Friday, March 2, 3:12 a.m.: You wake up, startled by two things. The first is that you're actually asleep—in bed, even—at 3:12 a.m., rather than staring at a monitor. The second is a programming epiphany, the simultaneous simplicity and sophistication of which would bring tears to a lesser man's eyes.

And thus, the perfect day begins.

8:20 a.m.: You drive to work. Amazingly, fast cars stay in the fast lane, slow cars stay to the right. Traffic in general parts before you, sensing your importance. You arrive at work 1.5 hours earlier than usual.

8:52 a.m.: You arrive at your office to find that the new computer you have been bugging IS about for eight months is finally here. Better yet, they have not taken it out of the box and preinstalled all their crud. There is nothing here you do not want. This PC is a virgin.

9:02 a.m.: Wondering what emergencies have cropped up overnight, you check your e-mail. You have none. You check to see if the e-mail server is down. It isn't.

9:10 a.m.: Time for the first Pepsi of the day. You insert the dollar bill into the soda machine and punch a button. A Pepsi comes out. Four seconds later, another Pepsi drops, gratis. Then the soda machine rejects the dollar bill.

9:15 a.m.: You begin writing the code that came to you last night. The idea has no hidden "gotchas" that render it unworkable. As you program, your Inbox remains strangely empty and your phone doesn't ring. In less than three hours—and in fewer than 300 lines of code—you are finished. It compiles and runs on the first try. Voilá! You have just written an object that causes the keyboard (or other called peripheral device) to levitate 6 inches off the desktop.

11:45 a.m.: You demonstrate this object to your coworkers and manager; they agree it is—bar none—the best VC++ code ever written and absolutely, positively must be integrated into the next version of your company's product. They insist on buying you lunch.

2:00 p.m.: You settle down to browse a few of your C++ vs. Java newsgroups. You find the pro-Java hacks have admitted that their language is, in fact, nothing more than a child's toy and not suitable for real development.

3:45 p.m.: Mail arrives, containing free T-shirts, electronics, and the latest copy of VCDJ.

4:00 p.m.: The product manager and marketing manager for your product wander by your office. You demonstrate your new object, which—to your amazement—they agree is incredibly cool. They then leave without mentioning the word "deadline" or asking you to describe "in plain English" (read "baby talk") a feature you've described a half dozen times before.

4:10 p.m.: You review a coworker's code, quickly reducing it from 5,000 lines to 1,500, and increasing its speed by a factor of 20. The coworker—your nemesis—resigns in disgrace.

4:58 p.m.: You reflect on the fact that you have not had to purchase a single soda all day (the two-Pepsis-for-the-price-of-none trick keeps working), saving you $8.45.

5:00 p.m.: You go home, realizing you have just put in a 9-to-5 day—a first in the history of computer programming.

Of course, on Monday you'll find the reason you didn't get any e-mail was the marketing guys were all in a giant brainstorming meeting, thinking up new features that have to be included in this next release, all 32 of which will be vaguely enumerated and discussed in a never-ending stream of e-mail. Furthermore, they'll decide the one feature they don't need is a levitating keyboard.

The vending machine will resume charging for soda. IT will repossess the new computer (it came straight to your office via a mistake in the mailroom), not returning it until they've imaged it with their standard suite of software. The free T-shirts will turn out to be too small. Your archrival will be rehired, assigned to head a new project dedicated to the development of levitating keyboards.