Microserfs (10 page)

Susan's accepting - and she's forking up some of her vesting money as seed capital for a larger equity stake - and she's clinching the title of Creative Director. "I'll be the Paul Allen of interactivity."

Abe, however, is saying no. "What - you guys want to leave a sure thing?" he keeps asking us. "You think Microsoft's going to shrink, or are you nuts?"

"That's not the point, Abe."

"What is the point, then?"

"One-Point-Oh," I said.

"What?" replied Abe.

"Being One-Point-Oh. The first to do something cool or new."

"And so in order to be 'One-Point-Oh' you'd forfeit all of this -" Abe fumbles for le mot juste, and expands arms widely to showcase a filthy living room covered with Domino's boxes, junk mail solicitations, Apple hard hats, three Federal Express baseball caps, and Nerf Gatling guns) "- security? How do you know you're not just trading places . . . coding like fuck every day except with a palm tree outside the window instead of a cedar?"

Karla reiterated what she said to Todd, about humanity's dreaming, but Abe is too scared, I think, to make the leap. He's too set in his ways. Repetition breeds inertia.

My computer's subconscious files continue still to surprise me. Who would have known that these are the words my machine wanted to speak? Well, actually, I know that it's me speaking through the computer, sort of like those really quiet guys who go all nuts when you give them a wooden puppet - ventriloquists - and these aspects of their personalities you didn't even know existed start screaming out.

Abe has actually provoked Karla and me into deciding, *yes*. We both gave Shaw our two weeks' notices, and basically he said we might as well leave at the end of the week since we're not currently "with project."

With start-ups: you get a crap shoot at mega-equity but more importantly, it's true, you do get a chance to be "One-Point-Oh." To be the first to do the first version of something.

We had to ask ourselves, "Are you One-Point-Oh?" - the answer is what separates the Microserfs from the Cyberlords.

But beyond this there's what Karla said - about being human, and the dream of humanity. I get this little feeling that we can all of us speed up the dream, dream in color, dream in volume, and dream together down south. We can, and will, fabricate the waking dream.

Preparing for this weekend's yard sale, I found a half-pound lump of hamburger meat in the garage that had been sitting in a Miracle Whip jar for about four months - an experiment I had forgotten about. The meat was still kind of pink, with gray fuzz growing on it. "A test to see if the beef industry pumps up cattle with preservatives," I told Karla.

She looked at the jar. "Your brain," she said dismissively, "during the last half-year here at Microsoft."

Mom phoned. She sounds so much better now that the economic stress is off her and that she's exercising. After a short while I got to asking what it is that Dad does for Michael exactly - "So what's Dad's job, Mom?"

"Well, I'm not sure. He's never here. He's driving with Michael up and down the Peninsula . . . picking things up. Fixing up the office, I think."

"Carpentry?"

In a whisper: "It keeps him out of my hair all day. And he seems happy to be needed." Resumption of normal tone: "So when will we be seeing you down here?"

"Next week."

My body: Today I've been feeling angry all day, and I have to get it off my chest. I went to Microsoft for the last time to clean out my office. Our section, having recently shipped, was unusually empty, even for a Sunday. I was all alone there for the first time, ever, I think.

I got to thinking of my cramped, love-starved, sensationless existence at Microsoft - and I got so pissed off. And now I just want to forget the whole business and get on with living - with being alive. I want to forget the way my body was ignored, year in, year out, in the pursuit of code, in the pursuit of somebody else's abstraction.

There's something about a monolithic tech culture like Microsoft that makes humans seriously rethink fundamental aspects of the relationship between their brains and bodies - their souls and their ambitions; things and thoughts.

Maybe if this thing with Karla hadn't started I never even would have noticed - I'd have accepted my sensory-deprivation lifestyle without a second thought. She's helping me get closer to getting a life - and having a . . . personality.

I erased the office voice mail message that has served me well for the past six months:

"Thank you for phoning the powerful Underwood personal messaging center.

Press one for Broyhill furniture

Press two for STP, the racer's edge

Press three for the roomy, affordable Buick Skylark

Press four for Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat

Press five for Turtle Wax

Press six for Dan

Press pound to repeat this menu."

Shaw, of all people, came in, and he made this awkward little speech about how he was going to miss me, but I just wasn't in the mood. Shaw, ever the Boomersomething, says that he never got into Lego when he was a kid. "Too 1950s for me. I liked Kenner's modular skyscraper kits. 'If it's from Kenner, it's fun . . . SQUAWK!'"

Shaw did point out that now that we're off Microsoft's e-mail system, we're going to get to invent new log addresses.

I think when people invent their Net log names, they reveal more about themselves than their given names ever reveal. I'm going to have to choose my new name carefully.

I figure there must have been a time in the past, like the year 1147, when there was a frenzy of family-naming - Smith and Goodfellow and Green and stuff - not unlike the current self-naming frenzy spawned by the Net. Abe says that within 100 years, many people will have abandoned their pro-millennial names and opted for "Nettier" names. He says it'd be inspiring to see people use other letters of the keyboard in their names, like %, &, ™ and ©.

Susan asked me later how I ended up at Microsoft in the first place. I told her, "No big surprise: I was 22 . . . it seemed like a studly thing at the time. Microsoft got what it wanted and I got what I wanted, so all's fair and no regrets."

I asked her: She said it was to get away from her parents and having to visit either of them because they were both trying to rip apart her loyalties in some nasty custody war.

"I wanted to go to a place where loyalty wasn't an issue. Ha! I wanted to not have a life because life back East sucked big time. So I made the choice to come here - we all made the choice to come here. Nobody was holding a carbine up to our temples. So us crabbing about our zero-life factors isn't up for debate, really. Yet do you remember, Dan - do you remember ever having a life? Ever? What is a life? I think I once had one - or at least dreamed of having one - and now with going to Oop!, I kind of feel like I have a hope of life again."

I said I remembered having a life, back with Jed and being a kid, and Susan said being a kid counted as life only sort of. "It's what you do after you're a kid when life counts for real."

I said, "I think I have a life now. With Karla, I mean. "

She said, "You guys really like each other, don't you?"

And I said - no, I whispered-"I love her."

I've never told anyone that yet - except Karla. It felt like I jumped off a steep cliff into deep blue water. And then I wanted to tell everybody.

More body talk: Karla believes that human beings remember everything. "All stimulation generates a memory - and these memories have to go somewhere. Our bodies are essentially diskettes," she says. "You were right."

"Lucky for me" I reply," my own memories tend to get stored in my neck and shoulder blades. My body has never felt so . . . alive - I wasn't even aware I had one until you woke it up today. Life's too good."

Sometimes I think my subconscious has bad days, and I can't believe how mundane the stuff that I write into the file is. But isn't that the deal with a person's subconscious . . . that it stores all the things you aren't noticing visibly?

I'm driving up Interstate 5. It is raining and I remember I have to pick up paper towels and decaffeinated coffee at Costco.

And how did you feel about that?

Mom. . .

Dad . . .

I'm okay. I am not being starved, or beaten, or unnecessarily frightened.

Dropshadow lettering

Granite backgrounds

Hand

Held

Game

This is the end of the Age of Authenticity.

Oracle

NeXT

Ampex

Electronic Arts

Garage sale day.

It was a real "Zen-o-thon" - we decided the time had arrived to shake ourselves of all our worldly crap and become minimalists - or at least try starting from scratch again - more psychic pioneering.

"This is so 'Zenny,' " Bug said happily, as some poor cretin purchased his used electric razor (ugh!) as well as his collection of Elle MacPherson merchandise.

