Microserfs

I realized that Michael was BarCode’s first love, and I realized that I was seeing something special here, as if all of the flowers in the world had agreed to bloom just for me, and just for once, and I said, “Well, I think it’s mutual. Now could you relax just a bit more, Amy, because you’re frankly scaring the daylights out of me, and I don’t think my right arm can deal with another wrestle.”

She gushed a bit, flush with happiness. She sat and smiled at the undergrads who, it seemed, regarded her with a no small tinge of fear. She surely must be some sort of campus legend.

“You’re the bearer of hot news, and I’ll always remember you for that, Dan,” and she kissed me on the cheek and I thought of Karla, and my heart felt so happy yet faraway from her.

“Man, I’m so happy I could crap,” she said, “Hey — over there — that table of engineers — let’s go trash ‘em!”

SATURDAY (one week later)

Michael and BarCode — excuse me—Amy—are now engaged. Amy and Michael have been having a John-and-Yoko lovefest at the Residence Inn Suites down in Mountain View. Karla and I went to visit them, and their suite was all a-rummage with pizza boxes, diet Coke cans, dirty laundry, unread newspapers and gum wrappers. Michael has transformed from a lonely machine into a love machine.

People!

Amy, 20, is going to finish her degree in computer engineering, and is going to come work for us starting in May. We’re all in love and awe and terror of her. She and Michael together are like the next inevitable progression of humanity. And the two of them are so happy together — seeing them together is like seeing the future.

Oh — here’s something I forgot to write last week. At the bar, I asked Amy what it was — or rather, how it was that two people could not know each other and fall in love and all of that. She told me that all her life people had only ever treated her like a body or a girl — or both. And interfacing with Michael over the Net was the only way she could ever really know that he was talking to her, not with his concept of her. “Reveal your gender on the Net, and you’re toast.” She considered her situation: “It’s an update of the rich man who poses as a pauper and finds the princess. But fuck that princess shit — we’re both kings.”

We both got drunker and she said to me, “This is it, Dan. This is the way I wanted to always feel. This is it.”

“What?”

“Love. Heaven is being in love, and the love never stops. And the feeling of intimacy never stops. Heaven means feeling intimate forever.” And I can’t really say I disagree.

Later on tonight, Michael stomped into the office in a way he never has before, clapped his hands, and shouted, “Troops, let’s make these machines do something they’ve never done before. Let’s make them sing”

SATURDAY

Melrose Voyager Melrose Voyager

7 Transhumanity

EIGHT MONTHS LATER Las Vegas, Nevada Thursday, January 5, 1995

The Alaska Airlines captain said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the city of Las Vegas is below us to your right. You will be able to see the pyramid of the Luxor Hotel …”

The 727 lurched sideways as its human cargo chugged like Muppets to view a Sim City game gone horribly wrong: the Luxor Hotel’s obsidian black glassy pyramid, and beside it, the Excalibur’s antiseptic, Lego-pure, obscenely off-scale Arthurian fantasy. Farther up the Strip was the MGM’s jade glass box with 3,500 slot machines and 150 gaming tables representing the largest single concentration of cash points on earth—“the Detroit of the postindustrial economy,” Michael declared.

It was pleasing for me to see so many of the faces of the people in my life, lit by the glow of the cabin windows — Karla, Dad, Susan, Emmett, Michael, Amy, Todd, Abe, Bug, and Bug’s friend, Sig — their faces almost fetally blank and uncomprehending at the newness of the world below into which we would shortly dip.

Sig is an ophthalmologist from Millbrae who convinced Bug that he wasn’t stereogramatically blind. He’s a vast improvement over Jeremy, and Bug is suddenly so much more himself, relaxed and joking and just … glad. Back at SFO Airport Sig and Bug adopted a J. Crew fashion thing: instead of vogueing, they “Crew.” When we shout the word “Crew!” they’d freeze into a rehearsed series of maniacally-smiling dorky male model poses. It was good for laughs the whole flight down. Also, Bug almost got whiplash from craning his neck halfway through the flight trying to catch a glimpse of the ultrasecret Groom Lake military facility. He told me, “They have UFOs and aliens cryogenically frozen there.”

I said, “Right, Bug. As if Alaska Airlines is allowed to fly over a top secret base,” and Bug replied, “Look down there, Dan — that’s the place where they staged the fake moon landing back in 1969.” I looked, and it did resemble the moon.

So I started to torment Bug about his new 3-cylinder Geo Metro, and Amy joined in, saying, “God, Bug, you couldn’t even kill someone with that thing. You could maybe nudge them to death, or something …” And then she pretended she was at her doctor’s office and her doctor was saying, “Amy, this rash you’ve got … have you had prolonged exposure to rodents, perhaps, or small dogs, maybe 3-cylinder cars?” and Amy says, “Well, yes, actually, I have noticed a Geo following me around and nudging me considerably … I just assumed it was maybe a lost student driver but now that I think about it, that’s where my rash is coming from!”

Susan, Karla, and Amy have really Chyx’d out for the CES — bulletproof vests over tiny little tube tops (Susan has declared that it’s her responsibly as a feminist media figure to singlehandedly revive the tube top), baggy jeans worn low on the hips, and black sunglasses. Susan continues to gain celebrity with Chyx (New York Times business section last week). All three of them decided to dress “Tough Love” because Ethan told them the fair is 99 percent male and they don’t want to look “like dweeb bait.”

I, as ever, am clad in my Riot Nrrrd staple: Dockers and Gap pocket-T. Dad was in Brooks Brothers, and now that his hair’s turned snow white over the last year, he makes a singularly trustworthy impression as a representative for the company. (And he also finally speaks C++.) Todd was wearing a trench coat because he’d read in the Chronicle that it was raining in Las Vegas. We told him he looked like Secret Squirrel, the old cartoon character, and the coat soon vanished. Todd also unveiled his new “hockey hairdo” on the flight: short on the top and long in the back. I guess this is because of the hockey strike. Todd bought season tickets to see the Sharks.

Also on the plane was a company called BuildX which is doing an Oop!-like product, down in Mountain View, and there were eight of them and they had matching black sweatshirts with a