Read Online Microserfs by Douglas Coupland - Free Book Online Page B

you the same question, and you say, "I will," too.
    * * *
    There are other reasons Karla's lovable, too, reasons not so poetic, but just as real. She's like a friend to me, and we have all of these common interests - "mind meld" - whatever. I can discuss computers and Microsoft and that part of our lives - but we also have esoteric conversations that have nothing to do with tech life. I've never really had a friend this close before.
    And there's the nonlinear stuff: Karla's intuitive and I'm not, yet she's still on my frequency. She understands why yaki soba noodles in a plastic UFO-shaped container from Japan are intrinsically glorious. She scrunches up her forehead when she knows she's not explaining an idea as clearly as she knows she can, and she gets frustrated.
    Anyway, I want to remember that love can happen. Because there is life after not having a life. I never expected love to happen. What was I expecting from life, then?
    As I type this in, I feel small arms around my neck and a kiss on my jugular and I don't know, but I think I may be forgiven. I hope so because my forgetting the anniversary thing was an honest mistake. I'm new at this love thing.
    * * *
    Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
    Cedars Sinai
    starburst explosion
    Gak
    UNDO
    Ctrl Z
    CtrI Z
    CtrI Z
    Phoenix
    Cleveland
    Luis Vuitton
    Kalashnikov
    Waxahachie
    LA Lakers
    San Antonio
    bubble economy
    Creamsicles
    Livermore
    the place for ribs
    Taylor Sequences
    frog
    Bleeding eyeliner
    Colossal
    SUNDAY
    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