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S I L I C O N__F O L L I E S   The serial Silicon Follies is a serial comedy about life, work, love and war in Silicon Valley that follows six characters as they become, or attempt to become, masters of their domains. New chapters will appear twice a week, every Monday and Thursday, in Salon 21st.   Start at the beginning If you want to catch up on reading Silicon Follies from the beginning, start here.   The characters Paul Armstrong Silicon Valley software contractor who, at the ripe age of 28, finds himself burned out, disaffected and haunted by the creeping feeling that a career in the infotech industry may not be much of a life to speak of. Steve Hall Paul's childhood friend, master programmer and hacker extraordinaire. Disdains all forms of industrial software development. Believes that all software development should be left to True Hackers and other artists. Revels in taunting "the man," his catch-all nickname for all clueless personnel in commercial computing outfits. Spends his spare time puncturing firewalls. Liz Toulouse Recent Stanford University liberal arts graduate, reluctantly employed as a marketing associate in a major Silicon Valley company, infuriated by legions of young male techies earning four times her salary while being unable to deploy verbs properly in a written sentence. Laurel Waites Liz's classmate, roommate and confidante. Unwilling to throw her own humanities degree on the bonfire of infotech, she has settled for work as a caterer and waitress in a fashionable Silicon Valley eatery popular with the venture capital/IPO crowd. Barry Dominic Megalomaniacal founder and CEO of TeraMemory Inc. Billionaire, workaholic, tyrant, misogynist. Pursues hobbies of extremely expensive and highly visible nature. Kiki Dominic Barry's mysterious and estranged wife. Psychrist Cybernetic infiltrator/provocateur/performance artist. The ballistic nature of his work guarantees a large following among Silicon Valley's nerds, techies and otherwise culturally challenged males -- technological demolition derby as conceived by Umberto Eco.   The author Thomas Scoville is a programmer, writer, consultant and 16-year veteran of various Silicon Valley infotech wars. He is the author of a number of popular essays and Internet provocations, including the Silicon Valley Tarot, The Elements of Style: Unix as Literature, An Undying Affection and Martin Luther, Meet Linus Torvalds. His articles have appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, O'Reilly Online and Salon Magazine. He would like to remind all his former clients that any similarity between the characters in Silicon Follies and any actual person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. He lives in Silicon Valley, but dreams of housing prices almost anywhere else.   Complete list of chapters to date Chapter 1: Adrift among the cubicles Chapter 2: The disinhibition of market leaders Chapter 3: Hacked in Seattle Chapter 4: The claw and the classifieds Chapter 5: Addressed for success Chapter 6 Large No. 11 at the Tung Kee Noodle House Chapter 7 Death by a thousand e-mails Chapter 8 Psychrist, the semiotic demolition derby and Deathmatch 3000 Chapter 9 Liz faces the wrath of the Nerd King Chapter 10 The WHIP comes down on Paul Chapter 11 Liz descends to the engineers' level Chapter 12 Why Barry carries a MiG stick Chapter 13 Managing for total chaos Chapter 14 Programming in vampire mode Chapter 15 Where elite geeks meet to eat -- and run Chapter 16 Looking for a gal who's quick with a vaporizer. Chapter 17 Wizards with Harvard degrees and $4,000 suits. Chapter 18 The women's locker room game -- Decathlon of the flesh Chapter 19 "No boundaries" for Barry's libido Chapter 20 Liz regroups at the chateau Chapter 21 Stalking the wild Fry's salesperson Chapter 22 Barry announces the death of the Nerd Maverick Chapter 23 Zen cats, dragon's eyes and the valley's Gertrude Stein Chapter 24 The Guru gives a pep talk Chapter 25 The Doom Server atop the Throne of Infinite Logic Chapter 26 The sysadmin vs. the world. Chapter 27 Afterglow of the robotic inferno. Chapter 28 Fire off the press releases! Sales force, start your engines! Chapter 29 Marketing mutiny and the magic love burrito. Chapter 30 Kiki's Salon des refusees -- no "cyber-talk," please! Chapter 31 What's an NDA between friends? Chapter 32 Kiki's story: Barry and the big red bong Chapter 33 Steve draws a bead on The Man. Chapter 34 Candy's Comdex freakout. Chapter 35 Comdex burlesque -- Barry preaches to the choir as Paul duct-tapes the demos Chapter 36 Last chance -- squatters off Highway 17 Chapter 37 Liz and Paul's dating game Chapter 38 TeraMemory stock catches fire; productivity plummets Chapter 39 Hackers of the world, unite -- geeks plot palace coup Chapter40 Kiki's cryptic errand -- shady deals in the apricot orchard Chapter41 IPO -- where'd Paul's office go? Chapter42 Bidding for a date with the CFO on the eBay of Love Chapter43 Geek apocalypse: Four days to ship, and the bugs are everywhere Chapter44 Hot words as Barry barbecues his board Chapter45 The bad news -- WHIP gets whipped by pundits Chapter46 Green tea and red ink -- Barry loses millions over breakfast Chapter47 The contractor's contractor -- migrant labor on steroids Chapter48 Strategic mergers -- Barry and Candy dine out in style Chapter49 Layoff -- Candy gets taken out with the trash Chapter50 Candy downshifts out of the fast lane -- and into Psychrist's hot tub Chapter51 Caterers become cable moguls; Barry flies down under Chapter52 Barry, beaten -- the rich man and the sea Chapter53 Paul flames out; Liz and Laurel cash in Chapter54 Kiki and Barry reunited by Iridium -- silence at $40 a minute Chapter55 Barry's Singularity -- ship without a captain Chapter56 Barry's requiem -- Bill Gates, golf and marijuana Chapter57 Laurel moves out, Paul moves in and a CEO goes UFO   ILLUSTRATIONS BY OCTAVIO DIAZ