Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland

  OH RIGHT!

  No, I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life - a decade or so? and then it becomes perverse and random. Expecting a pension kids? Ha hah ha!

  I'm feeling like Bug today.

  2)

  Easter egg

  platform

  surfing

  frontier

  garden

  jukebox

  net

  dirty linen

  pipeline

  lassooo

  highway

  We will have soon fully entered an era where we have creatted a computer metaphor for EVERY thing that exists in the real world.

  Actually when you think about it, *everything* can be a metaphor for "anything*.

  To quote YOU, Daniel: "I mean, If you really think about it."

  * * *

  Abe has a friend in research who's working on "metaphor-backwards" development of software products. That is, thinking of a real-world object with no cyber equivalent, and then figuring out what that cyber equivalent should be. Abe's worried because at the moment he's working on "gun."

  * * *

  Thought: sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the year: i.e., 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to now, and you realize that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing, indeed.

  * * *

  Actually, I've noticed recently that conversations always seem to reach the point where everybody says they don't have any time anymore. How can time just . . . disappear! Early this morning I told this to Karla as we were waking up and she said she's noticed this, too.

  She also said that everybody's beginning to look the same these days - "Everybody looks so Gappy and identical." She considered this for a second. "Everybody looks the same nowadays because nobody has the time to differentiate themselves - or to even shop."

  She paused and looked up at the ceiling. "Your mother doesn't like me."

  "How can you get so random out of nowhere? Of course she does."

  "No. She doesn't. She thinks I'm a hick."

  (Oh God - not this stupid stuff again.) "You two never talk, so how can you even tell?"

  "So you admit she doesn't like me?"

  "No!"

  "We have to do something together. We have no shared experiences or memories."

  "Wait a second-don't I count?"

  "Maybe she sees me as stealing you."

  "Mom?"

  "Let's arrange a lunch. We've been here how long? And we've never even had a lunch out together."

  "Lunch? That's not much."

  "Memories have to begin somewhere."

  Now that I think about it, Mom never comes over to our work area. Ever. And the two of them never really do chat. It occurs to me that I should have noticed, and I realize that I'm worried about it.

  A crisis in my new-and-improved life.

  * * *

  We shot Nerf darts (Jarts) for a few hours this afternoon down in the backyard to allow the sunlight to reset our circadian rhythms. We drank Napa Valley Cabernet like we were Gary Grant and made Klingon jokes. We used Dad's Soviet binoculars to inspect the enormous blue "Jell-O cube" down in the Valley below - a.k.a. the Air Force Satellite Control Facility, at Onizuka Air Force Base in Sunnyvale.

  A citrus tree was blossoming outside the house; the air was lemony fresh and smelled like an expensive hotel's lobby.

  Ethan was, as usual, in a beautiful suit, like one of those suntanned Academy Awards guys. (But again, his dandruff!) He greeted us with, "Good afternoooon, my precious content delivery system."

  We asked Ethan if he wanted to throw Jarts with us, but he said, "Love to, kids, but antidepressants make me photosensitive. Sunlight kills me. My retinas'll get etched like a microchip. You kids keep on playing. Sunlight is good for productivity." He and Dad then went into the kitchen to discuss psychopharmacology while Mom made us a tray of Dagwood sandwiches.

  * * *

  Ethan told me something really cool. He said that the reason lion tamers brandish chairs while cracking the whip is because the lions are mesmerized by all four points of the chairs legs, but never all of them at the same time - their attention is continually distracted, and hence they are subdued.

  Ethan talks so "big-time." I've never heard people talk this way before. Susan says he talks like characters in a miniseries.

  I agree with Susan that Ethan is annoying, but it's hard to peg exactly why - there are all these little things that he does that just add up to ANNOYING. When I really think about it, I realize that if someone else did those things they probably wouldn't annoy me. It's just the way he is, all smarmy and fake genuine. Like he's always coming into the office and going up to me and saying, "How are you" in this concerned voice while looking deep into my eyes. Retch. Like he cares. And when I say, "Fine," he squeezes my shoulder and says, "No, really, how are you?" as though I wasn't

  really being honest. "I know you've been working hard." I never know what to say so I always just look back at my screen and keep on coding.

