I am alive, you know. I may not have a life, but at least I’m alive.”

“You sound like Abe.”

“I always used to wonder, do machines ever feel lonely? You and I talked about machines once, and I never really said everything I had to say. I remember I used to get so mad when I read about car factories in Japan where they turned out the lights to allow the robots to work in darkness.” He ate his apple pie, asked the waitress for a single-malt scotch, and said, “But I think, yes, I do feel lonely. So alone. Yes. Alone.”

I said nothing.

“Or I did.”

Did … “Did? Until when?” I asked.

“I’m—”

“What.”

“I’m in love, Daniel.” Oh man, talk about a gossip bomb. (And thank God I’m not fired.)

“But that’s great, Michael. Congratulations. With who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know who.”

“Well, I do and I don’t. I’m in love with an entity called ‘BarCode.’ And I don’t know who he-slash-she is, how old or anything. But I’m in love with … it. The BarCode entity lives in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. I think it’s a student. That’s all I know.”

“So let me be sure I understand this. You’ve fallen in love with a person, but you have no idea who the person is.”

“Correct. Last night you were all talking about getting bar code tattoos, and you kept saying the word ‘bar code’ over and over, and I thought I was going to go berserk with love. It was all I could do to contain myself. And then Bug was so open and honest I thought I would die, and I realized things can’t go on as they have been going.”

Michael’s scotch arrived. He rolled the ice around and gulped — he’s shifted from Robitussin into the hard stuff.

“BarCode eats flat food, too. And she-slash-he’s written a Flatlander Oop!-style product with immense game potential. BarCode is my soulmate. There is only one person for me out there, and I have found it. BarCode’s my ally in this world and …”

He paused and looked across the restaurant.

“Sometimes when I’m loneliest, life looks the most dreadful and I don’t want to be here. On earth, I mean. I want to be … out there.” He pointed to the sun coming in a window, a beam coming down, and the sky over the Bay. “The thought of BarCode is the only thing that keeps me tethered to earth.”

“So what are you going to do about it, Michael?”

He sighed and looked at the other businessmen in the restaurant.

“But what are you going to do about it?” I asked again. He looked up at me. “Is that why I’m here, Michael? Am I getting involved in this?”

“Can you do me a favor, Daniel?”

I knew it. “What.”

“Look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

“No, look.”

Michael put himself under the microscope lens: pudgy; eyeglassed; ill-clad; short-sleeve shirt the color of yellow invoice paper; pale complexion; Weedwacker hairdo — the nerd stereotype that almost doesn’t even really exist anymore — a Lockheed junior draftsman circa the McCarthy era. But for his almost Cerenkovian glow of intelligence, he might be mistaken for a halfwit or, as Ethan would say, a fuck-wit. I said, “Is there something I should be seeing?”

“Look at me, Daniel — how could anyone be in love with me?”

“That’s ridiculous, Michael. Love has almost nothing to do with looks. It’s about two people’s insides mixing together.”

“Nothing to do with looks? That’s easy for all of you to say. I have to work everyday inside our body-freak world of an Aaron Spelling production. You think I don’t notice?”

“Point being …? From what I can see, if one person is feeling something, there’s usually a pretty good chance the other is feeling the same thing, too. So looks are moot.”

“But then they see me — my body—and it’s over.”

In a way I was losing my patience, but then who am I to be an expert in love? “I think you’re perfectly lovable. Our office is a freak show and no indication of the world at large.”

“You say that like a father whose son just got braces and headgear.”

“What do you want me to do, Michael.”

He paused and looked both ways and then to me: “I want you to visit Waterloo for me. Meet BarCode. Offer … it … a job. BarCode’s the smartest programmer I’ve ever conversed with.”

“Why don’t you go, Michael?”

He looked down at himself and clamped his arms around his chest and said. “I can’t. I’ll be … rejected.”

Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s Michael and his unbudgeability. “Michael, if I were to do this, under no circumstances would I be willing to pretend, even for one microsecond, that I were you.”

“No! You wouldn’t have to! Just say that I couldn’t make it and you came in my stead.”

“What if BarCode turns out to be a 48-year-old man wearing a diaper — a diaper with spaghetti straps?”

“Such is love — though I hope that wouldn’t be the case.”

“How long have you and BarCode been e-mailing each other?”

“Almost a year.”

“Does BarCode know who you are? What you are?”

“No. You know the joke: On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.”

“Oh God.”

“You’ll do it!”

“BarCode could be anybody, Michael.”

“I love their insides already, Daniel. We’ve already blended. I’ll take what fate throws me.”

“But tell me one thing — how can you talk to somebody for over a year and not even know their age or sex?”

“Oh, Daniel — that’s part of the thrill.”

Back at the office I went on a walk with Karla and told her about it right away and she said it was the most romantic thing she’s ever heard of and she smooched me right there in the middle of a downtown street. “Michael is so brave to love so blindly.”

When I told her that it was private and that Michael would prefer Dusty and Susan didn’t know, her face expressed slight peevedness, but she understood. They can be merciless.