“No. I can’t do it.” Susan shook her head violently, rising half out of her chair, trying once again to get her point across to the three executives at the other end of the table. “Ask me to do something easy. Ask me to part the Red Sea. Ask me to get blood from a stone.” Her voice rose in volume and in pitch as she worked up to a good rant. “Ask me to bring people back from the dead. Anything. But I just can’t get you sixty engineers in three weeks. It Just. Can’t. Be. Done.”

Lewis Levant, CEO of InterMob Media, age 26, dressed in a light grey Armani suit, and with a net worth of over $1.2 billion dollars in recently minted InterMob.com company stock, steepled his fingers and pursed his lips disapprovingly. The very blonde marketing VP to his right, equally young and equally well dressed, gazed at him adoringly. The Chief Financial Officer on the left, mid-fifties, less well-dressed, scribbled spirals on a pad as if the whole conversation bored him. Lewis waited several moments, as if he was letting Susan’s protests settle around him like dust onto the carpet.

“When I hired you to run this division, Susan,” he finally said, “it was my understanding that you had significant recruiting connections in the Valley. Are you telling me,” there was a significant pause — Lewis knew all too well the value of the significant pause — “that your skills are not up to this challenge?”

Susan reddened and thought she might press her fingernails right through her palms. “I am telling you, Lewis,” she said, carefully, slowly, repeating the same words for the umpteenth time and wondering if her CEO was excessively stubborn or just plain stupid, “that no one, not even the king of recruiters, can find sixty qualified programmers in this valley in three weeks. I can staff you a department. I can find you programmers. But it will take TIME. When you hired me you told me I had six months. Now you move up that schedule to three weeks? Three weeks doesn’t begin to cover it.”

Lewis stood up and put his knuckles down on the conference table, a habit that made him look somewhat like an over-groomed gorilla. “Let me emphasize to you, once again, how important this project is to InterMob.” he said. Susan groaned inwardly. Oh God, not again. “UniMicro has announced a video server project. Other companies are about to announce video server projects. I believe that if we have a video server project out before them we can successfully leverage our reputation and our user base into social media, and from that we can achieve recurring revenue. We *like* recurring revenue, don’t we Audrey?” He turned to the woman next to him, who grinned and blushed. “Yes we do, Mr. Levant!” she chimed in brightly. Susan wanted to twist her head right off her skinny little neck.

“With a successful video server project I believe we can compete on the level of a UniMicro or an NOL. I believe that with this project we can catch the wave, cross the chasm, and enter the tornado. I believe we must step outside our value network to avoid the innovator’s dilemma.” He paused, significantly, as if to make sure the buzzwords had sunk in. I read best-selling business books, was the impression Lewis wanted to give. I don’t understand any of them, was the impression Susan got. “But in order to do that, we need to start now, or we will miss this window. And our shareholders don’t appreciate missed windows.”

Obviously making the same point yet again wasn’t the right tactic. So Susan tried another one. “I understand that this project is very important to the company,” she began. “And I hope I’ve impressed upon you that getting these programmers this quickly will be exceedingly difficult.” Lewis opened his mouth to interject again, but Susan stormed ahead before he had a chance. “–but I have a suggestion. While we’re interviewing for the full-time staff, we hire contractors to get the project off the ground.”

“Contractors, there’s an idea.” Lewis mused. “InterMob has had very good luck with contract web designers.”

Susan smiled wanly. InterMob’s “good luck” with web designers, of course, meant hiring recent liberal arts grads who had read a couple books about web design, paying them next to nothing, giving them free pizza and nerf toys and convincing them it was a Cool Working Environment. It meant working them 100 hours a week and then firing them on a whim when they started to burn out. Programmers, with a lot more core skill and much more scarce, wouldn’t tolerate that sort of nonsense.

“Contractors will, unfortunately, be significantly more expensive than staff,” Susan said. “*Significantly* more expensive.” She emphasized. At the mention of money Bob, the CFO, suddenly woke up and put down his pen. They were talking money. Money was his territory.

“The budget we’ve given you for this division is already quite generous.” the older man said, frowning, pulling a printout of a spreadsheet out of a folder and gearing up for an argument. “The budget for your division already exceeds our current operating capital –”

“But contractors will get us off the ground quickly?” Lewis asked. Susan nodded.

“Do what you have to, then.” Lewis said. “You have InterMob carte blanche.”

Bob stared agog at what Lewis had just said, and then stared down at his now useless spreadsheet as if it would get up and crawl away. “Lewis, I must protest,” he stammered. “This will totally throw off my projections, all the earnings forecasts — the stock analysts –”

“Shut up, Bob,” said Lewis, in his typical style. “Do what you have to.” he repeated to Susan. “I need the video server project up and running in three weeks.”

* * * *

Susan was finally released from her meeting, and trudged back over to her division in building D. The building was mostly empty, its cubicles still being assembled, the network wiring still being strung, for the project she would run and the staff she would hire. The staff she had to hire in three weeks.

She had been working through her usual headhunter contacts since she had arrived at InterMob, used her usual methods of finding programmer recruits. It had been working reasonably well. But there wasn’t any time for “reasonably well” any more. It was time to call in the really big guns.

A quick glance at her contact list for the phone number, and she dialed the direct line of Martin Amherst, of Martin Amherst and Associates, Recruiters.

“This is Martin,” came the venerable voice at the other line.

“Martin, Susan Foster,” Susan introduced herself.

“Susan!” Martin replied warmly. “It’s good to hear from you! How are things?”

“Not too bad,” Susan said.

“How is your father?” he asked.

“Oh, fine, fine.” Susan’s father had been an executive at Hewlett Packard for many years, and now advised top venture capitalists on technical strategy. He played golf with Martin. It was her father’s friendship with Martin that allowed her access to his direct line. No one had access to Martin’s direct line.

“So what can I do for you this morning, my dear?”

“I need help. Big help. You know I’m running this new division at InterMob–” she began.

“Yes, your father mentioned that. Congratulations.”

“Well, I have kind of a recruiting problem.”

“I can help you with a recruiting problem!” Martin laughed. “What sort of recruiting problem is this?

“I need to come up with sixty programmers in three weeks.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Hello?” Susan asked, wondering if the line had gone dead.

“Good God, Susan,” Martin said in a long exhalation of breath. “Why didn’t they just ask you to move the mountains into the bay with a spoon.”

“Would have been easier, huh.” Susan said ruefully. “But its not all bad. They’ll let me bring in contractors while I hire full-time people, and I have a big budget on this. Big. But I need to move really quickly. I need lots and lots of contractors. Any ideas?”

Another pause, and a riffling noise, like paper being flipped through. Martin was an old-fashioned kind of guy; whereas all the new young recruiters had moved their contact databases onto computers and tiny sleek handheld toys, Martin still made do with a huge row of well-thumbed circular rolodexes. Between the rolodexes, his seemingly bottomless memory for people and faces and connections, and the thirty years he had spent in the Valley recruiting for the biggest and best of companies, Martin had no problem keeping up. No problem whatsoever. He was the uber-headhunter.

“About how big was that budget, you said?” he asked.

“BIG big,” Susan emphasized.

“Money-is-no-object big?”

“I’d put it right up there.”

“Hmmm.” Martin mused. “InterMob’s stock is up some 800% from the IPO, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know you played the market, Marty. Yeah, we’re doing well.”

“Congratulations,” Martin said. Susan, as an InterMob employee, had her own share of stock options and would of course benefit from the stock price.

“Don’t congratulate me yet,” Susan said. “I don’t vest for three years. A lot could happen in three years.”

