Microserfs

As Oop! users won't have the actual plastic blocks in their hands, Oop! generates new experiences to compensate for this lost tactility: feedback loops . . . hidden messages . . . or "rewards" for properly completing a kit; i.e., King Kong will climb up and down your Empire State Building and install the flag if you finish. Oop! comes equipped with "starter modules" such as houses, cat shapes, cars, buildings, and so forth that can be added on to or modified or finished in an unlimited number of colors or surfaces: slate, leopardskin, woodgrain, and so forth. Oop! structures can grow hair or plant life. Oop! structures can be distorted, stretched, morphed, or "Jell-O'd." Oop! users can dissolve the connection lines between bricks to create "solid" structures.

Oop! constructions can be saved in memory or they can be "destroyed" by:

"Los Angeles" (earthquake simulator)

"Pyro" (fire and melting)

"Ruins" (decay simulator: x-numbers of years of decomposition can be selected and simulated. Imagine your ranch house rotted into fragments and covered in kudzu or a variety of choking vines. Another idea: "Flood")

"Big Foot" (elder sibling emulator: kicks constructions into bits)

"Terror!" (a bomb explodes either inside or outside the structure)

As the Lego Generation ages (and as the Oop! product invariably grows more sophisticated), Oop! becomes a powerful real-world modeling tool usable by scientists, animators, contractors, and architects. Object-Oriented Programming design allows great flexibility for licensees to develop cross-platform software add-ons.

Build every possible universe with . . .

Oop!

We felt surreal from Michael's offer.

At sundown, we congregated in the living room, turned off the ESPN, cracked open two Safeway fire logs, and chewed over Michael's data, while Mishka chewed up a Windows NT box. We felt like a Magritte painting.

We talked some more, but the basic idea was clear. As Abe said, "It's virtual Lego - a 3-D modeling system with almost unlimited future potential."

"Oop! sounds too fun to resist - like that pile of FREE BIRD SEED in the old Road Runner cartoons," said Bug.

Susan said, "Maybe Oop! is Sea Monkeys. Maybe it seems unbelievably fun, but in the end winds up as a cruel, bitter letdown upon arrival."

"I doubt it," said Abe. "Michael's a genius. We all know that. And the ERS looked great."

"Just think," said Karla, "Lego can be rendered into anything, in 2 or 3 dimensions. This product has the possibility for becoming the universal standard for 3-dimensional modeling."

We silently nodded.

And we didn't talk much. We just looked into the flames and thought.

* * *

Mom called. She's learning the butterfly stroke - at 60!

* * *

Karla kept on talking about bodies, her obsession, tonight, about an hour ago before she fell asleep and I, as ever, remained wide-eyed and awake.

"When I was younger," she said, "I went through a phase where I wanted to be a machine. I think this is one of the normal phases that young people go through now - like The Lord of the Rings phase, the Ayn Rand phase - I honestly didn't want to be flesh; I wanted to be 'precision technology' - like a Los Angeles person; I listened to Kraftwerk and 'Cars' by Gary Numan."

(A concerned pause.) "Oh ... is your foot twitching, Dan? Let me fix it for you . . .

(Insert foot massage here.)

"That was a decade ago, and years have passed since I had had that particular dream of wanting to become a machine.

"Then four summers ago when I was visiting my parents down in McMinnville, I accidentally fell back into the body/machine dream.

"It was a summer day - too bright out - and I was walking amid the family's apple orchards and developed a brain-splitting, wasp's sting of a headache and became nauseous. I walked into the house and went into the basement to be cool, but I threw up on the cement floor next to the washer and dryer. I lost control of my left arm and then I passed out on top of a stack of laundry for three hours. Dad freaked out over the paralysis and drove me into the city and we did a brain scan to check for stroke damage and clots and stuff.

"They injected all sorts of isotopes into me and I found myself part of a literal body/machine system - being bodily radioactive - and inserted like a fuel rod into a body-scanning machine. I remember saying, to myself, 'So this is the feeling of being a machine.' I felt more curious about death than I felt afraid; I felt glad to be no longer human for a few brief minutes."

"Was there a blood clot?" I asked.

"No. Simple sunstroke. And the feeling of my being a machine evaporated quickly, too. But the whole incident made me decide to discover my body, pronto. Here," she said, scratching my tender inner forearms lightly with her fingernails, sending me into paroxysms of delight. "How does that feel?"

"Glrmmph."

"Just as I thought. People who do repetitive work on keyboards tend lo have highly erogenous forearms and shoulder cuffs. Now, you scratch me."