Sound of rain. Windshield wipers. Suddenly I'm getting that feeling again like I'm not quite there, like I'm listening to my own heartbeat from across the room. I'm not even looking at the screen, or hearing the words, or thinking anything but breathe, I need to breathe like I'm normal and not some accident victim or something.

You don't even have to try... Sedan. Pickup. I'm staring at your ear. Over-focusing, on three particular tiny blonde fuzz-hairs near the back of the lobe, right where your skin dimples a little. Then I'm thinking that this really doesn't matter. That it's no big deal for you, that you've probably heard this on MTV a hundred times. Then, as if you're reading my mind, as if you're not even listening at all, you make one of those almost-giggle sounds and say, "It's so tiny."

And because I'm not there, because I'm desperately trying to think of something besides the curling wisp of hair that just touches the back of your neck, I don't have any idea what you mean.

Eventually, I realize you mean the AVI window, and I think I should have run it full screen instead of double size. Of course it's tiny, and the speakers are cheap and you've probably got a 50-inch TV with surround sound at home and this is like a joke to you. She's already past so appealing, you could make me cry and the van going by and you're still not really hearing her because you're saying, "Is it supposed to be like that?"

White guy, black guy. ...then I wonder where you are. Your fingers on the arm of my chair, long pink-white nails digging gently into the gray-blue fabric. From way off in the distance, my own voice, "Like what?"

"All blocky and blurry like that. Is that a computer effect?" You do the almost-giggle again, the one I've heard in my head over and over and over, that single unspellable syllable like something a kid's stuffed animal would make when you squeeze it, or a loose stair creaking. Good times, bad times...

...Gimme some a that. I don't even have to look to know its the Suburban going by. All day yesterday, I didn't get any work done. Just good times, bad times... maybe 200 times, until I could see every car and face with my eyes closed, until the 16-bit waveforms for the whole three minutes fourteen seconds were etched into my skull.

I've never been much of an early adopter. I've got enough of my own stuff to debug without messing around with somebody else's beta that they decided to call 1.0 because the ship date came and went. But I'd bumped into you again outside the office on the way home and I was in the kind of mood where you feel like you should do something important and huge but you don't know what. The only thing I could come up with was to stop at Egghead and buy Windows 95, which seemed like a pretty lame excuse for a big decision but I had this vague idea that maybe you'd heard all the hype and you might want to see it. Of course, I knew you could probably care less and that you didn't even have a computer but I got into this thing about it, and bought a multimedia kit with a 4x CD-ROM drive too just because they were on special.

Then when the sound card wouldn't work I kept remembering how your voice sounds so light and gentle and windy all the time and feeling like I was on some sort of mission from God or something to sort out the IRQ and DMA conflicts. When it all finally came together and I clicked in the \FunStuff\Videos\HighPerf folder on Goodtime.avi, it was a really bizarre feeling to have this MTV thing inside my computer, filling the room up with voices and guitars and the whoosh of cars going by the camera.

It was late, and maybe I was too tired, but I felt all kind of sad and depressed, as if an era of my life had just passed. Sort of as if databases and programming and fast typing weren't valuable any more, like the world where I was king had been invaded by 40 megabyte AVI files that did nothing but express somebody's emotions. As if anyone needs romantic video clips gobbling up their hard drive, anyway.

But I thought maybe you could relate to it better. Maybe you'd understand me somehow if you could see something that made sense behind that screen I stare into all day. Maybe you'd have heard of Bill Gates and we could talk about the hundred-million-dollar media blitz and I'd have something to say or show you besides my messy apartment and my new fish tank.

And now you're turning around and not seeing it, not hearing I don't wanna say goodbye, don't wanna walk you to the door... and now I'm totally here and wishing I wasn't. You're looking at me and I'm looking at her to avoid looking at you and what am I supposed to say? Look, Justine, I don't have a VCR or a stereo and I don't go out much and I'm basically a total loser so it was kind of a big deal for me when I installed the multimedia kit? Hey, Justine, I was kind of hoping you'd listen to this song because I'm too terrified to talk about anything besides my aquarium or Windows 95 with you? Excuse me, Justine, I haven't been breathing for two minutes and seven seconds so I'm just going to fall over now?

I've spent a little time with you, I want a little more... Kids in the water fountain. "Hey, it's Bill Gates' idea of video." I hope I'm smiling and shrugging, but I have no idea if I am or not. I breathe out and in and hope you don't notice that I'm ripping a sliver of already-too-short fingernail off my left index finger with my right thumb.

You smile, which doesn't make me reel this time because I'm thinking good she knows who Bill Gates is even though I'm not so sure you get the connection.

"So do you make videos?" As you stand up and roll the chair past me, your hair almost brushes my sleeve. Guy in the cowboy hat. Gimme some a that...

"Oh, no." I laugh in a strangled sort of out-of-breath way. So what do I do, that I could possibly explain without sounding like God's Gift to Geekdom? "Much more boring stuff. Database programming, mostly."

With a jerk, I grab the mouse and close the window. I can't look at the football sequence, with the deep voice crooning baby I really don't have to go anywhere right now and not feel like a complete idiot talking in a nervous, high-pitched whine about how transaction processing is where the money is. I cut him off on you want... and click on Start/Shut Down without even showing you the Plimpton cartoon I'd told you about.

My voice: Bye, bye! from the tinny speakers. I pray you weren't paying attention, but you do a monosyllabic half-giggle and say, "You programmed it to say that every time you turn it off?" I want to deny it, to say it must be a bug, that it usually plays a Mozart riff or a Star Trek sound clip or anything but a sappy, anti-nasal bye-bye. For a moment I'm thinking I could sample your voice instead but then I realize how depressing it would be to have you say good night from my chintzy 5-watt speakers every morning at 2:00am when I finally quit debugging and fall into bed.

You're laughing, looking at the orange letters on the screen. "That's great! They should have the deep voice from that video saying it out loud, though: It's Now SAFE to Turn OFF Your Computer." And before I can worry or go off into my head again, I'm laughing, too, and we're imitating what washing machines and dish washers of the future will say when it's SAFE to turn them OFF, even though it shouldn't really be this funny.

Then it's all quiet the way it gets after you stop laughing with someone, and it stays quiet while you brush a tuft of hair out of your light brown eyes. We both realize that I've been staring at you the whole time, which seems like fifteen minutes even though it's probably been ten seconds.

When you say, kind of quietly, "Whatcha thinking about, Warren?" all of a sudden its like I'm looking at myself from way up in the corner of the room by the ceiling, listening to that thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump in my ears as if it were coming from subwoofers in the apartment upstairs. And I hear someone say, as if it were the most natural thing in the world and not the most improbable, impossible thing anybody ever said, "You're very beautiful, Justine."

I'm thinking, fade to black. Digital hiss. Copyright, 1995, Geffen Records. But you look at the floor for a second, then right into my eyes. "It must be close to seven. Maybe we could grab a sandwich or something together."

I'm breathing now, and I'm not on the ceiling any more. Everything's okay again. "Sounds good." You smile.

When I finally get home, the computer is still on. It's now safe...


Copyright, 1996 by Dick Oliver

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since I posted this story on the Web, lots of people have asked me who the woman singing "Good Times" on the Windows 95 CD-ROM is. I didn't know myself until someone from Brazil clued me in that you can right-click on the AVI file to find out. (Duh!) It's Edie Brickell, Paul Simon's wife.