“True, true,” Martin said. Martin took his commissions in cash and stock. No options; actual shares of stock. Given his Mercedes, his huge house in Woodside and the summer house in the Bahamas, this had served him well over the years. “I believe I know someone who might be able to help you with your problem.”

“Great!” Susan grabbed a pad of post-it notes. “Hit me.”

“His name’s Rafael St. John.” He rattled off a phone number. “He runs a very special agency for engineering emergencies just like yours.” He paused to let her write it down. “He can supply good programmers, lots of them.”

Yes! Susan thought, scribbling madly. Just what she needed. Contractors would get the job done, but leave her time to be able to hire full-time employees. This would work just fine.

“Now, I should warn you, Susan, that Rafael runs a really unique shop. He will have some unusual requests.”

“Unique?” Susan echoed. “Unique in what way?”

“I should let Rafael explain that to you,” Martin said, coyly. “But I can assure you — those clients I have referred Rafael to have had nothing but praise for his programmers and for his professionalism.”

* * * *

Rafael’s office was in a small building in a town called Colma, just south of San Francisco and off of Interstate 280. It was a short trip for Susan from the InterMob offices in Menlo Park; a quick and scenic drive over the mountains for lunch.

Rafael was an older gentleman, well-groomed, with a slight european accent she could not place. He wore the same expensive italian suits that Lewis Levant had custom made but still managed to look uncomfortable in. Rafael looked as if he had been tailored from birth.

They went to lunch at a small Italian restaurant where Rafael knew the owner, and discussed her little recruiting problem over excellent hand-made ravioli and a bottle of Sangiovese. Normally she would not drink in the middle of the day, but with Rafael, somehow it seemed appropriate.

Rafael had seemingly solved her problems even before the main course arrived. He could supply her with the programmers she needed, with the skills she needed. He explained to her that his programmers were already even organized into teams, and there would be team leaders she and her managers could work directly with on specific portions of the project. She could barely believe her luck.

But then he quoted her the rate, per programmer, for that six month contract, and she turned white. “That much?” she stuttered. Bob the CFO would string her guts up in the courtyard flagpole for that.

“Allow me to explain,” Rafael said, placing his hand gently over hers, a gesture that would have seemed patronizing in any other man but totally natural in him. “My programmers are amongst the most dedicated in the Valley. They live for the art of programming, and they will live and breathe your project for the time that they are working on it. They do not keep apartments, and they do not have personal lives outside of work. They cost this much because they work in shifts and sleep onsite. You are actually getting at least two to three normal programmers for one of mine, well-organized, well-trained, working around the clock. You are getting a ruthless programming machine from me for that price.”

Susan did some math in her head. Even if his programmers weren’t as good as he said he was, just having those bodies around for that much time meant a lot of work would get done. Lewis could make serious headway on the video project, and Susan could get plenty of time to staff the project for real. She could probably make the case for the cost. It was a big risk. A really big risk. But Lewis liked big risks. It could possibly work.

“In return for their dedication, however, we will need dormitory quarters made available for the team,” Rafael added. “That will be an additional cost you must incur if you agree to take us on.”

Sleeping and showering facilities were not a problem at InterMob; they already did that for the Web designers. Adding a few more to building D as it was being constructed would mean only a slight incremental cost. Susan nodded. “Will I need to feed them, too?”

“No,” Rafael said. “That we take care of ourselves.”

“Not even soda?” Susan joked. Free soda was one of the mainstay benefits of Valley programmers. If you didn’t have free soda available, you almost weren’t considered a real company. Rafael smiled. “We will supply all nourishment for the programmers.”

“This isn’t some kind of cult, is it?” Susan abruptly asked. “You haven’t brainwashed these guys or anything, have you?”

Rafael exploded into laughter. Customers at adjoining tables stared. “I assure you, all my programmers work for me of their own free will. No cultism involved.”

“Then how do you get programmers to work for you, with such strict controls on their lives?” she asked. “The programmers I’ve known have always been much more free spirited than that.”

“Many of them are,” Rafael explained. “But there is a certain class that appreciates the sort of working environment we can give them. We take away the difficulties of life so they can concentrate on what they love the most: the code. Many of them appreciate that. And a few years of consulting with me and they can retire comfortably. There’s none of the risk of a startup, where maybe they’ll strike it rich or maybe they’ll be working this hard for nothing — they WILL be able to retire off the pay they make working for me. Its not an uncompelling arrangement.”

Susan shook her head. She couldn’t believe how easy this was going to be. “Is there anything else?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rafael said, picking up his wine glass and taking a short sip. “The most important requirement of all. We are signing up for a six month contract. That six month contract is firm.”

Susan waited for the actual problem to be mentioned. “I’m sorry?” she asked when Rafael didn’t continue.

“I mean that we can only work for six months. After that time the contract is over. Irregardless of whether your project is complete, whether you have the money to retain us for longer, or whether you think we are the best programmers you have ever met — the contract is over. My programmers will leave before noon on the final day of the six months, and you may not re-contract with us for another year.”

Susan blinked. What was this arbitrary six month deadline thing? Just six months and that was it? How bizarre. “Why the six months?” she asked.

“You could call it a requirement of byzantine government regulations,” Rafael said, waving his hand dismissively. “It would be too difficult to explain. At any rate, that requirement is absolutely non-negotiable. If you cannot acquiesce to that, I’m afraid we cannot come to an agreement.”

Six months. Susan puzzled. The project was supposed to be finished as soon as possible. But six months of killer programmers, working around the clock — and six months of time in which she could hire full-timers. If the project wasn’t done in six months she would possibly have enough staff engineers around to pick up the slack. But if not — at the end of six months things could seriously fall apart without Rafael’s programmers. Another big risk. A big expensive risk for the company. But a major coup if it worked. If it worked Lewis would be all over her.

“I can have my building done in a week,” she said. “How soon can your programmers move in?”

* * * *

She was right, Bob the CFO did go utterly postal when she told him how much Rafael’s programmers would cost. But she was also right about how Lewis reacted when she proposed hiring Rafael’s programmers in the right terms. Lewis had grabbed the bait; the ability to get off the ground this quickly was too tempting. In fact, after talking to Rafael personally Lewis came down so much in favor of the plan that he decided it was his idea in the first place. Susan, being the good executive that she was, allowed him this belief.

The programmers had arrived on schedule in two big unmarked busses. They looked like any other programmers in the Valley, running the gamut from large unkempt bearded hippies to younger men of Indian descent in cleanly pressed Gap khakis. There was even a woman or two.

Rafael arrived with them to finalize the deal, to tour the building, and to make sure his programmers got settled. Susan introduced him to Stewart, her technical architect and operations manager, the man who would be the actual director for the project. Susan had worked with Stewart in many previous companies and knew he would ensure that the group stayed on schedule and to update her regularly. Stewart was her field general and she trusted him.

“Well, what do you think?” Susan entered Stewart’s office a few hours after Rafael had departed, shutting the door behind her. Stewart was practically bouncing in his chair with excitement.

“I was just sending you email with the new schedule,” he said. “These guys are really hot. I put the architecture up on the white board and the project leads just took it and ran. I didn’t even have to explain much of it at all — just a few of the more complicated protocols and connections between components, and they all grasped it immediately. Then they broke down all the tasks, set milestones for themselves based on which team was better at each particular thing — I don’t think I’ve ever worked with guys this good.”

“So you think we can make the deadlines Lewis has set for the project? You think this team can get us significantly underway in six months?”

“I think we may be able to *finish* the project in six months.” Stewart’s excitement was contagious. Maybe this was going to work, Susan thought. Maybe they could pull it all off.

They had six months to find out.

