Microserfs

Todd's obsessing on his body big-time these days. This afternoon he came in late from the gym and sat on the living room Orion carpet flexing his arm and staring at his muscles as they bulged - buff and bored. His biggest project at the moment is making pyramids out of his empty tubs of protein supplements with their gold labels that resemble van art from the 1970s. Why do nerds make pyramids out of everything? Imagine Egypt!

The Cablevision was out for some reason, and Todd was just lying there, flexing his arms on the floor in front of the snowy screen. He said to me, "There has to be more to existence than this. 'Dominating as many broad areas of automated consumerism as possible' - that doesn't seem to cut it anymore." Todd?

This speech was utterly unlike him - thinking about life beyond his triceps or his Supra. Maybe, like his parents, he has a deep-seated need to believe in something, anything. For now it's his bod . . . I think.

He said, "What we do at Microsoft is just as repetitive and dreary as any other job, and the pay's the same as any other job if you're not in the stock loop, so what's the deal . . . why do we get so into it? What's the engine that pulls us through the repetition? Don't you ever feel like a cog, Dan? . . . wait - the term 'cog' is outdated - a cross-platform highly transportable binary object!"

I said, "Well, Todd, work isn't, and was never meant to be a person's whole life."

"Yeah, I know that, but aside from the geek-badge-of-honor stuff about doing cool products first and shipping them on time and money, what else is there?"

I thought about this. "So what is it you're really asking me?"

"Where does morality enter our lives, Dan? How do we justify what we do to the rest of humanity? Microsoft is no Bosnia."

Religious upbringing.

Karla came into the room at this point. She turned off the TV set and looked at Todd square in the eyes and said, "Todd: you exist not only as a member of a family or a company or a country, but as a member of a species - you are human. You are part of humanity. Our species currently has major problems and we're trying to dream our way out of these problems and we're using computers to do it. The construction of hardware and software is where the species is investing its very survival, and this construction requires zones of peace, children born of peace, and the absence of code-interfering distractions. We may not achieve transcendence through computation, but we will keep ourselves out of the gutter with them. What you perceive of as a vacuum is an earthly paradise - the freedom to, quite literally, line-by-line, prevent humanity from going nonlinear."

She sat down on the couch, and there was rain drumming on the roof, and I realized that there weren't enough lights on in the room and we were all quiet.

Karla said, "We all had good lives. None of us were ever victimized as far as I know. We have never wanted for anything, nor have we ever lusted for anything. Our parents are all together, except for Susan's. We've been dealt good hands, but the real morality here, Todd, is whether these good hands are squandered on uncreative lives, or whether these hands are applied to continuing humanity's dream."

The rain continued.

"It's no coincidence that as a species we invented the middle classes. Without the middle classes, we couldn't have had the special type of mindset that consistently spits out computational systems, and our species could never have made it to the next level, whatever that level's going to be. Chances are, the middle classes aren't even a part of the next level. But that's neither here nor there. Whether you like it or not, Todd, you, me, Dan, Abe, Bug, and Susan - we're all of us the fabricators of the human dream's next REM cycle. We are building the center from which all else will be held. Don't question it, Todd, and don't dwell on it, but never ever let yourself forget it."

Karla looked at me. "Dan, let's go out and get a Grand Slam Breakfast. I have $1.99 and it's burning a hole in my pocket."

* * *

Susan taped the following clipping from the Wall Street Journal to her door (which won't be hers much longer - she's moving soon): Sept. 3, 1993, a littie while ago. The clipping was about the Japanese rainy season that started this year in June, and never ended:

A typhoon flooded the moats of Japan's imperial palace in downtown Tokyo. Imperial carp fled their home for the first time and flopped in knee-deep waters covering one of Japan's busiest intersections.

Susan's "totally right-lobe" now.

I tried to find her and ask her what she meant with the article, but she was out on Capitol Hill getting pixelated with her no-doubt right-lobed grunge buddies.