  Another annoying thing he does is ask you something about what you're working on, and just as you start really talking about it, he takes over and somehow ties it into an anecdote about himself. Like I was telling him about the problems we were having deciding whether or not Oop! will have sounds or not, and how we're trying to calculate the extra memory space sound would occupy and whether or not having sounds adds enough value to justify the extra work. It was like Ethan was just waiting for a place where he could break in. He said, "Added value. What an arbitrary concept, since it's different for every person." He then launched into this story of holidaying in Bali, staying in little shacks at this super-resort called Amand-something which cost $400 a night which even had little slaves to do his bidding. In his mind it tied into the notion of "value-adding," but my question about sound and memory was lost.

  I sure wish we had that Bali money back now.

  One must grudgingly admit Ethan does seem to know a good deal about Valley business. Like many people in computers and gaming, he never went to college. He designed a game that sold millions in the Pong era, became a millionaire, went bust with Atari, became a millionaire again in Reagan's '80s with a SEGA-based something-or-other, went bust again, and now I guess he's going to become a multimillionaire in the Multimedia '90s.

  His tech credentials are good, too. Somewhere amidst all the money he did manage to squeak in work with Xerox's El Segundo Lab and TRW in Redondo Beach.

  * * *

  I’ve never seen a stock get more attention than 3DO. Everybody's wondering if they should invest in it. I mean, if we had money to invest. I must remember to drive by their parking lot some Sunday afternoon.

  * * *

  Karla asked Mom out to lunch and Mom balked at first - "I don't know how much time the Library can spare me for." That kind of thing. I mean, if someone wants to have lunch with you, they simply don't make pseudo-excuses like that.

  But Karla wore her down, like someone who's been to Anthony Robbins lectures. The three of us are going to have lunch later this week, but I hope it isn't a grudge match.

  * * *

  I asked Michael what he wanted for his 25th birthday next week. His message flashed onto my screen at 2:40 A.M., from his office where he was working with the door shut:

  >Birthday:

  I want one of those keys you win in video games, that allows you to blast through walls and reach the next level get to *the other side*.

  This is a particularly long message for Michael whose e-mail tends to be about three words long, normally. A carriage return, punctuation marks and everything!

  * * *

  Now that I've been thinking about it, I'm not sure what exactly Oop!'s money structure is. Wouldn't it be a sick joke if I got into something without understanding the financial underpinnings . . . if I hadn't even bothered to ask the questions I'm supposed to ask because I've never had to ask them before becaus
e I'd been coddled to death by benefits at Microsoft? Naaaaah . . .

  * * *

  There was a windstorm last night and a bunch of branches blew off the eucalyptus tree beside the garage. Around sunset Bug, Karla, and I pretended we were a trio of evil Finnish masseuses named Oola, swatting naughty victims with much vim. I've got mentholated scratches all over my arms.

  * * *

  Karla is preparing a list of subjects to discuss at lunch with Mom. I said, "Karla, this is a lunch, not a meeting." She wants to make a good impression so badly. I am surprised by how much that pleases me.

  * * *

  Michael is furious at Todd for taping over a VHS cassette of Oop! graphic animatlion that Michael had done as a demo for potential investors. Todd replaced it with The Best of Hockey Fights III.

  * * *

  Todd and Susan have the flu, so I guess we're all doomed for it now. And Ethan's been acting weird all week. Our bank account must be running on fumes again.

  * * *

  unraveled brown

  cassette tape

  on the freeway

  Staples

  CK-one

  PIN number

  basketball hoop

  If we were machines, we'd have the gift of being eternal and I want you to understand

  TUESDAY

  Everybody's flu-ridden today except for Ethan and me. Ethan asked me to accompany him up to Electronic Arts in San Mateo, and then down to a VC meeting out at the Venture Capital mall at the corner of the 280 and Sand Hill Road - in his ruby red Ferrari.

