The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

by Neal Stephenson

  Hackworth's initial surge of terror had worn off. He had now entered into morbid fascination with the incredible dreadfulness of his situation and the magnificent performance staged by Dr. X to celebrate it. He knelt silently and waited in a stunned, hyper-relaxed state, like a pithed frog on the dissection table.

  Formalities were gone through. The Judge was named Fang and evidently came from New York. The charge was repeated, somewhat more elaborately. The woman stepped forward and introduced evidence: a cine record that was played on a large mediatron covering the back wall of the stage. It was a film of the suspect, John Percival Hackworth, slicing a bit of skin from his hand and giving it to (the innocent) Dr. X, who (not knowing that he was being gulled into committing a theft) extracted a terabyte of hot data from a cocklebur-shaped mite, and so on, and so on.

  “The only thing that remains is to prove that this information was, indeed, stolen—though this is strongly implied by the suspect's behavior,” Judge Fang said. In support of this assertion, Constable Chang stepped forward and told the story of his visit to Hackworth's flat.

  “Mr. Hackworth,” said Judge Fang, “would you like to dispute that this property was stolen? If so, we will hold you here while a copy of the information is supplied to Her Majesty's Police; they can confer with your employer to determine whether you did anything dishonest. Would you like us to do that?”

  “No, Your Honour,” Hackworth said.

  “So you are not disputing that the property was stolen, and that you deceived a subject of the Celestial Kingdom into colluding with your criminal behavior?”

  “I am guilty as charged, Your Honour,” Hackworth said, “and I throw myself on the mercy of the court.”

  “Very well,” Judge Fang said, “the defendant is guilty. The sentence is sixteen strokes of the cane and ten years' imprisonment.”

  “Goodness gracious!” Hackworth murmured. Inadequate as this was, it was the only thing that came to him.

  “Insofar as the strokes of the cane are concerned, since the defendant was motivated by his filial responsibility to his daughter, I will suspend all but one, on one condition.”

  “Your Honour, I shall endeavour to comply with whatever condition you may choose to impose.”

  “That you supply Dr. X with the decryption key to the data in question, so that additional copies of the book may be made available to the small children crowding our orphanages.”

  “This I will gladly do,” Hackworth said, “but there are complications.”

  “I'm waiting,” Judge Fang said, not sounding very pleased. Hackworth got the impression that this business about the caning and the Primer was a mere prelude to something bigger, and that the Judge just wanted to get through it.

  “In order for me to weigh the seriousness of these complications,” Hackworth said, “I will need to know how many copies, approximately, Your Honour intends to make.”

  “In the range of hundreds of thousands.”

  Hundreds of thousands! “Please excuse me, but does Your Honour understand that the book is engineered for girls starting around the age of four?”

  “Yes.”

  Hackworth was taken aback. Hundreds of thousands of children of both sexes and all ages would not have been difficult to believe. Hundreds of thousands of four-year-old girls was hard for the mind to grasp. Just one of them was quite a handful. But it was, after all, China.

  “The magistrate is waiting,” Constable Chang said.

  “I must make it clear to Your Honour that the Primer is, in large part, a ractive—that is, it requires the participation of adult ractors. While one or two extra copies might go unnoticed, a large number of them would overwhelm the built-in system provided for paying for such services.”

  “Then part of your responsibility will be to make alterations in the Primer so that it is suitable for our requirements—we can make do without those parts of the book that depend heavily on outside ractors, and supply our own ractors in some cases,” Judge Fang said.

  “This should be feasible. I can build in automatic voice-generation capabilities—not as good, but serviceable.” At this point, John Percival Hackworth, almost without thinking about it and without appreciating the ramifications of what he was doing, devised a trick and slipped it in under the radar of the Judge and Dr. X and all of the other people in the theatre, who were better at noticing tricks than most other people in the world. “While I'm at it, if it pleases the court, I can also,” Hackworth said, most obsequiously, “make changes in the content so that it will be more suitable for the unique cultural requirements of the Han readership. But it will take some time.”