* * * *

Nearly six months later, Susan was getting increasingly nervous. The first few months had been spectacular. Code flowed like wine. The status reports from Stewart were good — the programmers were making astonishing progress, far more than would have been expected, and with hardly any complaint. But as the months progressed the reports were less positive; Stewart admitted that things were not progressing as well as he’d like given how much Lewis interfered and how often he changed the scope of the project. Additionally neither Susan nor Stewart had been doing as well as she had hoped in hiring on full-time staff. Part of the problem was Bob — after losing the battle with her over the contracting budget, he had retaliated with her by cutting her stock option budget to almost nothing. How was she supposed to hire programmers if she couldn’t offer them significant options? Getting Lewis to listen wasn’t working; he was so focussed on the brilliance of Rafael’s contractors, on the sheer amount of work they generated every day she could not get him to put the squeeze on Bob to get him to release her more options. The net result was that in five months she had only managed to hire a dozen full-time programmers — far short of the number she needed to replace Rafael’s contractors once they disappeared after their six-month term was up.

And that six-month deadline was awfully close, a cliff wall looming up at the end of the highway she was traveling at 100 miles per hour. Every morning she woke up closer to the wall, still with more of the project left to do, still with more programmers left to hire. What would happen if she didn’t make it? She tried not to think of that. She got up every morning and called more of her contacts, went over more resumes with the HR associate she had working for her, schmoozed with more prospective applicants. Every day she had an appointment for lunch with another programmer who was trying to decide between an InterMob offer and other offers from other companies — usually better offers from smaller, pre-IPO companies with more excitement and better options packages. It was hard to get the programmers to come around to her point of view.

One day she took off from the persuasion lunches and had a lunch with her friend Brenda instead. They had met at a small cafe in downtown Palo Alto. It was nice not to have to do the hard sell over artisan bread and dipping oil, for once; here she could relax, let down her hair and just rant about how nervous she was about the project.

“It would have been so easy if it wasn’t for Lewis,” she said after filling Brenda in on the details. “Every day he has a new idea. Every day he changes the spec. Every day he comes over to my building and mucks around with my programmers. This isn’t my project any more. Its my name on the org chart, but its really his project. His project when it goes well, but if it gets screwed up its my butt out the door with footprints on it.”

“Typical,” Brenda commiserated. “Typical pushy type A CEO behavior. You think Ellison or Clark or any of those guys are any different? Could be worse,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “He could also be hitting on you.”

Susan’s hand, with an olive in it, paused just short of her mouth. She made a face. “I’m trying to eat here.” she protested.

“Now Susan,” Brenda admonished, jokingly. “Lewis is quite a catch. Young, relatively good-looking, excellent future earnings potential — ow!” Susan had pelted her with the olive.

“*I* have excellent future earnings potential,” Susan insisted. “At least I will if this project doesn’t fail.” She paused and picked at a thread in the tablecloth. “I have to give Martin Amherst credit, he’s the one who got me this far, recommending Rafael’s outfit to me. Those programmers are just totally amazing. They never stop! They just keep working! No complaints, no tantrums, they just generate enormous amounts of code. Its brilliant.”

“Yeah, but what about that six month thing?” Brenda asked. “What happens when the deadline is up?”

“I have no idea.” Susan breathed. “I have no idea. I try not to think about it, but sometimes it keeps me up nights. I’m just scared to death that on the first of the month he’s going to show up with those busses of his and take his programmers back to Colma and I’ll be left with hordes of incomplete code and no one to work on it and Lewis will have my head..”

“Colma?” Brenda laughed. “Your recruiter is based in Colma? That’s funny.”

“Why do you say that?” Sarah said, looking at her quizzically.

Brenda stared back. “How long have you lived here?” she asked. “Don’t you know Colma? No one actually does anything in Colma. No one alive, that is.” She picked at her salad and laughed again.

“Excuse me?”

“Suz, you really need to get out see more of the Valley beyond the freeway and your office. Colma is the city of the dead. It’s ninety percent graveyards. When San Francisco got too busy during the gold rush they relocated all the graveyards to Colma so they’d have more room for houses. Its more built up now, there are townhouses and stuff, real people do actually live there. But mostly it’s still just graveyards. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

Susan thought back to her her first meeting with Rafael, and did vaguely remember driving past a number of graveyards to get to his office. She didn’t think much of it at the time, so eager was she to meet Rafael and to get the deal signed. She shrugged. “Is it such a big deal? Maybe offices are cheaper there or something.”

“It’d creep me out,” Brenda said. “Working right next to all those dead people. I wouldn’t want to work there.”

“Doesn’t seem to bother Rafael,” Susan said. “Doesn’t seem to bother any of this programmers. Of course his programmers work onsite all the time. We have dorms for them, did I tell you that?”

* * * *

They didn’t make it. The six months was up and they didn’t make it. Susan had hired a total of nineteen programmers, she finally managed to get Lewis to stop changing the scope and requirements for the project, but they didn’t manage to get everything done on time. From the estimates she and Stewart and the leads put together she figured they had only a month’s left of coding to do. Just a month. From there they could get by with the full-timers they had. But without Rafael’s programmers, for that month they were dead in the water.

The day before the end of the contract Susan got in early and slogged down four cups of bad coffee in her office as she prepared her strategy. At precisely 9AM she met Bob at the door as he arrived to work. She was determined and wired enough to intimidate an army of Bobs, and with a minimum of shouting in the hallway and threatening to call Lewis she got him to sign off on a contract extension for the team. She went directly from his office to the fax machine and sent the papers over to Rafael’s office. OK, she thought, nervously wiping her hands on her skirt. We’ll all get through this.  

On the last day, Susan hadn’t slept much the night before. She hadn’t heard from Rafael. She didn’t know where they stood. The tension was killing her. She paid a visit to building D first thing in the morning. The busses were already there, taking up space in the parking lot, and waiting. The busses that would take her programmers away and ruin her career.

The programmers were still working on that last day, working as if nothing had changed. One would expect that normal programmers would slack off, knowing it was their last day. These guys just kept going and going, as if they had a fire lit inside them. Susan and Stewart stood at the edge of the cube ocean and watched as the programmers typed away at their desks. “They’re not going to just walk out?” Susan asked Stewart, who was just as surprised as she was. “What’s stopping them?”

“They say they won’t go until we release them. They’ll just keep working until we tell them to leave.”

“Oh, good,” Susan breathed. There was still time to work out a deal with Rafael. “Keep them here,” she told Stewart. “Keep them working.”  

Barely hour later the receptionist called her from the building entrance. Rafael St. John had arrived and was demanding to see her. “Ms Foster,” he frowned at her as she opened the door to the reception area. “I am greatly displeased. The terms of the contract we signed were very clear. Six months, not a day more. Your director will not let me into your building. He tells me he will not release my programmers until I clear it with you.”

“Please, come into my office,” Susan said placatingly, beckoning him through the door. He stood his ground in the reception area, his arms folded. “I would be happy to discuss this with you,” she continued, “I had a conversation with my CFO and I believe we can come to a new agreement.”

“My busses have waiting in the parking lot since early this morning,” Rafael insisted, standing his ground. “It is imperative that you release my programmers this moment. Absolutely imperative.”

“Now, wait, Mr. St. John,” Susan said, smiling her best and most conciliatory smile. “I faxed you a contract extension yesterday, and I hope we can come to terms. The programmers are already here, they have facilities, surely you won’t pull them–” Susan’s cell phone tweedled at her side. She pressed the ignore button unconsciously with one hand. “Mr. St. John,” she said, turning back to the man in front of her. 

