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establish some sort of one-on-one relationship, but
my attempts invariably failed. I talked twice to Stacy Kerrin, the blond woman,
and I gathered from reading between the lines of what she said and what she
didn’t say that my predecessor had been well-liked within the department.
Apparently, he had maintained friendships with many of the programmers outside
of work and had seen them on a social basis. She spoke of him fondly, as an
equal.
    But I was clearly a second-class citizen.
    I wanted to feel superior to these people, should have been able to feel
superior—they were dorks and nerds, geeks to a man—but I found myself
feeling uncomfortably out of place around them and even slightly intimidated. In
the real world they might be losers, but here in their world they were the norm
and I was the outcast.
    I took to spending most of my breaks at my desk, alone.
    On Friday, Stewart had assigned me to correct the grammar on an old
chapter of the department Standards Manual, and I spent at least an hour trying
to get the paper aligned in the printer. I was supposed to have the assignment
finished before noon, and I had to wait until all of the pages were printed
before leaving, so I was late for lunch.
    It was twelve-thirty by the time I xeroxed the chapter, placed a copy on
Stewart’s desk, and finally went outside.
    The two BMWs that had flanked my car this morning were gone, and I
pulled out easily. The Buick was almost out of gas, and there was no gas station
between here and the freeway, so I decided to try the other direction. I figured
I’d find a Shell or a Texaco or something at one of the intersections.
    Ten minutes later, I was hopelessly lost.
    I’d never really driven through Irvine before. I’d driven past it on my
way to San Diego, I’d passed through a corner of it on my way to the beach, but
I’d never driven in it. I didn’t know the city, and as I headed south on
Emery, I was amazed by its monochromatic sameness. I drove for miles without
encountering a store, gas station, or shopping center of any kind. There was
only row upon row of identical two-story tan houses behind a seemingly endless
brown brick wall. I passed four stoplights, then turned at the fifth. None of
the street names were recognizable to me, and I continued turning, right and
left and right and left, hoping to find a gas station, or at least a liquor
store where I could ask directions to a gas station, but there was only that
brown brick wall, lining both sides of every street. It was like some
labyrinthian science fiction city, and I was getting worried because my gas
gauge was now definitely on E, but there was also a part of me that found this
exciting. I’d never seen anything like it before. Irvine was a planned
community, with businesses all in one area, residences in another, farmland in
another, and apparently stores and gas stations in another. Something about that
appealed to me, and though I was afraid of running out of gas, I also felt
strangely comfortable here. The mazelike uniformity of the streets and the
buildings fascinated me, and seemed to me somehow wondrous.
    Finally I did find an Arco, deceptively disguised in an unobtrusive
corner building the same brown brick as the wall, and I got my gas and asked the
attendant how to get back to Emery. The directions were surprisingly easy—I
hadn’t gone as far afield as I thought—and I thanked him, and drove off.
    I returned to work feeling lighter and happier for my little noontime
jaunt.
    I promised myself I’d spend more of my lunch hours exploring Irvine.
     
    The days dragged.
    My job was mind-numbingly boring, made even more so by the knowledge
that it was completely useless. From what I could tell, Automated Interface
would have had absolutely no trouble getting along without me. The corporation
could have eliminated my position entirely and no one would have even noticed.
    I mentioned this to Jane over dinner one night,