  “Very well,” said Judge Fang, “all but one stroke of the cane are suspended, pending the completion of these alterations. As for the ten years of imprisonment, I am embarrassed to relate that this district, being very small, does not have a prison, and so the suspect will have to be released this evening after the business with the cane is finished. But rest assured, Mr. Hackworth, that your sentence will be served, one way or another.”

  The revelation that he would be released to his family this very evening hit Hackworth like a deep lungful of opium smoke. The caning went by quickly and efficiently; he did not have time to worry about it, which helped a little. The pain sent him straight into shock. Chang pulled his flaccid body off the rack and bore him over to a hard cot, where he lay semiconscious for a few minutes. They brought him tea—a nice Keemun with distinct lavender notes.

  Without further ado he was escorted straight out of the Middle Kingdom and into the streets of the Coastal Republic, which had never been more than a stone's throw away from him during all of these proceedings, but which might as well have been a thousand miles and a thousand years distant. He made his way straight to a public matter compiler, moving in a broad-based gait, with tiny steps, bent over somewhat, and compiled some first-aid supplies—painkillers and some hæmocules that supposedly helped to knit wounds together.

  Thoughts about the second part of the sentence, and how he might end up serving it, did not come back to him until he was halfway back across the Causeway, borne swiftly on autoskates, the wind keening through the fabric of his trousers and inflaming the laceration placed neatly across his buttocks, like the track of a router. This time, he was surrounded by a flock of hornet-size aerostats flying in an ellipsoidal formation all around him, hissing gently and invisibly through the night and waiting for an excuse to swarm.

  This defensive system, which had seemed formidable to him when he compiled it, now seemed like a pathetic gesture. It might stop a youth gang. But he had insensibly transcended the plane of petty delinquents and moved into a new realm, ruled by powers almost entirely hidden from his ken, and knowable to the likes of John Percival Hackworth only insofar as they perturbed the trajectories of the insignificant persons and powers who happened to be in his vicinity. He could do naught but continue falling through the orbit that had been ordained for him. This knowledge relaxed him more than anything he had learned in many years, and when he returned home, he kissed the sleeping Fiona, treated his wounds with more therapeutic technology from the M.C., covered them with pajamas, and slid beneath the covers. Drawn inward by Gwendolyn's dark radiant warmth, he fell asleep before he had even had time to pray.

  More tales from the Primer; the story of Dinosaur

  and Dojo; Nell learns a thing or two about the art

  of self-defense; Nell's mother gets, and loses, a

  worthy suitor; Nell asserts her position against a

  young bully.

  She loved all of her four companions, but her favorite had come to be Dinosaur. At first she'd found him a little scary, but then she'd come to understand that though he could be a terrible warrior, he was on her side and he loved her. She loved to ask him for stories about the old days before the Extinction, and about the time he had spent studying with the mouse Dojo.

  There were other students too …

  said the book, speaking in Dinosa
ur's voice, as Nell sat by herself in the corner of the playroom.

  . . . In those days we had no humans, but we did have monkeys, and one day a little girl monkey came to the entrance of our cave looking quite lonely. Dojo welcomed her inside, which surprised me because I thought Dojo only liked warriors. When the little monkey saw me, she froze in terror, but then Dojo flipped me over his shoulder and bounced me off the walls of the cave a few times to demonstrate that I was fully under control. He made her a bowl of soup and asked her why she was wandering around the forest all by herself. The monkey, whose name was Belle, explained that her mother and her mother's boyfriend had kicked her out of the family tree and told her to go swing on the vines for a couple of hours. But the bigger monkeys hogged all the vines and wouldn't let Belle swing, so Belle wandered off into the forest looking for companionship and got lost, finally stumbling upon the entrance to Dojo's cave.

  “You may stay with us for as long as you like,” Dojo said. “All we do here is play games, and you are invited to join our games if it pleases you.”

  “But I am supposed to be home soon,” Belle complained. “My mother's boyfriend will give me a whipping otherwise.”