“This is a severe breach of our contract,” Rafael said sternly. “Very severe. The repercussions will be substantial. *Substantial.*”

“Look, Mr. St. John,” Susan said. “I appreciate your position. Please try and appreciate–” her phone rang again. She tried to ignore it. “We are very close to the end of the project. I am authorized to pay your programmers overtime pay if they stay.” The phone was insistent. “I am authorized to give them substantial InterMob stock options if they stay. I really don’t–” The phone interrupted yet again. Irritated, Susan answered her phone and shouted into it. “What do you want!”

“Susan,” Stewart was on the other side. His voice was urgent, scared. “You have to come over here. Something really bad is going on.”

“Really bad?” Susan echoed, looking up at Rafael, whose face suddenly furrowed. He covered his mouth with one hand. “What? What’s going on?”

“Please. Just come down here.” Stewart abruptly hung up the phone.

Susan turned on her heel, Rafael following close behind, and together they sprinted across the lawn to building D. They were held up at the door as Susan fumbled with her key card. “Do you know what’s going on here?” she asked her companion.

“Yes,” Rafael replied sadly. “I fear we are too late.” Through the door, past the receptionist, down the hall to the main floor of the building where all the cubicles were, where all the programmers worked. Susan flung open the fire doors.

The smell alone was enough to push her back a few steps. A dank smell, a thick, sweet, rotting smell, like the smell she had had in her house the previous summer when a rat had died behind the walls. “Oh, my god,” she said, reeling back. Rafael caught her as she stumbled, but she covered her mouth and nose with her hand and pushed away from him, with the other.

“What the hell is this?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, sadly, as Susan steeled herself and moved into the room. “I really did try to warn you.”

Initially, beyond the smell, everything seemed to be fine. It was awfully quiet, though. Usually there would be programmers wandering through the halls and grouped in the common areas, discussions and arguments going on — the sound of work. But now, nothing. It was utterly quiet, no sound except the faint hum of the machines.

The walls of the cubicles were tall enough to hide their interiors. Susan turned into the entrance of the nearest one. “Oh, my god,” she repeated. The occupant of the cubicle — Susan didn’t know his name — was obviously dead, slumped over his keyboard, letters still streaming into the editor on his screen. If Susan didn’t know better, if she hadn’t just been there a few hours earlier, she would have believed that the man had been dead for weeks. His skin was purplish, bloated, and a black substance that looked like tar had spread over his clothes and the chair on which he sat. Susan couldn’t bear to look. She backed away from the gruesome scene.

But that same picture was repeated all over the room, in nearly every cubicle. In the center of the room by the pool table it was worse; here the bodies had fallen as if struck. Coffee had spilled from cups as they fell, leaving dark stains on the carpet next to bodies that looked as if they might be leaving dark stains of their own. It was if some gas had come through, some nuclear blast, some sudden force had swept through the building and struck down every one of her programmers. 

Susan heard a noise, a faint cry, and turned to the office at the end of the hall. Stewart’s office.

Stewart was backed into a corner, crouching behind his desk, wild-eyed, his arms wrapped around himself. One of the programmers had fallen in the doorway, face down on the floor.

He looked up and saw Susan. “He just came in,” Stewart said, pointing to the body in the doorway. “He just came in, looking really bad, all bruised or something, and said he couldn’t work any more. None of them could. He said the contract was up and it was time to go back. And then…he…..” Stewart swallowed. “He had no eyes. He *had no eyes.*”

Susan looked down at the body in the doorway. The horror she had just walked through replayed itself in her mind. And the smell; oh, the smell. She could feel thick panic rise up like acid in the back of her throat, but with it a strange realization. The uneaten food in the dumpster. The agency based in Colma, city of the dead. This was impossible.

Where did Rafael get his programmers, when there were no programmers in the Valley to be had?

She turned to Rafael, who was looking about dispassionately, as if this was the sort of thing he saw every day. “Rafael,” she asked, licking her dry lips with a dry tongue. “Did you send me zombie programmers?”

“I am very sorry.” Rafael continued to be solicitous. “This is very unfortunate. But I did warn you. The contract was only to last six months. That was a very firm date. The programmers go bad after six months.”

Susan’s lower jaw fell open of its own accord, and then she burst out in a giggle. “They go bad?” she asked, looking down at the corpse at her feet. She giggled again, and nudged it with her toe. The nudging broke something inside, and a small spurt of brackish liquid stained the carpet. “They go bad. Of course. They go bad. Past their expiration date. I understand.” She pressed her hand against her mouth, wrapping her other arm around herself as if she would burst apart like the bodies of the programmers in her building.

Rafael clasped her by the shoulder. “I will send a team to retrieve the staff and to clean up,” he said.

“Oh,” Susan said, still trying to control the giggles. “That’s good. Thank you.”

*        *        *        *

UniMicro announced its video product at Comdex in November to much industry fanfare. UniMicro stock was up five points on the day.

InterMob, which had earlier announced plans for a competing video product of great sophistication, claimed “difficulties adjusting to the new business model as well as extreme competitive pressures,” closed the division, and wrote of all of its considerable development expenses. On the announcement InterMob stock lost more than a third of its value, resulting in several nasty shareholder lawsuits and causing Lewis Levant’s net worth to plummet to a mere $900 million, dropping him off the list of Top Internet Zillionaires and severely impacting his social life. Susan Foster left InterMob when the division was closed, leaving the Valley and the high tech industry altogether to open a flower shop in her home town of Poughkeepsie, New York.

St. John Consulting continues to supply emergency programming services to some of the largest companies in the Valley.

Copyright © 1999, 2012 Laura Lemay ]]> http://www.lauralemay.com/fiction/the-deadline.html/feed 0 http://www.lauralemay.com/fiction/transmission.html http://www.lauralemay.com/fiction/transmission.html#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2004 02:17:32 +0000 laura http://wptest.lauralemay.com/2004/01/transmission.html Strange Horizons said that funny futuristic tech support stories are way too much of a cliche and they never want to see any more. But then I dug it out again recently and thought well, it isn't that bad. So my cliche is your gain. ]]>

“Good morning, this is the Honda Starlight Owner Satisfaction Team(tm). Is this Mr. Lipinsky I’m talking to?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Very good, sir. And how can I help you today?”

“My car won’t start. I’ve tried a bunch of times.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Lipinsky. Lets start from the beginning. Did you place your hands on the Honda AutoRecognition BioSensors(tm) when you got in the car?”

“Yes, I did that. The car wakes up, it recognizes who I am, it just won’t start. I’ve asked it a bunch of times and it doesn’t even answer. The only command it took was to phone home.”

“All right, sir. Let’s go through some simple diagnostics. I can see your car on my system, so your GPS transponders are all working. Let me connect to the car’s computer and see what’s up. You may see some blinking on the dashboard, there’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

“OK. I’ve only had the car a couple of months, you know.”

“I know, sir. I have your records right here.”

“Its been a really great car, though, totally reliable, and really convenient. I really hated always filling up my last car. I really like the mileage meter.”

“HondaMiles(tm) are awfully convenient, aren’t they sir?”

“Oh, yes. And all the adaptive stuff –”

“The Honda NeuroCognitive Adaptive Driving System(tm).”

“Yeah. Its like the car is built just for me, and it drives just for me. Its so sweet.”

“Well, thank you very much on behalf of the Honda Motor Company, sir.”

“Which is why I’m so surprised that it didn’t start today, its been so perfect up to now…”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this, sir, and get you back out onto the road as fast as we can, sir. I’m connected to your car’s computer now, sir, and processing your logs now. All parameters appear to be within normal ranges, although I do notice that you have been exceeding the speed limit for 6.4% of your hours of operation.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m sure you’re aware that speeding is very dangerous, sir.”

“You record my speed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t know you did that.”

“It’s in your Honda Owner’s Satisfaction Guidelines(tm), sir. Page 346.”

