Microserfs by Douglas Coupland Read Free Book Online

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.
    THURSDAY
    Woke up at 8:30 and had breakfast in the cafeteria - no crunchy cereals for the next week, thank you.
    Over oatmeal, Bug and me were looking at some of the foreign employees - from France, or something - who were smoking outside in the cold and rain. Only the foreign employees smoke here - and always in sad little groups. Smoking's not allowed inside anywhere. You'd think they'd get the message.
    We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude - they'd invent a little icon for a headwaiter that, once clicked, made you wait 45 minutes for your file. It's no surprise that user-friendliness is a concept developed on the West Coast. The guy who invented the Smiley face is running for mayor of Seattle - for real. It was in the news.
    * * *
    Mom phoned the minute I entered my office. She visited the garage this morning - a hot, dry Palo Alto morning with white sunlight screaming in through the cracks around the garage door - and there was Dad again in his blue IBM business suit and tie, standing in the center of his U-shaped, waist-high trainscape with just one dim light shining from the ceiling above, pushing his buttons and making the trains shunt and run and speed through mountains and over bridges.
    Mom decided that enough was enough, that Dad really needed somebody to talk with - someone to listen to him. She pulled up one of the old Suzy Wong bamboo cocktail bar stools left over from the basement renovation, put aside her usual lack of enthusiasm for his model trains, and talked to Dad about them, like it was show-and-tell time.
    "The model train setup has expanded since you were here last, Danny," she told me. "There's a complete small town now, and the mountains are steeper and he's put more of those little green foam trees on them. It's like Perfectville, the town where everybody's supposed to grow up. There's a
    church now - and a supermarket and boxcars - he even has little drifters living inside the boxcars. And there's -"
    There was a pause.
    "And what, Mom?"
    Still more silence.
    "And - oh, Danny -" This was not easy for her to say.
    I said, "And what, Mom?"
    "Danny, there is a small white house on the top of the hill overlooking the town - apart from the rest of the landscape. So amongst my other questions I asked him, 'Oh, and what's that house there?' and he said to me, without breaking his pace, 'That's where Jed lives.' "
    We were both quiet. Mom sighed.
    "How about I come down to Palo Alto tomorrow?" I said. "There's nothing pressing here. Lord knows I have enough time owing to me."
    More silence. "Could you, honey?"
    I said, "Yes."
    "I think that would be good."
    I could hear their fridge humming down in California.
    "There's so many consultants on the market right now," Mom said. "People always say that if you get downsized you can become a consultant, but your father is 53, Dan. He's not young and he's