  “Then I will show you the way from your family tree to my cave and back,” Dojo said, “so that you can come here and play with us whenever your mother sends you out.”

  Dojo and I helped Belle find her way back through the forest to her family tree. On our way back to the cave, I said, “Master, I do not understand.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?” Dojo said.

  “You are a great warrior, and I am studying to become a great warrior myself. Is there a place in your cave for a little girl who just wants to play?”

  “I'll be the judge of who does and doesn't make a warrior,” Dojo said.

  “But we are so busy with our drills and exercises,” I said. “Do we have time to play games with the child, as you promised?”

  “What is a game but a drill that's dressed up in colorful clothing?” Dojo said. “Besides, given that, even without my instruction, you weigh ten tons and have a cavernous mouth filled with teeth like butcher knives, and that all creatures except me flee in abject terror at the mere sound of your footsteps, I do not think that you should begrudge a lonely little girl some play-time.”

  At this I felt deeply ashamed, and when we got home, I swept out the cave seven times without even being asked. A couple of days later, when Belle came back to our cave looking lonely and forlorn, we both did our best to make her feel welcome. Dojo began playing some special games with her, which Belle enjoyed so much that she kept coming back, and believe it or not, after a couple of years of this had gone by, Belle was able to flip me over her shoulder just as well as Dojo.

  Nell laughed to think of a little girl monkey flipping a great dinosaur over her shoulder. She went back one page and reread the last part more carefully:

  A couple of days later, when Belle came back to our cave looking lonely and forlorn, we both did our best to make her feel welcome. Dojo made a special meal in his kitchen out of rice, fish, and vegetables and made sure that she ate every scrap. Then he began playing a special game with her called somersaults.

  An illustration materialized on the facing page. Nell recognized the open space in front of the entrance to Dojo's cave. Dojo was sitting up on a high rock giving instructions to Dinosaur and Belle. Dinosaur tried to do a somersault, but his tiny front arms could not support the weight of his massive head, and he fell flat on his face. Then Belle gave it a try and did a perfect somersault.

  Nell tried it too. It was confusing at first, because the world kept spinning around her while she did it. She looked at the illustration in the book and saw Belle doing exactly what Nell had done, making all of the same mistakes. Dojo scampered down from his rock and explained how Belle could keep her head and body straight. Nell followed the advice as she gave it another try, and this time it felt better. Before her time was up, she was doing perfect somersaults all over the playground. When she went back to the apartment, Mom wouldn't let her in at first, so she did somersaults up and down the hall for a while. Finally Mom let her in, and when she saw that Nell had gotten sand in her hair and shoes down at the playground, she gave her a spanking and sent her to bed without any food.

  But the next morning she went to the M.C. and asked it for the special meal Dojo made for Belle. The M.C. said it couldn't really make fish, but it could make nanosurimi, which was kind of like fish. It could make rice too. Vegetables were a problem. Instead it gave her some green paste she could eat with a spoon. Nell told the M.C. that this was her Belle food and that she was going to have it all the time from now on, and after that the M.C. always knew what she wanted.

  Nell didn't call it her magic book anymore, she called it by the name printed plain as day on the title page, which she'd only been able to read recently:

  YOUNG LADY'S ILLUSTRATED PRIMER

  a Propædeutic Enchiridion

  in which is told the tale of

  Princess Nell

  and her various friends, kin, associates, &c..

  The Primer didn't speak to her as often as it used to. She had found that she could often read the words more quickly than the book spoke them, and so she usually ordered it to be silent. She often put it under her pillow and had it read her bedtime stories, though, and sometimes she even woke up in the middle of the night and heard it whispering things to her that she had just been dreaming about.