“Oh. I’ve been meaning to read that. Its kind of a big book, though.”

“There’s a lot of excellent information in the Guidelines, sir. I’ve read it dozens of times myself. ”

“I’m a very safe driver, you know.”

“I’m sure you are, sir. No, there’s nothing here that would prevent your car from starting itself. Why don’t we reboot your car.”

“Reboot the car?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send a special signal down to the car to reset its internal systems. The car needs to be awake when it happens, so you’ll need to be in it, but you won’t feel it.”

“Oh, OK. It won’t hurt the car, will it?”

“No, sir. The car will go dark momentarily, and you’ll lose contact with the satellites and with me, but then everything will return to normal after a few seconds.”

“Oh, OK. Go ahead then.”

“Do you have a pacemaker, hearing aid or other medically implanted electronic devices?”

“What??”

“The signal can interfere with electronic devices. If you have a pacemaker or other implant you’ll have to get someone else to be in the car.”

“Um, no, I don’t have any implants or anything like that.”

“All right, Mr Lipinski, we’re all set. The car is awake?”

“Yes, its awake.”

“I am sending the signal now. I’ll open the channel again when the car comes back.”

“OK, talk to you — Ow! OW! shit!”

… “Mr Lipinsky?”

“Goddammit! What was that?”

“Sir?”

“The car zapped me!”

“I don’t understand, sir, you’re saying the car ‘zapped’ –”

“Yes! You said it wasn’t going to affect me! You said it was just for the car! Well it wasn’t, it felt like pissing into a wall socket! What the hell was that?”

“That should not have happened, sir. The signal should not have affected you. This is very unusual.”

“You bet it is! This had better have worked cause I’m not doing that again! I’ll go back to a gas car before I do that again! Goddammit!”

“Could you try starting the car now sir?”

“I can’t fucking feel my hands right now. Give me a moment.”

“On behalf of the Honda Motor Company I am extremely sorry. May I ask you a personal question, sir? Are you sweaty?”

“Am I sweaty? Excuse me?”

“Yes, sir. Are you perspiring heavily.”

“I’m in Tucson. Its July. I have no air conditioning because my car. Won’t. Start. Yes. I am perspiring heavily.”

“I’m very sorry, sir. I am afraid you are correct. There is a rare case that if there is contact between the Honda PosteriComfort Climate Sensors(tm) in the seats, such as can happen with excessive perspiration, the signal can result in the tingling sensation you experienced.”

“Tingling. Right. The Honda Motor Company will be hearing from my lawyer.”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Page 23 of your Honda Owner’s Satisfaction Guidelines(tm). All disputes between yourself and the Honda Motor Company are to be resolved through the Honda Owner Satisfaction Team Representative.”

" … That’s you?”

“That’s me, sir. And I am pleased to tell you that I am authorized to grant you 1500 HondaMiles(tm) as compensation for this incident.”

“I see. 1500 miles, that’s very generous.”

“However, I have just received a message from your insurance company. They have instructed me to inform you that because your speeding record is above the average for your combination of age class and your car type, they will be raising your rates in the next quarter.”

" … I see.”

“Could you try starting the car now, sir?”

“I think I’d like to stay home now.”

“Sir?”

“I’m sorry. Car: start. Yes, the car is running now.”

“Excellent! Is there anything else you’d like me to help you with today?”

“No. No, I think that’s enough for today.”

“Thank you for contacting the Honda Starlight Owner Satisfaction Team. And thank you for driving Honda. Have a Nice Day.”

A few years back, soon after we moved up into the Santa Cruz Mountains, I woke up one January morning just before the sun came up, and something was different. There was a strange blue-white glow coming from the windows. I sat up.

“What is it?” Eric asked sleepily.

“Its snow,” I said, gaping out the window. “Its a whole lot of snow.” Snow! In California! Snow! Whole big heaps of it! Snow! On the lawn, in the trees, still coming down from the grey sky in the grey dawn in enormous powwdery flakes.

Snow!

Its SNOW!

It SNOWED!

I bolted out of bed and immediately began throwing on clothes: long underwear, jeans, sweaters. Where are my gloves? Where is my hat? There’s no time! There was SNOW out there, and I had to get out into it. I could not stay inside a minute longer because it had SNOWED!

I grew up in Boston, the heart of New England, where it snows six months out of the year. When I left Boston for the Bay Area everyone I knew joked, well, you’ll never have to shovel a driveway again. And yes, I am thankful for that. I am thankful for the lack of cold toes, runny noses and icy patches on the sidewalk. I am thankful there are no more frigid dirty March days where the big piles of snow and ice sand and dirt on the sides of the road where the plows put them in Decemeber are still sitting, sitting and rotting away like the dirty corpses of Winter.

When I moved out here to the Bay Area, California winters seemed very bland. November comes along, and it rains some. There are cold days, and there are nice days. Then spring comes, it gets a little warmer, and the rains stop. The bay area has more of a quiet slide from the wet season to the dry season, from Summer to Winter without really a Fall or a Spring in between. Sometimes there’s not much of a Winter at all, and I wonder, where did it go?

I’m told there’s a term for this, for us displaced cold-weather folk who miss winter: seasonal deprivation. We miss the turning of the seasons, the clear borders between Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall. We miss the dramatic fall colors, the snows, the first crocus that comes up through the snow in the springtime. And the snow. Always the snow. I told Eric once that you can tell that summer has turned to fall because there is a smell to it. That snow has a smell to it. Eric, who grew up in California, thought I was nuts.

There are some ex-cold-weather folk I know who think I am nuts. If you miss snow, they say, go to Tahoe. All the snow you need, and you can leave it again at the end of the weekend. But its not the same. Going to the snow is not the same has having the snow come to you. It is not the same as waking up in the morning and discovering that the snow has fallen overnight, those heavy wet snowstorms we used to call white christmas storms, that coat the entire landscape with fondant icing and that leave the air cold and still and silent except for a very quiet whump as a clump of snow falls from a branch somewhere nearby. It is always a wonder to me when it happens. Each and every time I wake up in the morning surprised — my god, it SNOWED — and then the excitement – Oh my god, it SNOWED. Each and every time it is like I am eight years old again, school has been cancelled, and there is nothing to do all day but get the sled out of the garage and go out and PLAY.

We get these snows in the Santa Cruz mountains. Not often, just once or twice a year. But the best part of California snow: three, sometimes four days go by, the weather changes, warms up, and the snow melts and its gone. No lingering slush or piles of dirt. No icy driveways or sidewalks. Just enough snow to be a joy for a few hours in the early morning, just enough to satisfy seasonal deprivation for a displaced New Englander, but not enough to be an annoyance. Not enough to require shovelling out the driveway.

This morning I woke up to another snowstorm, four inches of it. I found my hat and gloves and went out and made a snow angel. It started snowing again as I wrote this, so now I must go out and spend some time catching snowflakes on my tongue. Later on I have a snowman scheduled, and I must call the neighbor kids and see if I can make an appointment for a snowball fight.

I wonder where in the Bay Area I can find myself a sled.

It was the mushrooms that gave it away. It was cold, and it was wet, and it was mushroom season, and Martin saw them from yards away, even through the fog, even as nightfall slunk through the trees, and he went over to look.

He didn’t know one mushroom from another, would not know a button from a morel from a deathcap. He had a cousin, once, used to go mushroom hunting for food and probably to get high, although he never told Martin that, of course. The cousin got really sick one year and stopped doing it. Probably best that way.

These were big mushrooms, white, almost glowing in contract against the dark of the oak leaves in the ground. There were dozens of them, clustered in fairy rings, laced and concentric fairy rings. But only in this one spot, this one small clearing in the oaks. As if someone had dropped a stone into the forest floor, right here, and the mushrooms had rippled outward. All from this one spot.

