"We could take turns going psycho," said Bug.
Susan, writing the words D-U-R-A-N/D-U-R-A-N on the proximal phalanges of her fingers, said, "You already are psycho, Bug. That doesn't count."
Susan read aloud bits from the Handbook of Highway Engineering:
"'Improperly installed or unwarranted signals can result in the following conditions:
-Excessive delay
-Disobedience of the signal indications
-Use of less adequate routes to avoid the signal
-Increase of accident frequency
She paused and looked at the fire for a while. "I wonder if this guy is alive and if he's married?"
I called to see if Mom was feeling better, and she was. She's signed up for swimming classes at the local pool. But the big news occurred when Dad got on the extension line and shouted at me, "I'm employed!"
"Way to go, Dad. I told you something would come up. What are you going to be doing?"
"Oh-this and that. Michael is certainly one bright young fellow. Odd. But bright."
"You're working for Michael?''
"I certainly am."
"At Microsoft?"
"No, he's starting something else, a new company."
"He IS? What are you working on there?" (*Shock*)
"And he's living in one of the spare bedrooms-can you believe it?"
(Good God!) "Yes, I can. And your job description?"
"Here, your mother wants to speak to you . . ."
Mom chatted about being relieved with Dad's salary plus rent money flowing in. But the job description never arrived. Nor any clue about this mysterious new company.
We have a new word for vaporware: Sea Monkeys, as in, "ScriptX is really Sea Monkeys!"
Susan said, "Remember when you were a kid and sent away for that little nuclear family with Ddd wearing a crown and everything, and instead all you got was . . . brine shrimp ?"
Reading a book about viruses. Went into Boeing Surplus again. It was Monday, so all the new magazines were in.
Karla and I were here in my room, lying on my bed-bare legs akimbo- and we made this really embarrassing observation that neither of us have tan lines-that we spent all summer in the crunch mode to meet shipping deadline.
Karla began talking all Star Trekky again-the best thing about her.
She said, "I don't believe human beings store memory in our brains exclusively-there simply aren't enough storage slots or interconnective possibilities. And so if not in the brain, then where? I concluded that another viewpoint on memory was to see our bodies as 'peripheral memory storage devices.'"
Hence, *bliss*, shiatsu.
"You know yourself, Dan, that every sitcom ever broadcast is stored in
your brain-that's terabits of terabits of memory-as well as the details of Burt and Loni's divorce. Brains just don't have enough space to handle all these bits. And so I decided to learn shiatsu massage-as a means of thawing memory frozen inside the body."
I thought about this. The concept of body as hard drive seemed very plausible to me.
I couldn't believe we had been enemies for so long. Trek on, woman!
So Dad's working-for Michael. Michael is hiring people. That is so random. The world is indeed chaotic.
Space Needle 1962
Mattel
C+++++++++++ silver lens sunglasses
Redmond
Schaumberg, III.
Interstate 80/287, NJ
Dallas Galleria/LBJ Fwy.
Torrey Pines/UTC Sorrento Valley, Ca.
Metroplex/lrvine, Ca.
King of Prussia/Route 202
Tandy Corp., Fort Worth, Texas 76107
relentless... crispy...
fluids...
200 years from now
Ebola Reston
Marburg
Hepatitis non-A/non-B
Ebola Zaire
Sabia
Michelangelo Machupo Rift Valley Hanta
TUESDAY
A FedEx pack arrived today with letters for everybody: RoommatesGeek House followed by our postal address. Talk about news. Michael's offering all of us jobs at a start-up company he's assembled down in Silicon Valley. Excerpts from Michael's letter:
. . . People our age are abandoning the tech megacultures in droves, starting up their own companies, or joining small, content-based start-ups. There's a recruiting frenzy going on . . . . multimedia craziness and the big companies that aren't minting money are hemorrhaging brains. It's intellectual Darwinism.
. . . The five of you are rudderless at the moment. Is now not the time to take a risk and jump into the future?
. . . Some say that the world is visibly cleaving into a race of information Haves, and a race of information Have-Nots. Whatever. Let me simply say that history is happening, it's happening now and it is happening here, in Silicon Valley and in San Francisco.
. . . Tell me, are you seriously going to be at Microsoft 20 years from now? 15? 10? 5? Or even 2 years? At what point do you decide that you have to take your own life into your own hands?
. . . At the very least, you'll make an 'okay salary if you work with me; at best, you'll gain equity in something that might become very valuable; I have an idea for a product that I think will be very popular. And wouldn't it be amusing for all of us to be together again!
. . . I must have your decisions immediately. Do call.
Most definitely yours,
Michael
Michael has designed this amazing code and the scary part is completed already-the proprietary work that could only have sprouted from Michael's brain-Object Oriented Programming from another galaxy. And he's been doing it in his spare time-as a game called Oop!. He offered me a job coding, as opposed to just testing . . . who knows how long it'll take me to move up to coding at Microsoft?
He sent us a rough draft of a product description he's written plus ERS-Engineering Requirements Specifications. Herewith:
Oop!
Oop! is a virtual construction box-a bottomless box of 3D Lego-type bricks that runs on IBM or Mac platforms with CD-ROM drives. If a typical Lego-type brick has eight "bumps"; an Oop! brick can have from eight to 8,000 bumps, depending on the precision demanded by the user.
Oop! users can virtually fly in and out of their creations, or they can print them out on a laser printer. Oop! users can build their ideas on a "pad" or they can build their ideas in 3D space, a revolving space station; running ostriches . . . whatever. Oop! allows users to clone structures, and add these clones onto each other, permitting easy megaconstructions that use little memory. Customized Oop! blocks can be created and saved. The ratios and proportions of Oop! bricks can also be customized by the user in much the same way typefaces are scaled.
Imagine:
"Oopenstein"-flesh-like Oop! bricks or cells, each with ascribed
biological functions that allow users to create complex life forms
using combinations of single and cloned cell structures. Create
life!
"Mount Oopmore"-a function that allows users to take a scanned
photo, texture map that photo, and convert it into a 3D visualized
Oop! object.
"Oop-Mahal"-famous buildings, preconstructed in Oop!, that the
user can then modify as desired.
"Frank Lloyd Oop"-architectural Oop! for adults.
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.