Дуглас Коупленд - Microserfs

Bug asked Susan if she had some extra six-stud white beams, and she gave him some.

"I asked Allan what he did on Friday nights. He said he went to this one bar. I don't even think it had a name. A dive. Truck stop with grease burgers and piss beer. I went there three weekends in a row, and on the third weekend, he showed up, and I tried to be so casual. And we talked, and we got really deep really quickly – that scary kind of deep you experience when someone has you entranced.

"And he asked me to go for a drive with him. And so ask me, did I go?"

"Did you go?" asked Michael.

"Oh yeah. We drove around for an hour in his pickup and we talked and drank Bud Light, and I kept waiting for it to go somewhere, but my problem was I didn't know what it was, or where it was supposed to go ... where there was.

He'd swig and wipe his mouth and wipe his hand on the upholstery and nothing seemed to happen. Finally we returned to the bar. Back there, at the bar, he said he had to go, back to his ... girlfriend. But before he went he held my hand and he stroked it, and I thought I'd die of excitement."

Bug sighed.

"What happened next?" asked Susan.

"Me? I hounded him. Oh fuck, what a loser I was. I made all these needless deposits and withdrawals at the bank. $20. $50. $10. The manager finally came over and pointedly showed me the ATM machine. Allan always managed to elude me, so I never talked to him again.

Around the same time, I got a job offer at Microsoft and I took it – talk about escape hatch! And so there was never any closure with Allan. He's probably married now, and has 44 kids. I've been avoiding people ever since.

But there was one final incident, though. The weekend before I left for Microsoft, I went back to the dive, and there was Allan. I felt something swell in my heart, that maybe I'd have a second chance after all to really find out what it was that I wanted to happen, and I bought two beers and was carrying them over when I saw him go out to the parking lot with some other guy, taking some other guy out for a drive, and my heart fell like a bowl of goldfish smashing onto a cathedral floor. I guess it's his gig – little drives that go nowhere, with lonely boys. Whatta sleazebag."

Total silence had fallen over our office, save for a few machines purring. Bug picked up his Lego house and held it and smelled it.

"Sure, I know I'm a geek, and I know that predisposes me to introversion. And Microsoft did allow me to feed the introversion. But as you're all noticing for yourselves, you can't retreat like that here in the Valley. There's no excuse anymore to introvert. You can't use tech culture as an excuse not to confront personal issues for astounding periods of time. It's like outer space, where the vacuum makes your body explode unless you locate sanctuary."

Ethan said, "You mean to say you haven't ... done anything since the mid-1980s?"

Susan said, "What do you mean, done, Ethan?"

"You know – made whoopee, for Christ's sake."

Bug said, "More like ever, Eth ... I had my hand held once. Woo-ee! I'd be a lousy contestant on The Newlywed Game."

Michael had gone to the bathroom when this subject came up.

Susan asked, "Well, Bug, what about now?"

Bug said, "Now? I don't know if it's because I was afraid of being gay or because I was afraid of being rejected, but all I know is that now feels like the first chance at having some sort of go at being in love with someone else. I was so busy geeking out that I never had to examine my feelings about anything. I jumped into one of those little cartoon holes they use in old Merry Melodies, and I just came out the other side, and the other side is here. Didn't you ever wonder where the other side was?"

This was actually a pretty good question, and I got to remembering that I did sort of used to wonder where the cartoon holes would take you if you hopped into them.

Bug got quiet and put his head on Susan's legs. "You know, Sooz, I would have come here for nothing. I never had to get paid." Bug looked up. "Oh God, Ethan, you didn't hear that." He relaxed. "Well you know what I mean. I just wanted to leave the old me behind and start all over again. It's not the money. It's never been the money. It rarely ever is. It wasn't with any of us – was it? Ever?"

I don't think it ever was. We lay around and were silent while Bug pulled himself together. I put on an old Bessie Smith CD and we sat, alcohol scrambling our codes, our thoughts, our lives, if only for the remaining darkness, until work made its claim upon us once more.

Today was one of those days where I was snapped awake by a bad dream and a hangover. Beware of those layered Eurodrinks – they're made with scary, bee-sting-filled liqueurs!

All of us received an e-mail from Bug:

Hi kids. Me here.

Remember back in high school, there were always those peple who were in relationhips starting in eighth grade, and they're still in relationships today? They know all the logical sequnce of the way things are supposed to happen. Like in the third week, they have a spat, and they say, "Oh, well this is just the Third Week Spat," and it passes. Never having had a relationship, I don't know how all the steps in a relationship are suppossed to go. I have to learn all the steps, decades later. But I'll do it.

Sorry I lost it last night. I'm off to a B&B in Napa for a few days to think things through. Leisure and all of that. Freaky but necessary. Live and love. Bye kids.

It appears we might be getting a publishing deal lined up – with Maxis, the Sim City people. Apparently the fish are biting at the bait: Broderbund, Adobe, and Alias have also shown a bit of interest, too. So I guess we're doing something worthwhile, or more to the point, possibly profitable. Uh oh! Am I losing my integrity, my One-Point-Oh sensibility?

I drove with Abe and Ethan to Electronic Arts up the 101 in San Mateo, on Fashion Island Boulevard – a geek party friend of ours was going to let us beta-play a new game – and we got to drive the Highway 92-101 cloverleaf I like so much.

Like most Silicon Valley buildings, EA's headquarters, the Century Two complex, are sleek and clean, a Sony-based aesthetic, where a sleek, machine-shaped object contains magic components on the inside that do cool shit. Susan says it's a "male" aesthetic. "If men could have their way, every building on earth would resemble a Trinitron."

EA's parking lot was so odd-entirely composed of brand-new cars. I felt like I was in the lot at Alamo. In the fountain out front there was a big plaza sculpture plus a bunch of rubber float toys in water crested with Joy dishwashing liquid bubbles.

"I smell nerds," said Abe.

The lobby had a vitrine containing a football signed by John Madden and a basketball signed by Michael Jordan, game licensees, both.

Played their new game all afternoon. It was almost completely bug-free and they'll be shipping within weeks.

Fashion Island, BTW, is really great – it's all these huge dead department stores that got marooned by new freeway ramp construction.

After we drove back down the 101 from San Mateo, I checked my answering machine at the office. Michael left a message to phone him, so I did – even though he was sitting in his own office just a spit away. No matter. I got his machine's message, cobbled together from old Learn how to speak Japanese tapes:

[Resonant Berlitzian voice:]

Japanese at a glance

[Befuddled U.S. tourist:]