Also for sale:

• Japan Airlines inflatable 747

• official Hulk Hogan WWF focus-free 110 signature camera

• antique Ghostbuster squeeze toys

• Nick the Greek professional gambling home board game

• Ping-Pong table

• shoe box full of squirt guns

• blenders (2)

• vegetable juicer

• dehumidifier

• unopened cans of aerosolized cheese food products

• M. C. Escher pop-up books

• far too many Dilophosaurus figurines

• huge Sony box full of collected Styrofoam packing peanuts and packing chunks from untold assorted consumer electronics

The big surprise? Everyone sold everything - everything - even the box of Styrofoam. Bug's right: We're one sick species.

And my car sold, too - in a flash, to the first person who came around to look at it. Wayne's World did wonders for the secondary market of AMC products.

Actually, the Hornet was such a bucket I was surprised it sold at all. I was worried I'd have to drive it south. Or abandon it somewhere.

Now I am virtually possessionless. Having nothing feels liberating.

National Enquirer:

"Loni's Diary Rips Burt Apart"

He threatened her with a gun in jealous rage

He locked her out of her honeymoon suite

He hid vodka in water bottles

PLUS: Burt: "I wanted to ditch her at the altar."

Exclusive interview on his tell-all book

I do not want this to be me.

Today we left for California and Karla did her first major flip-out on me. I suppose I was being insensitive, but I think she overreacted by far. In packing her Microbus, she buried all of the cassettes we were going to be using for the trip deep inside the bowels of luggage. I said, "God, how could you be so stupid!"

Then she went crazy and threw a toaster oven at me and said things like, "Don't you ever call me stupid," and "I am not stupid," and she piled into the van and drove off. Todd was standing nearby and just shrugged and went back to bungeeing his Soloflex on top of his Supra. I had to take off in the Acura and catch up with her down by the Safeway, and we made up.

Karla said good-bye to her old geek house's cat, Lentil, named as such because that's how big its brain is. Nerds tend to have cats, not dogs. I think this is because if you have to go to Boston or to a COMDEX or something, cats can take care of themselves for a few days, and when you return, they'll probably remember you. Low maintenance.,

Bug was like a little kid, all excited about our "convoy" down to California and was romanticizing the trip already, before we'd even left. The worst part was, he had his ghetto blaster on and was playing that old '70s song, "Convoy," and so the song was stuck in our heads all day.

Cars for the trip:

Me: Michael's Acura

Karla: her Microbus

Todd: his Supra

Susan and Bug: their Tauri with U-Haul trailers

Todd said that our "car architecture" for our journey is "scalable and integrated - and fully modular - just like Apple products!"

Somewhere near Olympia, Bug's car rounded a bend and it was so weird - gravity pulled me into an exit off-ramp. And then everyone else trickled in, too. Served him right for lodging the virus of that dopey song in our heads. It was like in third grade, when you ditch someone. It just happens. Humans are horrible.

Then we all felt really horrible for ditching Bug, and we went out chasing him, but we couldn't find him and I got a speeding ticket. Karma.

I-5 is a radar hell.

During a roadside break I asked Karla why she didn't want to go visit her parents in McMinnville, but she said it was because they were psychotic, and so I didn't press the matter.

The Microbus is covered in gray bondo with orange bondo spots all over it. We call it The Carp.

We found Bug south of Eugene. He didn't even know about the ditch, so now all of us have a dark secret between us.

Along I-5, just outside a suburb of Eugene, Oregon, there were all of these houses for sale next to the freeway, and they were putting these desperate signs up to flog them: if you lived here, you would be home right now. Karla honked the horn, waved out the window of the Microbus and pointed at the sign. Convoy humor.

We made this rule that we had to honk every time we spotted road kill, and we nearly burned out our horns.

On a diner TV set we saw that in Arizona, the eight men and women of Biosphere 2 emerged into the real world after spending two years in a hermetically sealed, self-referential, self-sufficient environment. I certainly empathized with them. And their uniforms were like Star Trek.