"Thanks." He booted up his computer. "I guess I'd better prepare for the trip. Where did I store that file-you'd think Lucy Ricardo handled my information for me. Well, Daniel-we'll talk later on?" He looked for something underneath a cardboard box containing a '60s Milton-Bradley game of Memory.
He then looked up at me, gave me an 'I want to return to the controllable and nonthreatening world inside my computer' stare. You have to respect this, so the rest of the crew and I left him inside his office, clicking away on his board, knowing that Michael, like a young beauty swept out of a small Nebraska town by some Hollywood Daddy-O, was soon to leave our midst for headier airs, never to return.
Mom called. Dad stuff-after not sleeping all night again, he dressed for work and then went into the garage once more to work on his model trains When she tries to talk about the firing, he gets all jolly and brushes it away, saying the future's just going to be fine. But he has no details. No pictures of what comes next.
Dad called. From his den. He wanted to know what the employment situation was like at Microsoft for someone like him. I couldn't believe it. So now I'm worried about him. He should know better. I guess it's shock.
I told him to relax, to not even try to think about doing anything for at least a few more days until the shock wears off. He acted all hurt, as if I was trying to get rid of him. He wasn't himself. I tried to tell him what Karla had told me, about fiftysomethings now just entering the ease-of-use curve with new technologies, but he wouldn't listen. It ended on a bad note, and this bugged me, but I didn't know one other practical thing I could say.
I went to Uwajima-Ya and bought some UFO yaki soba noodles, the ones that steep in hot water in their own little plastic bowl. Amid all the lunch-with-Bill foofaraw, Karla and me managed to eat together. I asked her what her seven Jeopardy! dream categories would be-I told her about everyone else's, and she considered these as she twisted the yaki soba noodles in the little plastic dish, and then she said "they would have to be:"
• Orchards
• Labrador dogs
• The history of phone pranks
• Crime novels
• Intel chips
• Things HAL says in 2001, and
• My parents are psychopaths.
She then said to me, "Dan, I have a question about identity for you. Here it is: What is the one thing more than any other thing that makes one person different from any other person?"
I got all ready to blurt out an answer but then nothing came out of my mouth.
The question seemed so obvious to start with, but when I thought about it, I realized how difficult it is-and sort of depressing, because there's really not very much that distinguishes anyone from anyone else. I mean, what makes one mallard duck different from any other mallard duck? What makes one grizzly bear different from any other grizzly bear? Identity is so tenuous-based on so little, when you really consider it.
"Their personality?" I lamely replied. "Their, uhhh, soul?"
"Maybe. I think I'm beginning to believe the soul theory, myself. Last June I went to my ten-year high school reunion. Everyone's body had certainly aged over the decade, but everyone's essence was essentially the same as it had been when we were all in kindergarten. Their spirits were the same, I guess. Dana McCulley was still a phony; Norman Tillich was still a jock; Eileen Kelso was still shockingly naive. Their bodies may have looked different, but they were absolutely the same person underneath. I decided that night that people really do have spirits. It's a silly thing to believe. I mean, silly for a logical person like me."
As reality returned in mid-afternoon, my "boss," Shaw, came in for a hand-holding session. Shaw is a set-for-lifer. If you had to kill off all of the program managers, one by one, he would be the last to go-he has fourteen direct reports (serfs) underneath him.
Shaw really wanted me to have a juicy problem so he could help me deal with it, but the only problem I could think of was how we're never going to make our shipping deadline in seven days, and with Michael gone, that's just more work for all of us. But this problem wasn't juicy enough for him, so he went off in search of a more exotically troubled worker.
Shaw is fortysomething, one of maybe twelve fortysomethings on the Campus. One grudgingly has to respect someone who's fortysomething and still in computers-there's a core techiness there that must be respected. Shaw still remembers the Flintstones era of computers, with punch cards and little birds inside the machines that squawked, "It's a living."
My only problem with Shaw is that he became a manager and stopped coding. Being a manager is all hand-holding and paperwork-not creative at all. Respect is based on how much of a techie you are and how much coding you do. Managers either code or don't code, and it seems there are a lot more noncoding managers these days. Shades of IBM.
Shaw actually gave me an okay review in the semiannual performance review last month, so I have no personal beef against him. And to be honest, this is still not a hierarchical office: The person with the most information pertinent to any decision is the one who makes that decision. But I'm still cannon fodder when the crunch comes.
Shaw is also a Baby Boomer, and he and his ilk are responsible for (let me rant a second) this thing called "The Unitape"-an endless loop of elevator jazz Microsoft plays at absolutely every company function. It's so irritating and it screams a certain, "We're not like our parents, we're flouting convention" blandness. One of these days it's going to turn the entire under-30 component of the company into a mob of deranged postal workers who rampage through the Administration Building with scissors and Bic lighters.
Checked the WinQuote: The stock was down 85 cents over the day. That means Bill lost $70 million today, whereas I only lost fuck all. But guess who'll sleep better?
We slaved until 1:00 a.m. and I gave Karla and Todd rides home, first making a quick run to Safeway for treats. At the cash register, while paying for our Sour Strings and nectarines, we got into the usual nerd discussion over the future of computing.
Karla said, "You can not de-invent the wheel, or radios, or, for that matter, computers. Long after we're dead, computers will continue to be developed and sooner or later-it is not a matter of if, but when-an 'Entity' is going to be created that has its own intelligence. Will this occur ten years from now? A thousand years from now? Whenever. The Entity cannot be stopped. It will happen. It cannot be de-invented.
"The critical question is, Will this Entity be something other than human? The artificial intelligence community admits it has failed to produce intelligence by trying to duplicate human logic processes. AI-ers are hoping to create life-mimicking programs that breed with each other, simulating millions of years of evolution by cross-breeding these programs together, ultimately creating intelligence-an Entity. But probably not a human entity modeled on human intelligence."
I said, "Well, Karla, we're only human-we can only know our own minds-how can we possibly know any other type of mind? What else could the Entity be? It will have sprung from our own brains-the initial algorithms, at least. There's nothing else we could be duplicating except the human mind."
Todd said that the Entity is what freaks out his ultra-religious parents. He said they're most frightened of the day when people allow machines to have initiative-the day we allow machines to set their own agendas.
"Oh God, I'm trapped in a 1950s B-movie," said Karla.
Afterward, once I was back in my room by myself, I got to mulling over our discussion. Perhaps the Entity is what people without any visions of an afterworld secretly yearn to build-an intelligence that will supply them with specific details-supply pictures.
Maybe we like to believe that Bill knows what the Entity will be. It makes us feel as though there's a moral force holding the reins of technological progress. Maybe he does know. But then maybe Bill simply provides a focus for the company when no other focus can be found. I mean, if it weren't for the cult of Bill, this place would be deadsville-like a great big office supply company. Which is sort of what it is. I mean, if you really think about it.