Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland

  "What do I know?" I said, pulling my foot out of it.

  Karla cut in, "I had this friend, Bradley, who had a major Lego collection and I'd cheat, lie, and steal to go to his house and play with it. Then one day Bradley's mother put his Lego in the bathtub to wash it off. It was never the same - diseased, sort of - stinking, like the water was turning into feta cheese inside the plastic tubes of the locking devices. I think his memories of Lego must be pretty different from my own."

  Bug said, "For designing games, Lego makes a great quickie simulator for figuring out mazes for gaming levels."

  "You've designed games before?" I asked.

  "I've done everything you can do on computers. I'm 31."

  Maybe we underestimate Bug. When I stop and think about him, he's so full of contradictions - it's like there's one big piece of him, that if only I knew it, it would make sense of everything.

  * * *

  Since Michael's offers came in, we've all become really quiet, I've noticed. We're all mulling it over. Our doors are closed; phone calls are being made to the 415 and 408 area codes. Karla says we're all trying to figure out what we really need in life, as opposed to what we simply want.

  * * *

  A weird shiatsu moment: Karla focused on a piece of my chest, just above the Xyphoid Process (that weird thing in the middle of your ribs) and *bang* out of the blue I started bawling. I couldn't stop. So I guess I have memories hidden away that I don't think about.

  * * *

  1999: The people were lying on the ground.

  Demonize the symbolic

  analysts.

  You're smarter than TV.

  So what?

  Uranium and Beethoven.

  Define random

  MFD-2DD

  Ezekiel

  Sony

  THURSDAY

  A random sort of day.

  Woke up late; went on a CD rampage at Silver Platters in Northgate; bacon burger at the IHOP. Karla taught me some shiatsu basics - pressure points and stuff. ("Massage is a two way street, mister. . .")

  * * *

  I’ve been with Karla way over a month now, and just when I think I'm starting to understand her, something happens that makes me realize I don't. One truly weird thing about her is that she never calls her family or talks about them. All she'll say is that they're psychotic, as if everybody else's family isn't.

  She's a good deflector. She structures conversations so that her family never arises. Like today, I brought up the subject of phoning her parents simply because it was Sunday (call me old-fashioned - or at least an AT&T consumer victim) and she said, "McMinnville, Oregon - area code 503."

  "Huh?"

  "North America is running out of area codes. There's only two or three left, and they'll be gone soon enough. Suburban Toronto, Ontario, just got 905. West Los Angeles got 310. Suburban Atlanta got 706. Faxes and modems are eating up phone numbers faster than anyone ever though they'd be eaten up. We've exhausted our supply of numbers."

  "Your point being . . . ?"

  "Only one thing - eight-digit phone numbers. Disastrous, because all new phone numbers will be like those European numbers that are eight digits long and impossible to remember."

  Karla then discussed a theory called "Five plus-or-minus-two memory."

  "Most humans can only remember five digits at most. Exceptional people can remember up to seven (Michael, incidentally knows pi up to, like 2,000 digits). So the chances are that phone numbers will be broken up info four and four, for easier memorization," she announced confidently.

  "So are you going to call your family, or what?" I asked.

  "Maybe. But let me digress a bit. Here's something interesting . . . did you know you can figure out how important your state or province was circa 1961 by adding up the code's three digits? Zero equals 10."

  "No."

  "It's because zeros used to take forever to go around the little rotary dial - while ones zipped along quickest. The lowest possible code, 212, went to the busiest place, New York City. Los Angeles got 213. Alaska got 907. See my point?"

  Karla always comes up with the best digressions. "Yes."

  "Imagine Angie Dickinson in Los Angeles (213) telephoning Suzanne Pleshette in Las Vegas (702) sometime before the Kennedy assassination. She dials the final '2,' breaks a fingernail, and cusses a shit under her breath, irritated at Suzanne for being in a location with a loser area code."

  "How come you won't call your family?"

  "Dan, let it rest."

  * * *

  Karla's learning things about me, too. Like the fact that I don't like shopping but I am a new product freak. Slap a "NEW" sticker onto an old product, and it's in my cart. The day they introduced Crystal Pepsi, I harassed the local Safeway manager almost daily until it arrived. I thought this new Pepsi was going to be like regular Pepsi, except minus the plutonium stuff that turns it brown. Then I tasted it - it was like 7-Up and Dr. Pepper and Pepsi and tap water all sort of randomly mixed and decolorized. Downer!

  I guess Pepsi wishes they had John Sculley at the helm for that one.

  Karla brought me a whole fun-pak of clear products - Crystal Close-up, All "free" detergent. Crystal Pepsi (I guess she didn't know my feelings about it), and Crystal Mint breath drops. In a universe parallel to ours, she no doubt brought me Crystal Bologna, too.

  * * *

  nCube computers

  simulating the Tokyo

  power grid

  They left a dead escalator, chewed and torn lying on the pavement like a dead gray candy necklace.

  Imagine:

  In Florida the wind is rattling the chimes.

  You look over the alligators and

  the sea grass and water. There it is:

  The rocket's burn. The best century ever.

