When he read the e-mail, Sol burned with anger. He happened to be holding two cookies in his hand. He clenched his fist, breaking them into crumbs, which fell through his fingers to the carpet. "This is what will be done," he thought, "to the career of anyone who does not follow Sol Benjamin."

"But being open source," I said, "you'd have to be careful to see that nobody wrote an infinite loop. There's always some clown who will write a recursive function, something that called itself. I can see it now:

               sub go_meta {
                    &go_meta();
               }	

."

"I see what youâre saying," she said. "Like, somebody could write an entire meta chapter, in which characters talk about a novel that goes meta by having a chapter -- the 'obligatory meta' chapter, if you will -- in which characters talk about a novel going meta. And on and on. Eventually the book would crash, and the reader would have to do a brain reboot."

"That would be so incredibly dumb, but youâre right: Some hack out there would try to do it just to amuse himself. It's sad what people will do for a cheap laugh, and the less they know about what theyâre talking about, the sadder it is."

I loved it when she talked in Perl.

"Once the dust clears, someone should dramatize this whole dot-com spectacle."

"The business pages haven't been dramatic enough for you?"

"They've been plenty dramatic for me. But something monumental is going on. It will take a novelist to put it all in context so future generations know exactly what happened around the fall of 1999. The problem is, anyone close enough to the pulse of Silicon Valley to know whatâs going on is, well, too busy being close to the pulse of Silicon Valley to write about it. Thatâs why tech journalism is so bad. Those who can hack it in the industry do -- and make $90,000 plus options doing so. Those who cannot go write for the San Jose Beacon-Call. I mean, 'Microserfs' was great, but do you suppose Coupland has ever written as much as a sort algorithm?"

"So what would your novel be like?"

"I'm thinking some sort of Horatio Alger meets Po Bronson. But then they meet Sinclair Lewis and T.C. Boyle. The four of them in turn bump into Mark Twain. Before I know it, 30 literary heavyweights have met and have crowded me out the door. All I know for sure is that I'd probably contrive some way to say to the reader: 'Hey, I'm sorry this novel is so bad. I don't do this for a living. Quite frankly, I don't know what I'm doing.'"

I paused.

"Great. Now I've brought Dave Eggers into the mix."

ăDork," she said, kicking me in the shin.

"Exactly," I said, pulling my arms out from under the covers so that I could properly wag my hands in the air as I spoke. "But seriously: I could see myself, years from now, finally figuring out what all this means, but by then would I remember enough of the, I donât know, the zeitgeist to convey it adequately? Will anyone?ä

"I think you could," she said.

"Yes, well, you are too kind for your own good," I said, kissing her on the forehead. "My problem is, they say 'Write what you know,' right? Well what the hell do I know? I know enough about code to fake it. I know the AP stylebook. I know all the two-letter words accepted in Scrabble. That's about it. Try making a novel out of that. 'KA EL ME ID MA EL'?"

"Oh shut up. You know a lot more than that."

"What do I know?"

"You know, I don't know, you know stuff. OK, you know how to use words like 'zeitgeist.' As far as I can tell, you even use them correctly. You can't say that about a lot of the coders here. And my god, you just made a 'Moby Dick' joke -- and a Scrabble joke." She rolled her eyes. "Oh, and you always know the answers on 'Jeopardy!' when we watch."

"Of course. Everyone does. The trick is knowing the questions."

"Stop that. You know what I mean. We've discussed your pedantics."

"Pedantry."

"Jon ..." She did not look amused.

"I know, I know," I said. "I'm sorry. I'm just worried that my novel, if I ever wrote it, would be nothing more than 'A Copy Editor's Lament: My Silicon Valley Story.'"

"Look, cut it out. You're a good writer. It's great that youâre not one to put on airs, but it's just as bad to put on anti-airs."

"Freak pancakes, where you let three or four circles of batter bump into each other? They're the best."

"One another, you mean." More than two things bump into one another, never each other.

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Nevermind."

"Right. So, I wanted to apologize for that little episode back there in the living room."

"Oh, that? That was nothing," I said. Lying.

"I was afraid I made you look bad in front of your friends."

"Oh, no, that was my mistake. I have a habit of correcting people. When I've had a drink, it can get out of hand."

"Well, you could have worse problems. I've had drunk guys hit on me and just plain hit me. You're the first one to edit me. It's fine."

I blushed.

Palo Alto was the new Anchorage. If ever there were a case of too few disk drives for too many floppies, this was it.

"Thatâs what this gold rush is all about," David said. "An entire professional set has found a giant wallet, full of money equally unexpected and undeserved. No one, to my knowledge, has turned it in to the market's lost-and-found desk. But you, I think you would.ä

ăWhat about you? You're here, too. What are you doing with the wallet?ä

ăWho do you think dropped it on the ground in the first place?"

I didn't say I wasn't a stupid kid. I said I was a righteous kid. Stupidity and correctness are not mutually exclusive, and occasionally they are one and the same. It would take me 19 years to figure that out.