  "The Ferrari is like a rite of passage here for new money. You buy one at 26, get it out of your system, flip it for a gray Lexus or Infiniti, and then you drive gray sedans the rest of your life. I keep mine because I can't afford anything else at the moment, and I can't afford the capital gains taxes if I sold it. I should get one of those 'DON'T LAUGH: AT LEAST IT'S PAID FOR' bumper stickers. Nobody would appreciate the irony that I'm holding on by my teeth."

  We roared south past the rolling hills that oozed trees and fog. I looked down at the palm of my hand, slapped it, and said, "Hey, Ethan-I'm looking at my sympathy-o-meter, and the needle isn't moving."

  "It's the Valley, pal - think sideways. This is the Lexus Freeway, the most scenic in America."

  I told Ethan about the book on freeways I had read, Robert F. Baker's Handbook of Highway Engineering; Ethan in turn told me that 280 - the Lexus Freeway - is also nicknamed the Mensa Freeway.

  I looked in the glove compartment and there was a bottle of Maalox cherry. Ethan said, "I keep Maalox in the glove compartment of the car, and sometimes I swig it like a wino in parking lots before meetings. I once walked into this meeting with dried white Maalox powder caked on my lips and everybody thought it was coke or something. I told them it was Pixy Stix and they said, oh, how cute, but they still thought I was coked out. Man, if they only knew the truth - that a Pixy stick would burn a crater in my stomach like Mt. Saint Helens."

  Then we got into a discussion about volcanoes, and the year Mt. Saint Helens erupted and that old guy who lived on top of the mountain, who was all crotchety, and wouldn't leave, and everybody thought he was a real individual - and then he got creamed when the mountain blew. And this got me thinking of all the people at IBM, and I got to thinking about Dad and . . .

  * * *

  This is my first-ever VC meeting. Ethan has attended hundreds of them during his Valley career. Apparently, the Monday Partner's Meeting is a Silicon Valley tradition, according to Ethan. They mostly occur up at the venture capital "mall" at the corner of Sand Hill Road and Interstate 280. Monday is when partners agree to agree. And Tuesday is when the decisions are acted upon.

  Fifteen years in the business have loaned Ethan a rote tour-guidish quality. Humming up the 280, he further briefed me on the situation:

  "Initial presentations are made by capital seekers. If their idea seems promising, then there's a callback for a broader presentation - not unlike Broadway.

  "The VC team by then will have run due-diligence checks - spoken with insiders who have provided background on an idea - its suitability or marketability - as well as checked the technical robustness of the idea. Essentially, they must know what is the significance or defensibility of the technology underlying the idea? What is the overall viability of the idea. What do you have that the others don't? Is the necessary technical 'acumen on the team? Michael and I have been through this already. Today is the callback.

  "We passed all of the techie checks, but the VC firms aren't quite sure about Oop!’s marketability. With round-one seed capital, all the risk is ahead of you. Plus, software is a consumer, not a corporate business now - it's 10,000 units off to CompUSA instead of one jumbo unit to Delta Airlines or National Cash Register.

  "This isn't good for us, because Silicon Valley firms have little or no experience with Procter & Gamble-style focus grouping, but they won't admit it. So they pose as multimedia visionaries instead. They might as well be slitting open a sheep and reading the entrails. It's a big exercise in chain-yanking. Let the floor show begin!"

  We arrived and got out of the car. "Ethan, here - some leaves have fallen on your shoulder." I snowplowed away drifts of dandruff from his suit. "There," I said, "all set."

  * * *

  Condensed Version . . .Venture Capital Meeting

  (My First [and Last])

  1) Me:

  (I'm dressed like an outpatient; these VC people are dressed like they're about to whisper a deal into David Geffen's left ear. Why didn't Ethan dress me properly? He began flaking the moment we walked in the doorway. His shoulders!)