He kneeled down, and the leaves were wet and smelled of moss and damp. The fog spun away from his hand as he reached out to a small hillock where the largest of the mushrooms was growing. He tipped the mushroom to one side and it delicately broke off from the stem, the gills underneath the cap glistening white and streaked with dark blue. He pushed the leaves aside. Under the mushroom, a flash of skin. White, streaked with blue.

He let out his breath, slowly, and the mist clouded his face. “Charlie,” He called to the other man whose hat he could just still see through the dusk, bobbing over the crest of the hill. “Charlie, I’ve found her body.”

Explanation: I have a friend who works for a startup in the valley. One day a mandatory all hands meeting was called at this company so that HR could give every single employee copies of the book “Who Moved My Cheese.” You will read this book, it was explained to my friend and his co-workers, and discuss it in your workgroups. You will do little reports on it. Apparently all work at said company ground to a halt while everyone was very busy doing their little cheese reports. And you wonder why we are in a recession.

My friend was kind enough to give the book to me so that I could properly savage it.

* * * *

OK, I finally got around to reading Who Moved my Cheese. It took me about 45 minutes this morning, and that included a lot of time being disgusted and stopping to read the net instead.

Laura’s capsule review: what a massive pile of steaming horseshit this is.

Understand: I have read business books. I have read self-help books. I understand that the point is to take an idea that would be blatantly obvious to anyone with the intelligence of a radish, and spell it out in really small words and breezy language so that the whole book can be read in less than an hour. Business people and people who need help are busy people, after all. They don’t want to have to spend a lot of time puzzling over the point, because if that was what they wanted, they could spend $19.95 on Faulkner instead.

But jeez. As I posted earlier, the book is 94 pages, in extremely large type, and a number of those pages are taken up with large pictures of cheese with various important points on them. This is presumably so that you as a busy business person or self-help-type does not have to waste a valuable post-it-note marking the important parts.

Breezy tone? Oh yeah. It was any breezier it would blow over the lawn furniture. Throughout this book the tone of the writing kept giving me chilling flashbacks to Romper Room, to that horrible woman who spoke in a sort of bubbly friendly soothing voice to all us pre-schoolers, trying to lure us into staring into the magic mirror….. this always terrified me. I always wanted to scream DON’T LOOK INTO THE MIRROR!!!! WHO KNOWS WHAT HORRORS ARE IN THE MIRROR!!! IT’LL SUCK YOU IN AND YOU’LL NEVER GET OUT AGAIN!!!

Who Moved My Cheese is like that. It seems simple enough. They even spell out the point in the beginning, just in case the metaphor is too tough to grasp: cheese is whatever you want in life, comfort, wealth, a good job, a best-selling business book. You may expect the cheese to be in one point in the maze, but one day the cheese will get moved. And you can sit and complain and fail or you can go off looking for new cheese. And those who do go looking for new cheese will be the ones who succeed and be happy. So go! Succeed and be happy! Go! Go!

Yes, boys and girls, this is a 94 page, $19.95 version of the bumper sticker that says “Shit Happens.”

But that’s just the middle part of the book, the core cheese story. There’s a surrounding story at the beginning and end, and this is the part that has the subtle propaganda in it. In the meta-story, we have a group of ex-classmates, getting together at a class reunion to talk about how their lives have progressed since they graduated school, and of course the subject turns to change, and how they all manage change in their lives (funny, when I get together with old friends we all talk about that stupid thing so-and-so did back in ’85 after drinking nineteen shots of tequila, but I guess this is why I don’t write business books). And one of them says they have this great story about cheese, and how in their company when they told they cheese story, it CHANGED EVERYONE’S LIVES.

Everyone? the group asks in awe.

Well, not everyone, the classmate says sadly. There was one guy at our company who heard the cheese story, and he thought it was stupid and a complete waste of time. But then, he was one of those types who refuses to look for new cheese. And we eventually had to let him go.

Ahhh. You will read the cheese book, and you will like the cheese book. It will change your life. Or we will fire your ass.

No wonder HR departments love this book. No wonder they give it to all their employees and make them read it and do little reports in their groups. Its a weeding tool.

I will counsel my friend, should he run across any HR while at work, to memorize the following phrases, culled from the book, which should satisfy Them that he has been indoctrinated into the cult.

• If You Do Not Change, You Can Become Extinct.
• Smell the Cheese Often So You Know When It Is Getting Old
• When Your Move Beyond Your Fear, You Feel Free
• Move With The Cheese, And Enjoy It!

With these phrases and a quick duck into the coffee room, I imagine that even the most terrifying of HR demons can be quickly vanquished. These days, worker peons need all the help they can get.

The other day I was awakened in the middle of the night to a banging and clanging noise. I rolled over. All the lights were on. The living room lights, the outside lights. Eric was out of bed. Then, a shouting from the kitchen: “Hey! You! What are you doing! Get out of there!” More banging and rattling, doors slamming, glass breaking.

I lay quietly in bed. Was I going to be murdered in my bed if I stayed here? Were we being invaded my martians? What was going on? Should I get up?

A scraping noise. More doors slamming. Eric stomped back into the room. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“We have raccoons,” Said Eric, visibly fuming. “Big, fat, ARROGANT raccoons.”

We store birdseed in a big plastic container on the porch right by the kitchen door. We’re not dumb, the birdseed is in an airtight, latched container. But the raccoons are smarter than we are; they managed to get the latches open and crawl inside the container. But this time they made enough noise to wake Eric up. Eric went over, turned on the lights, and caught one raccoon butt-outward in the container and the other raccoon guiltily waiting his turn. He rapped on the door. The raccoons just casually stared at him. He opened the door. The raccoons just moved back a few feet and waited for Eric to go away, looking totally unthreatened. Raccoons are not like deer; they don’t scare easily.

It was then Eric got mad. You realize, of course, this means war. He went back into the kitchen, picked up the recycling, went back outside and lobbed an empty can of black beans right at the nearest sneering black-masked bushy-tailed seed-eater.

I should have gotten up and investigated the noise: I missed the spectacle of a naked man chasing raccoons across the lawn at three in the morning and pelting them with beer bottles.

And they say life in the country is boring.

The birdseed was moved inside for the night. It was my job that next day to put the birdseed into the closet on the porch. “But the closet isn’t locked,” I said, dubiously.

“If raccoons can open doorknobs,” said Eric, “We’re going to have much bigger problems than losing a little birdseed.”

No sign of the raccoons since putting away their immediate source of goodies. But sometimes when I go out into the garden I get the feeling I’m being….watched.

We first moved into the house in November, when the yard was grey and damp and The Weed wasn’t growing. We had no idea what horrors were yet to befall us.

The Weed started to sprout in February, and within a matter of weeks took over the entire property. It grew up and over everything, in and out, over and under, twining around and through and over itself, four feet high where it had no support and twelve feet high where it did. And it grew fast, feet a day, sometimes if you turned around for a second it seemed like it had grown another couple feet. Cutting it, pulling it out, spraying it with chemicals only seemed to encourage it. It sprouted more leaves at the ends, and took over another part of the yard.

We tried to cut it back. It only laughed. We made do with just keeping the main pathways clear, so we could get up and out of the driveway without it trailing out and snagging the car on the way down.

In June, The Weed sprouted all over with beautiful purple pink and white flowers. The ocean of horrible weeds that blanketed everything in the yard was now covered in pink. So it wasn’t all bad, then. The flowers were almost worth it. Almost.

We didn’t know what this stuff was. I couldn’t find it in any of my books. I had a book, Flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains, but I had a hard time understanding it because it was written for botanists and I could not tell my inflorescences from my lemmas. This was a vine, it had flat leaves and purple flowers, and it went bloody everywhere.

