Microserfs

Out the hotel window, it was just miserable and there were these Zamboni scraping piles of the past winters' snows, all stacked up. It reminded me of those Antarctic ice-pack core samples where they drill into the ice and date the gases and pollens trapped back in time. Except outside my window there were two layers of soot, one of dog poo, another layer of soot, another layer of dog poo. God, winter is gross. I can't believe Eskimos just don't set themselves adrift on ice floes for the boredom of it all. Or move to Florida.

* * *

Karla sent me a fax saying IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME RIGHT NOW. And I was so homesick.

Watched CNN. Coded Oop!.

* * *

Thought: one day the word "gigabits" is going to seem as small as the word "dozen."

SATURDAY

Michael arranged for me to meet BarCode at a student union pub.

BarCode, given the possibility of making a flesh-to-flesh connection, admitted on-line that . . . it was, as Michael guessed, a student - so at least the 48-year-old-man-in-spaghetti-strap-diapers scenario was averted.

"Don't be so sure, Daniel," said Michael on the phone from California with not a touch of worry in his voice. "Mature students, you know. Well - we can only hope not. . ."

Waterloo's student pub is better than others I've seen. "The Bomb Shelter," with an all-black inside, a large bomb painted on the wall, big screen TV, video games, pool, and air hockey.

The outdoor temperature was about minus 272 degrees and the students wore thick, gender-disguising outfits to ward off the gales of liquid helium sweeping down from Hudson's Bay. I thought of how in-character it was of Michael to fall for someone's insides and not even know their outsides. I sat there in a seat next to the wall, drinking a few beers, wondering if whoever came by could be . . . it.

I was getting all mushy and lonely and missing Karla when suddenly a hand grabbed my throat from behind and yanked me toward the wall, like an alien from Aliens. Fuck! Talk about terror. It was a small hand, but God, it was like steel, and a voice whispered to me, a girl's voice: "Talk to me, baby. I know who you aren't. So speak - gimme a sign, send me a code - let me know that you're you."

Oh man, I was meeting Catwoman . . . with an Official Chyx Wristband!

My head blanked. Only one word came into my head, Michael's code word for our meeting: "Cheese slices," I squeaked out from my snared vocal cords.

The hand loosened. I saw a bare arm. I saw a bar code tattoo below the vaccination bump. And then I saw BarCode, revealed at last, as she let go of her grip and climbed down off the railing and into my view: smaller than Karla, more muscular than Dusty, and dressed so tough that Susan looked like a southern belle in comparison: filthy down vest on top of an oily halter top; hot pants; gas station attendant's boots; haircut with a blunt Swiss Army knife; both eyes dripping with smudged mascara and melting snow . . . all underneath an ancient hand-knitted Canadian-type jacket with trout knitted into the front and back. She was small and tight and the natural embodiment that everything Karla, Dusty, and Susan self-consciously were trying to turn themselves into. She was the most aggressive female I'd ever seen and so young - and man, she was so IN CHARGE.

She looked both ways. She looked me in the eyes. She said. "You're Kraft singles's friend?" She narrowed her gaze. "You're here to interview me? Why didn't Kraft come himself/herself?"

"It's, uh . . . himself. . . and I'll be honest with you right now - I'm here because he didn't think you'd like him if you saw him."

She smashed a bottle on the ground and scared the wits out of me. "Man, what sort of pussy does he think I am? . . . that I give a shit whatthefuck he looks like?" But then her demeanor changed. She got sweet for a second: "He's a he! He cares what I think about him?"

" 'Kraft singles,' as you call him, is stubborn. You should know that."

She relaxed a bit. "You're telling me. Kraft is one stubborn motherfucking entity."

She giggled. "She." Pause. "He . . ."

"You mean," suddenly I was beginning to understand, "you didn't know who he was . . . what he was? I mean, sorry for being blunt, but you didn't know, either!"

"Don't make me feel like a wuss." She picked up an empty 7-Up can, crushed it flat on her knee and then got sweet again. "Is Kraft, ummm . . . like . . . married or anything?"

"No."

I could tell she was relieved and it was beginning to dawn on me that Michael wasn't the only one who had fallen for an entity.

"Do you want to see a picture, BarCode . . . do you have another name?"

"Amy."

"Do you want to see a picture of Michael, Amy?"

Quietly: "You have one?"

"Yeah."

"His name is Michael?"

"Yeah."

"What's your name?"

"Dan."

"Can I see a picture, Dan?"