  "Hello."

  2) VC Woman with Barbra-Streisand-in-Concert Hairdo:

  "Investors want to see a committed, marketing-sensitive visionary at the product's helm." (Who the heck is that. . . Michael? Marketing Sensitive?)

  3) Me:

  (Nodding and seeming interested)

  "Hmmm ...."

  4) A different VC with an eerie resemblance to Barry Diller:

  "One of the main reasons people start companies is to control their environment and the people they work with."

  Michael nods. Ethan agrees.

  5) Richie Rich Boomersomething with loud Hermes tie:

  silence

  6) Barbra:

  (earnestly)

  "Is there - an opening for world class leadership in this product's area?"

  7) Barry:

  "Start-ups appeal either to jaded cynics - because they know the way things really work - or to the totally naive - because they don't. Which are you?"

  8) Ethan:

  "We're that irreducible 5 percent of talented people - our culture's pearl divers."

  9) Young VC guy, who would be the same age as Rosemary's Baby:

  "You'll need more than lots of pearl divers . . ." (smug titters) "You need focus groups. People surprise you. They tell you that what you thought was worth $99 is only worth $29."

  10) Barry:

  Sugarishly: "We have to function as parents to new companies who are in the process of growing up."

  11) Hermes tie:

  more silence

  12) Ethan:

  "That's where I come in." (give prisoner last cigarette)

  13) Ethan:

  (now on a roll)

  "VC was in a lull until spring of 1992, and then came" [awed pause] "convergence. Unless there's a breakthrough hit, by 1997, multimedia is going to be a leper industry. We have the missing killer app right here."

  14) Barbra:

  "Yes, but as a VC firm we like to feel we're beyond 'the hit thing' now. In general, we don't like small, technology-oriented companies. There's nothing the world wants as little as a new technology company. If you give a company $2 million, they'll spend it all and never ship a profitable product."

  15) Hermes tie:

  noise of his silence equals noise of his tie

  16) Rosemary's Baby:

  "With a round-one seed, all of the ris
k is ahead of you."

  17) Barry:

  "Frankly, we're not totally convinced you have a crew that can market your product, that is, should it even make it past beta."

  18) Me:

  (Detached metaphysical perspective: as we speak, the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a quarter of a mile south, running underneath the Mensa Freeway, is quietly blowing up atoms into quarks and bosons and leptons and Fruity Pebbles.)

  "Hmmm."

  19) Ethan:

  "Frankly," (Oooh - everybody's trying to compete with each other through overuse of the word frank) "I have brought four products to market myself. Four very successful products. (Unspoken sentiment hangs in the air like dying fart: "Yeah, but your companies all tanked within a year.") "Our staff is so dedicated to the project they are working without pay until an alpha version is ready."

  20) Me:

  (Inside thought balloon above my head as Ethan looks at me with this big You're-fucked-and-you-have-no-choice'' in front of all these suits):

  "What do you mean working without pay?"

  21) Me:

  (Out loud)

  "We have to have a product that works first, and we can take care of the business side, with your help . . ." (The one thing I say and it's obsequious and stupid. Q: Do I feel like a liability? A: Yes.)

  22) Hermes Tie:

  "We'd like to help you . . . mwah mwah mwah (Charlie Brown's Teacher noise) . . . no infrastructure . . . mwah mwah mwah . . . no corporate plan for growth . . . mwah mwah mwah. . . ." (Pull trap door)

  23) Rosemary's Baby:

  (Parting shot to me, in confidence, after the others have left - like he's really helping us out as he discreetly escorts me toward the Mission oak doorway): "You probably wouldn't want to work for a VC-funded firm because in the end they'll just crack the whip and force you to ship, even if it's not entirely full-featured."

  24) Suits:

  (I paraphrase)

  "Please fuck off and die."

  25) Ethan:

  "Dinner, dance, and a kiss at the door. So much for meeting number 216. Well, pal, there's a saying down in these parts: twenty-four hours heals all wounds.