  We were here. But now it's time to go.

  The past is a finite resource.

  Shinhatsubai!

  FRIDAY

  Another Presto Log fire in the living room. Abe lectured us about his Theory of Lego. It felt like school.

  "Have you ever noticed that Lego plays a far more important role in the lives of computer people than in the general population? To a one, computer technicians spent huge portions of their youth heavily steeped in Lego and its highly focused, solitude-promoting culture. Lego was their common denominator toy."

  Nobody was disagreeing.

  "Now, I think it is safe to say that Lego is a potent three-dimensional modeling tool and a language in itself. And prolonged exposure to any language, either visual or verbal, undoubtedly alters the way a child perceives its universe. Examine the toy briefly . . ."

  We were riveted.

  "First, Lego is ontologically not unlike computers. This is to say that a computer by itself is, well . . . nothing. Computers only become something when given a specific application. Ditto Lego. To use an Excel spreadsheet or to build a racing car - this is why we have computers and Lego. A PC or a Lego brick by itself is inert and pointless: a doorstop; litter. Made of acrylonitrile butadiene stryrene (ABS) plastic, Lego's discrete modular bricks are indestructible and fully intended to be nothing except themselves."

  We pass the snacks. "Soylent Melts": Jack cheese and jalapenos microwaved onto Triscuits.

  "Second, Lego is 'binary' - a yes/no structure; that is to say, the little nubblies atop any given Lego block are either connected to another unit of Lego or they are not. Analog relationships do not exist."

  "Monogamous?" asks Susan.

  "Possibly. An interesting analogy. Third, Lego anticipates a future of pixelated ideas. It is digital. The charm and fun of Lego derives from reducing the organic to the modular: a zebra built of little cubes; Cape Cod houses digitized through the Hard Copy TV lens that pixelates the victim's face into little squares of color."

  * * *

  Karla and I discussed what we're planning to do. We don't have much time to choose; Michael needs a response by the end of this week. Michael is offering me a 24K salary plus
1.5 percent of EQUITY as opposed to my Microsoft 26K plus 150 shares vested over 3.5 years. Plus the opportunity to be a coder, and be closer to Karla on the food chain, and even best of all, the opportunity to be with Karla in the same product group again.

  SATURDAY

  It was another rainy night that called for a fire. We'd most of us spent the day processing all of our new career option data.

  We ran out of fire logs and had to light a real fire with flammables culled from around the house: a Brawny paper towel carton full of junk mail and bits of furniture too ugly to even throw out. And then Bug found a packaged fire log in the garage with (he read from the wrapping), " 'Realistic-looking flames and colors' - you can put anything on a label and people will believe it. We are one sick species, I tell you."

  * * *

  The fire was huge and felt religious, and triggered among all of us a discussion of our youthful pyromaniac tendencies. Our conversation became an unexpected bonding experience for us. We talked about pipe bombs, M-80s, Lysol spray can flame-throwers, sodium chunks borrowed from chem labs, potassium nitrate melted together with sugar into smoke bombs, firecracker bricks, MJB cans filled with gasoline into which lit matchbooks are tossed, and methane bubbled through water mixed with Joy dishwashing liquid ("fiery bubbles of doom").

  * * *

  Question: Is there an alt.pyro on the Net? Probably. There's something there for everybody.

  * * *

  Susan was able to dig up area code data from, of all places, Trieste, Italy - on the Net. It turns out that North America is creating up to 640 new area codes by allowing digits other than zero or one to go in the middle. So there can be area codes like 647 and 329. With roughly eight million phone lines possible per code, "That makes for roughly 5.1 billion new portals to fun."

  Karla was relieved that we don't have to have eight-digit phone numbers, "at least until some new, as yet uninvented technology, eats up the old ones again."

  Then we digressed into a discussion of how the word "dialing" is itself such an anachronism - a holdover from rotary phones. "Inputting" would be more true. And who came up with the word "pound" for the "#" symbol. Wouldn't "grid" have been easier and more fun? I mean, "pound"!

  Or think of how dumb it is too say, "I'm going to the record store."

  Technology!

  * * *

  You may

  have already won!

  Technology of mythic strength given surrealistic applications.

  Socially disengaged meritocratic elites.

  Sporting goods stores always smell like the most

  advanced plastics.

  Did the neutron bomb ever actually get built?

  SUNDAY

  Bug is going to accept Michael's offer. This is out of character, given that Bug worships Bill and the corporate culture of Microsoft so much. But he seems quite jolly and decisive about the move. I think the fact he was slated for transfer to the Converter Group in Building Seventeen, a notoriously glum Campus locale, added some oomph to his decision. Bug is a good debugger. That's how he got his name, so Michael's probably getting a good deal in hiring him. I still can't figure out why he never got stock options.

  Todd, too, has decided to go, perhaps also propelled by his transfer into the OLE Group (Ole!), over in the Old Buildings.

  This is the Object Linking and Embedding Group that writes code for an application allowing a user to drag part of, say, an Excel document into a Word document. About as much fun as it sounds.

  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.

  MONDAY

  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.

  THURSDAY

  Later that week

  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.