And now I even write in an actual box, this one actually an actual Japanese box, the SENSEI 2000 portable computer, sleek and lean and grey as dreams, with a four line window and mama-san chewing gum keys and a plug-in bubble memory I’m afraid to use, wanting something palpable for my troubles, if not hardcopy at least the little cassette valises full of memory.
Like estranged laundry.
“I have never had an operating system of my own,” I said to the sailor.
"And where's it got Hugh?"
Camel jockey teeth at the end of the aristocratic Armenian nose.
"Not where I can trust my mind to training invisible bubbles to line up right," I say.
"Shitsville, that's where," says the sailor, not bothering to listen to me, "I give you an operating system, a way to forget, a master mind.... Do you know this, my friend? That Sensei means master? I'm giving you a magic carpet, tailor made, an Armenian carpet, immortal friendship... plug one bubble in your box and there, at your call and beck, is a friend forever, a database to build a world on. Plug another bubble in and magnetic fluids swim like sperm, each little globule filled with the miniscule fingerprint of your genetic stuff, your wit and wisdom for a month would fill but one bubble, but you prefer the visible. The tape all locked up in its plexiglass box, words winding in on themselves in one long line. I offer to remove you from linear life and transport you to a world of orbiting molecules and magnetic dimensions, but you prefer not to...