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that yanking on one would cause the trays directly above it and below it to start sliding. With cables wrapped around every surface like lovelorn anacondas, that could unplug everything and shut down the entire rack.
    That's how my chance to perform bypass surgery on Google's still-beating heart came about. My comrades and I would be disconnecting the cables one by one and reconnecting them in tightly tied bundles running in plastic troughs along the side of the server trays instead of in front of them, making it easier to move the trays in and out of the racks. Even marketeers could use a twist-tie, so we were encouraged to get our hands dirty mucking out the server farm.
    "CableFest '99 lays the groundwork for the frictionless exchange of information on a global scale and will increase the knowledge available to every sentient being on the planet," I assured my wife.
    Kristen looked at me and sadly shook her head. She had a PhD in Soviet history, a job as a professor, and a very sensitive bullshit detector. She tried to be supportive, but her maternal instincts were primarily focused on the three children she now worried would see little of their father. "You took a giant pay cut, and now you're working weekends. You know, the
Merc
might still want you back."
    Saturday morning came and I pulled into the almost empty parking lot of a large, gray, windowless edifice in Santa Clara. There was no sign in front, but it was Exodus, the co-lo that housed our data center. * I joined the movement of people straggling single file through a well-fortified security checkpoint. Marketing, finance, and facilities were all represented. Even Charlie Ayers, our newly hired chef, was there. Photo IDs were checked and badges issued. Stern warnings were given. We were not, repeat,
not
to touch anyone else's stuff.
    And then we were in.
    Unless you're a sysadmin, electrician, or NSA stenographer, you may never have been inside a server farm. Imagine an enormous, extremely well-kept zoo, with chain-link walls draped from floor to ceiling creating rows of large fenced cages vanishing somewhere in the far, dark reaches of the Matrix. Inside each cage is a mammoth case (or several mammoth cases) constructed of stylish black metal and glass, crouched on a raised white-tile floor into which cables dive and resurface like dolphins. Glowing green and red lights flicker as disks whir, whistle, and stop, but no human voices are ever heard as frigid air pours out of exposed ceiling vents and splashes against shiny surfaces and around hard edges.
    The overwhelming impression, as Jim led us past cage after cage of cooled processing power, was of fetishistic efficiency. Clean, pristine, and smoothly sculpted, these were more than machines, they were totems of the Internet economy. Here was eBay. Here Yahoo. Here Inktomi. Welcome to Stonehenge for the Information Age.
    The common design element seemed to be a mechanized monolith centered in each cage, surrounded by ample space to set up a desk and a few chairs, with enough room left over for a small party of proto-humans to dance about beating their chests and throwing slide rules into the air.
    At last we arrived at Google's cage. Less than six hundred square feet, it felt like a shotgun shack blighting a neighborhood of gated mansions. Every square inch was crammed with racks bristling with stripped-down CPUs. There were twenty-one racks and more than fifteen hundred machines, each sprouting cables like Play-Doh pushed through a spaghetti press. Where other cages were right-angled and inorganic, Google's swarmed with life, a giant termite mound dense with frenetic activity and intersecting curves. Narrow aisles ran between the rows of cabinets, providing barely enough space to pass if you didn't mind shredding clothes and skin on projecting screws and metal shards.
    It was improbably hot after our stroll through a freezer to get there, and we were soon sweating and shedding outerwear. On the floor,