A San Franciscan computer programmer falls in love with a schoolteacher in the days after the dot.com boom.

Rand, Winston, and Johnson have a small tech startup company in the Bay Area that's developing a artificially-lived computer character, Koy Koy the bird, who can hear and see and interact with the user. Koy Koy gets placed in a kids schoolroom for testing, and Rand develops a relationship with one of the teachers, Sarah. Rand learns that his scientific understanding of human mating isn't necessarily a roadmap for the real thing.—Martin Lewison <[email protected]>