I asked on the net, and everyone said, “Oh, you have the Dreaded Bindweed. You are doomed.”

I said, great, we are doomed. But I looked up bindweed (leaves pubescent, rarely glabrous), and found a picture of it, and discovered that while yes, we do also have bindweed, The Weed is not bindweed.

So what was it? Sometime in fall after the pretty pink flowers were gone The Weed sprouted seed pods. Seed pods that looked suspiciously like…. peas.

“Do you think maybe its sweet pea?” I asked Eric. But sweet pea has such a nice, sweet quiet reputation. An annual, sweet pea comes in zillions of colors, the result of easy hybridization and medieval fun with genetics. It didn’t seem to bear much relationship to the aggressive pink monster in our garden.

Sunset Western Garden Book to the rescue. There are two sweet peas, Lathrys Odorata, common annual sweet pea, and Lathrys Latifolius, perennial sweet pea. Comparing notes between the Sunset book and the Flora book (looking up all the words I didn’t understand, which was most of them), I was able to confirm that The Weed is, indeed, perennial sweet pea (the flora book calls it everlasting sweet pea. Ahahah). The Sunset book has an amusing description of the latter when kept in perspective with The Weed, and I quote: “Strong growing vine up to 9 ft. … Plants grow with little care. May escape and become naturalized. Use as a bank cover.” Ahahaha.

Knowing what The Weed was gave us little consolation. For the last few years I have tried to ignore the existence of The Weed, mostly trying to keep it under control. One of the nice things about the The Weed is that it is very green, it holds a lot of water, and its easy to uproot because its a long vine that doesn’t really grab on to stuff very hard. So you can harvest a ton of it in the late summer, shred it all, and have just enormous amounts of really great compost ready to rot over the winter. And the flowers were really nice for my bees. Whenever I went out into the yard when The Weed was in flower the bees would be out in droves, rooting around in the pink and purple flowers, digging down into the petals for the nectar inside.

This year, however, sweet pea is apparently having a cultural renaissance. It has suddenly come into style. I first started seeing pots of sweet pea in reds and blacks and light blues in the garden center in early spring, little delicate l.odoratas, really pretty plants. I laughed. While light blue sweet pea is really pretty, I really didn’t need any more sweet pea in my life.

And then Martha Stewart Living did an article about how cool sweet pea was in bunches, when displayed in antique silver urns on linen tablecloths, etc, etc. Oh my.

Then, finally, I started seeing bunches of sweet pea in the farmer’s market every week. Not even good sweet pea, just the same same pinks and purples we had, for $3 a bunch, and not even very big bunches! And they were selling out!

It had never even really occurred to me to pick the flowers. They were everywhere, the sweet pea was The Weed! And now it was selling for $3 a bunch! Whoa!

So of course, I went out and picked some.

I can pick a big bunch of sweet pea, say, $15 worth, in about half an hour. I’ll need more time if the sweet pea is twined in with poison oak, and a lot more time if there is a big stinging nettle hidden in the middle of it that I don’t see until its too late (note to self: do not pick sweet pea in shorts). The bees still like sweet pea a lot, and when one is holding a mass of sweet pea in one’s hands, the bees will really like one. Work quickly.

It occurred to me after I was done picking that I had never actually smelled sweet pea. It didn’t seem to have much of scent on the vine, I had never actually noticed anything exceptionally fragrant about it, so, Ferdinand-the-bull-like, I stuffed my nose down into the mass of flowers, and inhaled.

Ah. They smell wonderful. A very light, nectar smell, not at all objectionable, not at all strong. You have to get very close to smell them. But they are lovely. Just lovely.

Back at home, I found a glass to put the flowers in. Sweet pea is a comfortable, disorganized flower. It isn’t a regal flower like a rose, or a structurally beautiful flower like an orchid. It isn’t even a friendly happy flower like a sunflower or a marigold. Its a messy rumpled bed flower, an overstuffed chair flower, a muddy wet dog flower. It is not a flower that is arranged so much as fluffed. But the result is extremely pretty.

Not bad for a noxious weed.

“…and in the South Bay, we have a three-car accident on southbound 85 just before Saratoga.”

South Bay! South Bay! The mother in the minivan fumed as the traffic in front of her moved exactly ten feet and then glided again to a stop. Why did they always talk about the South Bay and never what was going on where she was. “When are we going to get home, Mama?” the child in the back seat asked her. “Soon, Allie,” the mother replied, trying to keep her voice calm and her hands not so tightly clenched on the wheel as the clouds around them darkened. Looks like a storm’s coming in, she thought. I hope we make it home by then.

“On the Bay Bridge the metering lights are on and the traffic is backed up well beyond the maze…”

The top-notch executive in the convertible sports car made a split-second decision. He abruptly transferred his cell phone to his other ear, shifted his car into second, turned his head to check the next lane, steered with one knee and cut off the car next to him, all while simultaneously castigating his CFO for last quarter’s numbers. This gained him one car length’s position. The driver of the car he had cut off shouted something. The executive made a rude gesture out the window, and something fell on his hand and stuck there.

Curiously, he pulled his hand back into the car. Stuck to the back of his hand was a large piece of ash, an ash that might have risen from a log in a fireplace and then settled back again into the hearth.

He looked up, looked around. Fires were not unusual for this area, and a fire up ahead would explain the rotten traffic today. But there wasn’t any smell of smoke in the air, and the dark clouds ahead of them were rain clouds, not smoke. As the executive watched more ash began to fall all around them, falling lazily to the ground like grey powdery snowflakes and drifting in clusters on the hood of his car. “I have to go,” the executive snapped at his cell phone.

“In Napa County Highway 29 watch out for a ladder in the roadway. CHP is en route…”

The electrician’s truck wasn’t doing so well in this traffic, and he eyed his gauges worriedly as they creeped upward. His brother had told him just that weekend that the water pump was going to be a problem, but he had laughed. This old Ford had been nothing but rock solid for him for years, it would last a few more weeks. He had some good jobs down in the valley to do, high-paying jobs, and that would give him some money to fix up the truck.

He watched uneasily as the ashes fell heavily from the blackened clouds and not a car on the road was moving, not an inch. People all around him were getting out of their cars, faces turned toward the sky, holding their hands up to catch the ashes, pressing their fingers against them, crushing them in their palms.

“Highway 17 slows at the Summit…”

The electrician heard the first raindrops hit the roof of his truck like tiny marbles, tap tap tap. Then he saw one drop onto the hood, sizzle, and the vanish in a bit of steam. Another, larger, slapped down bright red on the sheet metal, rested for a moment, and then melted right through it.

“My God,” the electrician swore, crossed himself and slammed his truck into reverse. He accelerated backward, crushing the bumper of the car behind him, then shifted again and came forward. It was no use, he was trapped in traffic.

“Roadwork at Fillmore and Van Ness…”

The air was growing hot as the drops became a sprinkle became a storm, and there were cries and shouts from cars all around him. Molten raindrops pocked his truck; one came through the roof and melted through the seat next to him leaving a stink of burnt plastic and foam rubber. The electrician pressed his hands to his mouth and prayed.

“Traffic is stopped at the 101/880 interchange….”

In the executive’s car, the convertible top provided no protection against the rain, and the drops punched through again and again and again. The executive used his briefcase for a while to try and cover his head, but after a while not even the best quality leather workmanship money can buy could stop it.

