Microserfs

Microserfs Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Microserfs Read Online Free PDF
Author: Douglas Coupland
Tags: prose_contemporary
It's getting scary. Shall we worship?"
    It was then that she asked me, in a lowered tone, "Who's Jed?"
    She had seen me keyboard in my password - like HAL from 2001.
    And so I closed the door and told her about Jed, and you know, I was glad I was able to tell someone at last.
    * * *
    Mid-afternoon, Bug, Todd, Michael, and I grabbed some road-Snapples in the kitchen and headed over to pick up some manuals at the library, out behind the Administration building. It was more of a fresh-air jaunt than anything else.
    It was raining quite heavily, but Bug pulled his usual stunt. He made us all walk through the Campus's forest undergrowth instead of simply taking the pleasant winding path that meanders through the Campus trees - the Microsoft path that speaks of Wookiees and Smurfs amid the salal, ornamental plums, rhododendrons, Japanese maple, arbutus, huckleberry, hemlock, cedars, and firs.
    Bug believes that Bill sits at his window in the Admin Building and watches how staffers walk across the Campus. Bug believes that Bill keeps note of who avoids the paths and uses the fastest routes to get from A to B, and that Bill rewards these devil-may-care trailblazers with promotions and stock, in the belief that their code will be just as innovative and dashing.
    We all ended up soaking wet, with Oregon Grape stains on our Dockers by the time we got to the library, and on the way back we read the Riot Act and said that Bug had to stop geeking out and learn to enculturate, and that for his own good he should take the path - and he agreed. But we could see that it was killing Bug - literally killing him - to have to walk along the path past where Bill's office is supposed to be.
    Todd toyed with Bug and got him going on the subject of Xerox PARC, thus getting Bug all bitter and foaming. Bug is still in a sort of perpetual grief that Xerox PARC dropped the football on so many projects.
    And then Michael, who had been silent up to now, said, "Hey - if you cut over this berm, it's a little faster," and he cut off the path, and Bug's eyes just about popped out of his head, and Michael found a not bad shortcut. Right outside the Admin Building.
    * * *
    I realize I haven't seen a movie in six months. I think the last one was Curly Sue on the flight to Macworld Expo, and that hardly counted. I really need a life, bad.
    * * *
    It turns out Abe has entrepreneurial aspirations. We had dinner in the down stairs cafeteria together (Indonesian Bamay with frozen yogurt and double espresso). He's thinking of quitting and becoming a pixelation broker - going around to museums and buying the right to digitize their paintings. It's a very "Rich Microsoft" thing to do. Microsoft's millionaires are the first generation of North American nerd wealth.
    Once Microsofters' ships come in, they travel all over: Scotland and Patagonia and Thailand . . . Conde Nast Traveler-ish places. They buy Shaker furniture, Saabs, koi, Pilchuk glass, native art, and 401(K)s to the max. The ultrarichies build fantasy homes on the Samamish Plateau loaded with electronic toys.
    It's all low-key spending, mostly, and fresh and fun. Nobody's buying crypts, I notice - though when the time comes that they do, said crypts will no doubt be emerald and purple colored, and lined with Velcro and Gore-Tex.
    Abe, like most people here, is a fiscal Republican, but otherwise, pretty empty-file in the ideology department. Vesting turns most people into fiscal Republicans, I've noticed.
    * * *
    The day went quickly. The rain is back again, which is nice. The summer was too hot and too dry for a Washington boy like me.
    I am going to bring in some Japanese UFO-brand yaki soba tomorrow and see if Karla is into lunch. She needs carbs. Skittles and aspartame is no diet for a coder.
    Well, actually, it is.
    * * *
    A thought: Sometimes the clouds and sunlight will form in a way you've never seen them do before, and your city will feel as if it's another city altogether. On the Campus today at sunset,
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