  Tad had long since vanished from their home, though not before giving Mom a broken nose. He'd been replaced by Shemp, who had been replaced by Todd, who had given way to Tony. One day the Shanghai Police had come to arrest Tony, and he had plugged one of them right in the living room with his skull gun, blowing a hole in the guy's stomach so that intestines fell out and trailed down between his legs. The other policemen nailed Tony with a Seven Minute Special and then dragged their wounded comrade out into the hallway, while Tony, bellowing like a cornered, rabid animal, ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife and began hacking at his chest where he thought the Seven Minute Special had gone into his body. By the time the seven minutes had gone by and the policemen burst back into the apartment, he had dug a hole in his pectoral muscle all the way down to his ribs. He menaced the cops with his bloody knife, and the cop in charge punched in some numbers on a little black box in his hand, and Tony buckled and screamed as a single cookie-cutter detonated inside his thigh. He dropped the knife. The cops rushed in and shrink-wrapped him, then stood around his body, mummified in glistening plastic, and kicked him and stomped him for a minute or two, then finally cut a hole in the plastic so Tony could breathe. They bonded four handles onto the shrink-wrap and then carried him out between them, leaving Nell to clean up the blood in the kitchen and the living room. She wasn't very good at cleaning things up yet and ended up smearing it around. When Mom got home, she screamed and cried for a while and then spanked Nell for making a mess. This made Nell sad, and so she went to her room and picked up the Primer and made up a story of her own, about how the wicked stepmother had made Princess Nell clean up the house and had spanked her for doing it wrong. The Primer made up pictures as she went along. By the time she was finished, she had forgotten about the real things that had happened and remembered only the story she had made up.

  After that, Mom swore off men for a while, but after a couple of months she met a guy named Brad who was actually nice. He had a real job as a blacksmith in the New Atlantis Clave, and one day he took Nell to work with him and showed her how he nailed iron shoes onto the hooves of the horses. This was the first time Nell had actually seen a horse, and so she did not pay much attention to Brad and his hammers and nails. Brad's employers had a giant house with vast green fields, and they had four kids, all bigger than Nell, who would come out in fancy clothes and ride those horses.

  But Mom broke up with Brad; she didn't like craftsmen, she said, because they were too much like actual Victorians, always spouting all kinds o
f crap about how one thing was better than another thing, which eventually led, she explained, to the belief that some people were better than others. She took up with a guy named Burt who eventually moved in with them. Burt explained to Nell and Harv that the house needed discipline and that he intended to provide it, and after that he spanked them all the time, sometimes on the butt and sometimes on the face. He spanked Mom a lot too.

  Nell was spending much more time at the playground, where it was easier for her to do all of the exercises that Dojo was teaching to Belle. She also played games with the other kids sometimes. One day she was playing tetherball with a friend of hers and kept beating her every time. Then a boy came up, a boy bigger than either Nell or her friend, and insisted that he be allowed to play. Nell's friend gave up her place, and then Nell played against the boy, whose name was Kevin. Kevin was a big solid boy who was proud of his bulk and his strength, and his philosophy of tetherball was winning through intimidation. He would grab the ball, wind up melodramatically, baring his teeth and getting his face bright red, then smash the ball with a windmill punch, complete with sound effects that always showered the ball with spit. The performance was so impressive that many children just stood and watched it in awe, afraid to get in the way of the tetherball, and after that Kevin would just keep smashing the ball faster and faster on each revolution while vomiting profanity at his opponent. Nell knew that Kevin's mom had lived with a lot of the same guys that Nell's mom had lived with; he frequently sported black eyes that he certainly hadn't gotten on the playground.

  Nell had always been afraid of Kevin. But today when he wound up for his big serve, he just looked silly; kind of like Dinosaur did sometimes when sparring with Belle. The ball swung toward her, dewy with spit and not really going all that fast. Kevin was shouting things at her, calling her a cunt and other words, but for some reason Nell didn't hear it and didn't care, she just lunged toward the ball and punched it hard, putting her whole body behind her knuckles in a straight line, just as Dojo taught. She hit the ball so hard, she didn't even feel it; it shot up in a wide arc that took it behind and above Kevin's head, and after that all she had to do was give it a few more slaps as it whizzed by, and she'd won the game.