“Nothing but brake lights all the way from 880 to the toll plaza on the Dumbarton Bridge…”

The mother in the minivan was in the fast lane, and she got out of traffic and drove into the grassy median, something that had only occurred to a few other drivers on the road. But there the rain had pooled in the ground and it was only a matter of a few feet before the tires overheated and melted and blew. She did not get far. As the minivan ground to a stop she got out of the front seat, pulled her screaming daughter out of the baby seat and curled up on the floor of the back seat as the storm pattered noisily down on the roof, sounding entirely like the big thunderstorms she used to remember when she was growing up in the midwest and had missed so much when she moved to California.

“And this just coming up on my screen, it looks like we have a major backup on the Sunol grade due to a rain of fire. CHP is asking people to use alternate routes. More weather and traffic every eight minutes.”

I had business to do in San Francisco the other day, so like thousands of other people do every morning I got in my car and fought my way up the peninsula, fought my way through the smog and the traffic from one freeway to the next, from one dirty city intersection to the next, and then fought my way into a parking space. I didn’t have much business to do, not even worth the trip, actually, but it had to be done, and once it was done by midmorning I found myself feeling tired and worn and beaten.

I was sitting in my car at the intersection of Geary and Fillmore, waiting to turn left. Left back to Van Ness and then back to 101, back to Silicon Valley, back to work again to finish my day and meet my deadlines. It was a bright May day, the sort of beautiful temperate late spring day in the city where the weather is actually not too cold and not too hot, no fog to cloud the sky, just blue blue blue and and light and warmth and yellow sun.

Cars were stacking up on the left side of the intersection, to the left on Geary where I was going to be turning. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to go down to Van Ness and 101 and back to work. More fighting to be done, I sighed, more driving, more push push push and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

I looked out the right side, out to the West, toward the coast, where there was no traffic at all.

What do deadlines mean, really? a little voice said. It seemed to be coming from my car. The work gets done, eventually, doesn’t it? What’s a few hours? I found myself suddenly smiling, no, grinning, as something inside me went plink and I abruptly shifted into reverse, backed out of the left turn lane, and turned right.

West on Geary went away from the freeway, toward the coast and the beaches, and toward Highway 1, twisty twisty Highway 1, the very long way home. I felt like I was running away, I felt like I was skipping school, I felt wicked and I FELT GREAT.

Four lights down Geary: One to unlatch the car top, one to put the back window down, one to find my hat and my sunglasses in the glovebox, and the final one to fold the car top down. The woman behind me in the nice sedan gave me a look of dismay as the top came down. Oh. You have a convertible. Yes. I have a convertible. And this is what it wants.

On the beach side of the city the sky was still clear but I was not the only one who was playing hooky; the road was crowded and it took a few miles of southward travel before the traffic opened up, before everything — the road and the air and and the sky and the car — all came together. From then on there was little traffic as I drove south, and what few cars I encountered I easily passed.

Do people who are not car people get this? This sense of the perfect day, the perfect road, the perfect place, an almost glorious joy of driving where there are no missed shifts, no hesitations, where every tight corner is executed perfectly and there are no slow RVs hiding around the bend?

For miles I kept the ocean on my right, cliffs and scrubby brush and rolling hills on my left. Once I turned a sweeping left-hander near Pacifica and the whole hillside around the turn was flung wide with splashes of wildflowers, bright California poppies and wild lupines, the magnificent orange and blue mix that only occurs for a few weeks at this time of year. There was a light wind, a warm wind, not enough to be annoying, and it passed in waves over the flowers, stirring them this way and that as I passed on.

Three times I had to make a decision, to turn back from the coast, to go back over the mountains, to go back home. There were three roads that would take me there. Each time I assumed I would run into fog, into cooler weather, that I would become bored of the drive, that I would encounter slow drivers that would ruin the mood. It didn’t happen in Half Moon bay at Highway 92; it didn’t happen at Highway 84 at Pescadero, and it didn’t happen at the nearly unmarked Bonny Doon road. I drove all the way to Santa Cruz, with the weather and the road and the perfect sense of well-being still on my side, stopped in town for a late lunch at a little cafe, and then drove back up the mountain freeway home, arriving in mid-afternoon just as the sun was setting, just in time to crack open a beer and sit out on the porch listening to the bees hum.

If I want to get any work done in the future on bright warm spring days I will have to put my guard up and not listen to little voices coming from my car. If there are more days like that and more drives like the glorious California coastline my car can make an awfully convincing argument.

Pretty much everyone knows that Silicon Valley used to be called the Valley of Heart’s Delight, used to be full of orchards, and that the farmers all slowly vanished once the computers came in. There are still vestiges of the old Valley left, though, still a few old family farms left here and there in amongst the office buildings the billboards and the freeways. It hasn’t all disappeared.

I used to buy strawberries and cherries from an orchard in Saratoga. Actually, it wasn’t really an orchard, it was just an older gentleman with a few cherry trees who, as I understood it, used to have a much larger farm but sold off most of the land over the years as land values went up and farming became less profitable. He kept the acre or so around his house because he just really liked being a farmer. In May he would sell strawberries from Gilroy, and in June he sold cherries from his own trees, all from a little roadside stand. I would drive by, park along the white fence alongside his property, chat for a bit and buy a quart or two of berries for eating or for jam, or cherries for snacking. The prices were good, and the fruit was incredibly fresh and flavorful (far more than it ever got at the grocery store).

I read in the local paper late last year that my friend the old farmer had died, and his family was trying to decide what to do with the orchard. I hoped they would find a way to keep it open, but I knew that with housing prices what they were in the Valley, and especially in Saratoga, that the little cherry orchard would be sold. And sure enough, I drove by there just a little while ago, and there was a FOR SALE sign up on the white fence next to the roadside stand where I used to park my car.

I was very quiet for the next mile down the road.

Saratoga is a very rich neighborhood, a town of sweeping driveways paved in brick leading up to enormous faux-Tudor and faux-Tuscan mansions. You could fit at least three or four of those houses on a sad little worn out cherry orchard once you scraped all the trees off of it, sell those houses for a couple mil apiece, make quite a profit on your investment. And that’s what the Valley is all about, right? Return on Investment?

I was thinking of my friend and his cherry orchard when I heard recently that Mariani, the last dried fruit packer in Santa Clara County, is shutting down and moving to the Central Valley. Last year Del Monte closed its last fruit cannery here. A couple of years back Olson Cherries, who had huge orchards out in Sunnyvale and a big roadside stand on El Camino Real, sold most of its land to a developer. There are apartments there now. They’re called the Cherry Orchard Apartments. Ha ha ha.

All we’ve got left now as far as actual commercial fruit production in the Valley is a tomato packer owned by a company in New York, and a small maraschino cherry manufacturer. Both are planning to leave the Valley in the next few years. Soon all the fruit will be gone.

Does it really matter? Computers are more profitable. The economy in the area is certainly better with high tech that it would be in farming. The jump in land values is great if you own land. And you could argue that a lot of these farmers have been here for long enough that they can sell out for a lot of money, retire altogether or just buy more land in a cheaper area and keep farming. They don’t have to farm in this particular neighborhood. We don’t need farming here.

But I don’t know. In San Francisco they complain that when the dotcommers came in they drove out all the artists and the musicians and the people who make San Francisco interesting — that all that high tech money turned the city into a town of loft condos and cell phones and SUVs. In the Valley we’ve been over-teched for a long time and the change been much more gradual, much less dramatic. But the problem is the same: its good to have diversity. Its good to have industry in an area that is not all chips and networks and software. Its good to be able to talk to people who have different interests, different backgrounds, different ways of looking at the very neighborhood you live in and the streets you walk and drive every day. When an industry dies, particularly an industry that was once so important to this area, you lose all of that. I think its hard to understand how much that will be missed until its gone…and until it is far too late to get it back. But then, for the Valley of Heart’s Delight, it probably already is.