Дуглас Коупленд - Microserfs

"Oh, so that explains the Kraft cheese slices. Carton-loads."

Karla, still low energy from the flu, broke in: "You know, Mrs. Underwood, I think all tech people are slightly autistic. Have you ever heard about dyspraxial – Michael is an elective mute."

"No."

"Dyspraxia's like this: say I asked you to give me that newspaper. There's no reason on earth why you couldn't. But if you had dyspraxia, then you'd be blocked and you'd just sit there frozen. Dyspraxia is the condition where you become incapable of initiating an action."

"Then everybody is dyspraxic, dear. It's called procrastination."

"Exactly. It's just that geeks are slightly more so than most people. Autism's a good way of focusing out the world to exclude everything but the work at hand."

I added that Michael was also the opposite of a dyspraxic, too. "If he has an idea, he acts on it. But he has to put the idea into action immediately – like this company – or with an elegant strip of code. He's a blend of the two extremes."

Karla added, "The doors in Michael's brain are wide open to certain things, while simultaneously nailed shut to all others. And we must admit, he does get things done. He has no brakes on certain topics. He's a true techie geek."

Mom looked askance.

I said, "You can say geeks now, Mom."

"Yes, well, you geeks are an odd blend of doors and brakes."

The discussion changed to the (groan) information superhighway. "Do you think libraries are going to become obsolete?" she said stirring her coffee and fearing for her job. "Books?"

Karla lapsed into a discussion of the Dewey decimal system and the Library of Congress cataloging system, which was numbing to say the least. Mom found herself begrudgingly getting very into the discussion of cataloging. Librarians love order, logic, and linearity.

In the end lunch was like a balloon with not enough helium in it to float – not enough helium in it to even puff it up, really. I think the dynamic of Mom and Karla's relationship has been set. At least they don't hate each other. Truthfully, I'm a little worried ... why is Mom being like this?

Later on, I found myself being the only person working in the office. It was so strange, and I can't remember the last time this happened. Actually, I wasn't totally alone: Look and Feel were scurrying about inside their Habitrail. But other than that, I was alone. It was odd to be the only person in the office. I wished I could go to Kinko's and photocopy myself ... be more productive.

Karla found this allergy medicine I've been taking and said, "This is what's been causing your nightmares." She could be right – I hope she is. I'm going to stop as of today.

No nightmares last night.

Again, no nightmares. Problem solved?

Misty came into our work space and barked at Look and Feel. Gerbils really stink. I'll be glad if we ever get out of this space.

Karla and I were watching cartoons, and that old Warner Brothers cartoon came on with the frog that's buried in cement in the 1920s and comes alive and sings and dances, but only in front of one person. Karla looked at it and said, "That's me around your mother. I sit around and say 'ribbet' around her, but I'm the dancing, singing frog around you."

Everyone is getting a cold and sounds nasal and scary. Todd said, "Man, you don't want to see the stuff coming out of my nose into the Kleenex. Eggs Benedict." Thanks, Todd.

Look and Feel had babies! We think there are five, pink and plump, so we're going to call them Lisa, Jazz, Classic, Point, and Click. We hope they don't get eaten by their parents. We put raw hamburger into the Habitrail tubes to keep Look and Feel away from "the kids." The Habitrail is actually rather like Lagan's Run. Imagine gerbils with little 1970s feathered hairdos!

I was up at Ethan's frighteningly chic house tonight (all those bank cameras) and told him about the other night, when I wished I could go to Kinko's and photocopy myself. He misunderstood me. I merely wanted to increase my productivity, but he thought I was getting all cosmic and wanted to discuss the universe, and this became a cue for Ethan to commandeer the conversation into his direction, as usual.

Ethan did the "Ethan Thing" and went off on a tangent about himself. He said, "I've already photocopied myself!"

He explained: "People tend to assume that as we get older, years naturally start feeling shorter and shorter – that this is 'nature's way.' But this is crap. Maybe what's really happening is that we have increased the information density of our culture to the point where our perception of time has become all screwy.

I began noticing long ago that years are beginning to shrink – that a year no longer felt like a year, and that one life was not one life anymore – that 'life multiplication' was going to be necessary.

You never heard about people 'not having lives' until about five years ago, just when all of the '80s technologies really penetrated our lives." He listed them off:

VCRs

tape rentals

PCs

modems

answering machines

touch tone dialing

cellular phones

cordless phones

call screening

phone cards

ATMs

fax machines

Federal Express

bar coding

cable TV

satellite TV

CDs

"calculators of almost other-worldly power that are so cheap that they practically come free with a tank of gas."

"In the information Dark Ages, before 1976, before all of this, relationships and television were the only forms of entertainment available. Now we have other things. Fortunately depression runs in my family."

"Fortunately ?" I asked.

"Absolutely, pal. I couldn't figure out a way of rigging my brain to work in parallel instead of linear mode – and then they invented Prozac and all the Prozac isomers and kablam! – my brain's been like an Oracle parallel processing server ever since."

"I'm not sure I get this, Ethan."

"Prozac is great – and I think it goes beyond seratonin and uptake receptors and that kind of thing. I think these chemicals physically rewire your brain to think in parallel. It literally converts your brain from Macintosh or IBM into a Cray C3 or a Thinking Machines CMS. Prozac-type chemicals don't suppress feelings – they break them down into smaller 'feeling units,' which are more quickly computationally processed by the new, parallel brain."

"I think I need a second to digest this, Eth -"

"I don't. Linear thinking is out. Parallel is in."

"Explain to me more clearly – how does whatever you take affect your time?"

"I remember once when I was majorly depressed for, like, six months. When it ended, I felt like I had to make up for those six 'lost' months. Man, depression sucks. So my logic is, as long as I'm not bummed, I'm not wasting time. So I make sure I'm never bummed." He seemed quite happy to be telling his theory.

"You know how when somebody says, 'Remember that party at the beach last year?' and you say, 'Oh God, was that last year? It feels like last month '? If I'm going to live a year, I want my whole year's worth of year. I don't want it feeling like only one month. Everything I do is an attempt to make time 'feel' like time again – to make It feel longer. I get my time in bulk."

I left Ethan's thoroughly depressed, and not sure whether I still disliked Ethan or just felt sorry for him. I e-mailed Abe with a synopsis of Ethan's time theory, and he was online and answered me right away: