The Big U

by Neal Stephenson

  “Excuse me a sec, but what do you do for monsters?” asked Virgil.

  “Well, we don’t have real ones. We just have to pretend and use the official S & S rules, developed by MARS through a constitutional process over several years. We maintain two-way radio contact with our referee, Consuela, who stays in the Plex and runs the adventure through a computer program we’ve got worked out. The computer also performs statistical combat simulation.”

  “So you slog around in the shit, and the computer says you’re being attacked by monsters, and she reads it off the CRT and says that according to the computer you’ve lost a finger, or the monster’s dead, that sort of thing?”

  “Well, it’s more exciting than you make it sound, and the Dungeon Mistress makes it better by amplifying the description generated by the computer. I recommend you try it. We’ve got an outing in a couple of weeks.”

  “I don’t know, Fred, it’s not my cup of tea. I’ll think about it, but don’t count on my coming.”

  “That’s fine. Consuela just needs to know a few hours ahead of time so she can have SHEKONDAR—the computer program—prepare a character for you.”

  Virgil assented to everything, nodded a lot, said he’d be getting back to them and hurried out, shaking his head in amazed disgust. Unlikely as it seemed, this place could still surprise him.

  My involvement with Student Government was due to my being faculty-in-residence. I served as a kind of minister without portfolio, investigating whatever topic interested me at the moment, talking to students, faculty and administrators, and contributing to governmental discussions the point of view of an older, supposedly wiser observer. As I had no idea what was going on at the Big U until much later, my contributions can’t have done much good. I did visit the Castle in the Air on several occasions, anyway, and whenever I did I was presented with a visual display in three stages.

  The first was a prominent mural on the wall of the Study Lounge, clearly visible through the windows from the elevator lobby. Even if I had been visiting one of E12’s other wings, therefore, I couldn’t have failed to notice that E12S was a wing among wings. Here, as described, the Castle was painted in yellow—not a typical color for castles, but much nicer than realistic gray or brown. The Castle, stolen directly from a book of Disney illustrations, floated on a cloud that looked like a stomped marshmallow, not a thunderhead, seemingly too meager to support its load. Below, more Disney characters frolicked on an undulating green lawn, a combined golf course/cartoon character refuge with no sand traps, one water hazard and no visible greens. The book of illustrations was not large, and each character was shown in only one or two poses which had to be copied over and over again in populating this great lawn. Monotony had rendered the painters somewhat desperate—what was that penguin doing there? And why had they included that evil gray wolf, wagging his red tongue at the stiff cloned Bambis from behind a spherical shrub? But most agreed that the mural was nice—indeed, so nice that “nice” was no longer adequate by itself; in describing it, Airheads had to amplify the word by saying it many, many times and making large gestures with their hands.

  The second stage of the presentation was the entryways—two identical portals, one at the beginning of each of the wing’s two hallways. Here, at the fire doors by the Study Lounge, the halls had been framed in thick wooden beams—actually papier-mâchéd boxes—decorated with plastic flowers and welcoming messages. The fire doors themselves had been covered with paper and painted so that, when they were closed, I could see what looked like a stairway of light yellow stone rising up from the floor and continuing skyward until further view was blocked by the beam along the ceiling.

  Going through these doors, and therefore up the symbolic stair, I found myself in a light yellow corridor gridded with thin wavy black lines supposed to represent joints between the great yellow building-stones of which the Castle was constructed. These were closely spaced in the first part of the hallway, but the crew had found this work tedious and decided that in the back sections much larger stones were used to build the walls. Here and there, torches, fake paintings, suits of armor and the like were painted on the walls.

  Each individual room, then, was the province of the occupants, who could turn it into any fantasy-land they wanted. One or two of them painted murals on paper and pasted them to their doors. These murals purported to be windows looking down on the scene below, an artistic challenge too great for most of them.

  On each visit to Sarah, then, I was introduced to the Castle in the Air in the manner of a TV viewer. The elevator doors would fade out and there sat the Castle on its cloud, viewed through a screen of glass. The view would then switch to a traveling shot of the stairway leading up to the castle—evidently a long one. Through the magic of video editing, the stair would flatten, part and swing away, and I would be instantly jump-cut to the halls of the Castle proper, where to confirm that it had all happened I could pause at windows here and there and look down at the featureless plains from which I had just ascended.

  So much for the opening credits; what about the plot? The plot consisted almost entirely of parties and tame sexual intrigue with the Terrorists. The Airheads were not disturbed by the fact that their home was not much of a castle—the Terrorists or anyone else could invade at any time—and that far from being up in the air, it was squashed beneath nineteen other Terrorist-infested floors. The Airheads got along by pretending that any man who showed up on their floor was a white knight on beck and call. Certain evil influences, though, could not be kept out by any amount of painting, and among these was the fire alarm system.

  Early in the morning of November the Fifth, Mari Meegan was ejected from her chamber by three City firefighters investigating a full-tower fire alarm. Versions differed as to whether the firefighters had used physical force, but to the lawyers subsequently hired by Mari’s father it did not matter; the issue was the mental violence inflicted on Mari, who was forced to totter down the stairway and join the sleepy throng below with only patches of bright blue masque painted on her face.

  This situation had not previously arisen because it usually took at least half an hour between the ringing of the alarm and the arrival of the firemen on their tour through the tower. Thirty minutes was time enough for Mari to apply a quickie makeup job which would prevent her from looking “disgusting” even during full moons outside, and, as the lawyers took pains to document and photograph, her emergency thirty-minute face kit was set up and ready to go on a corner of her dresser. Next to it was the masque container, which was for “super emergencies”; given a severely limited time to prepare, she could tear this open and paint a blue oval over her face that would serve partly to disguise and partly to show those who recognized her that she cared about her appearance. But on this particular morning, certain Terrorists from above had demonstrated their mechanical aptitude by disabling the E12S alarm bell with a pair of bolt cutters. The more distant ringing of the E12E bell had not overborne the soft nocturnal beat of Mari’s stereo, and by the time she had realized what was happening, and energized the evening light simulation tubes on her makeup center, the sirens were already wafting up from the Death Vortex below.

  The Fire Marshall was not amused. After a week’s worth of rumors that portrayed the Fire Marshall as a Nazi and a pervert, it was decreed that henceforth during fire drills the RAs would go door-to-door with their master keys and make sure everyone left their rooms immediately. This grim ruling inspired a wing meeting at which Hyacinth wearily suggested they all purchase ski masks, since it was getting cold outside anyway, and wear them down to the street during fire drills. “Stay together and you will be totally anonymous, by which I mean no one will know who you are, or what you look like at three in the morning.” The Airheads appointed Teri, a Fashion Merchandising major, to pick out ski masks with a suitable color scheme.

  In private, Hyacinth came up with an acronym for them: SWAMPers. This meant that as a bare minimum they found it necessary to Shave, Wash, Ano
int, Make-up and Perfume all parts of their body at least once a day. Their insistence on doing this often made Sarah wonder about her own appearance—her use of cosmetics was minimal—but Hyacinth and I and everyone else assured her she looked fine. When preparing for the long, nasty Student Government budget meeting in early November, Sarah looked briefly through her shoebox of miscellaneous cosmetics, then shoved it under the bed again. She had greater things to worry about.

  As for clothes, it came down to a choice between her most businesslike outfit, a grey wool skirt suit, and a somewhat brighter dress. She picked the suit, though she knew it would lay her open to accusations of fascism from the Stalinist Underground Battalion (SUB), wound her hair into a bun, and steeled herself for madness.

  The SUB got there an hour before anyone else and had their banners planted and their rabid handouts sown before the Government even showed up. We met in the only room we could find that was reasonably private. Behind us came the TV crews, and then the reporters from the Monoplex Monitor and the People’s Truth Publication, who sat in the first row, right in front of the Stalinists. Finally Lecture Auditorium 3 filled up with supplicants from various organizations, all deeply shocked and dismayed at how little funding they were receiving, all bearing proposed amendments.

  First we slogged through the parliamentary trivia, including a bit of “new business” in which the SUB introduced a resolution to condemn the administration for massive human rights violations and to call for its abolition. Then we came to the real purpose of the meeting: amendments to the proposed budget. A line formed behind the microphone on the stage, and at its head was a SUB member. “I move,” he said, “that we pass no budget at all, because the budget has to be approved by the administration, and so we haven’t got any control over our own activity money.” On cue, behind the press corps, eight SUBbies rose to their feet bearing a long banner: TAKE BACK CONTROL OF STUDENT ACTIVITIES CAPITAL FROM THE KRUPP JUNTA. “The money’s ours, the money’s ours, the money’s ours…”

  We had expected all this and Sarah was undisturbed. She sat back from her microphone and took a sip of water, letting the media record the event for the ages. Once that was done she gaveled a few times and talked them back into their seats. She was about to start talking again when the last standing SUBbie shouted, “Student Government is a tool of the Krupp cadre!”

  Behind him, most of the audience shouted things like “eat rocks” and “shut up” and “shove it.”

  “If you’re finished interfering with the democratic process,” Sarah said, “this tool would like to get on with the budget. We have a lot to do and everyone needs to be very, very brief.”

  Student Government was made up of the Student Senate, which represented each of the 200 residential wings of the Plex, and the Activities Council, comprising representatives from each of the funded student organizations, numbering about 150. The distribution of funds among the Activities Council members was decided on by a joint session, which was our goal for the evening.

  The Student Senate was crammed with SUBbies and members of an outlaw Mormon splinter group called the Temple of Unlimited Godhead (TUG). Each of these groups claimed to represent all the students. As Sarah explained, no one in his right mind was interested in running for Student Senate, explaining why it was filled with fanatics and political science majors. Fortunately, SUB and TUG canceled each other out almost perfectly.

  “I’m tired of having all aspects of my life ruled by this administration that doesn’t give a shit for human rights, and I think it’s time to do something about it,” said the first speaker. There was a little applause from the front and lots of jeering. A hum filled the air as the TUG began to OMMMM…at middle C—a sort of sonic tonic which was said to clear the air of foul influences and encourage spiritual peace; overhead, a solitary bat, attracted by the hum, swooped down from a perch in the ceiling and flitted around, occasioning shrieks and violent motion from the people it buzzed. “At this university we don’t have free speech, we don’t have free speech, we don’t have academic freedom, we don’t even have power over our own money!”

  At the insistence of the audience, Sarah broke in after a few minutes. “If you’ve got any specific human rights violations you’re concerned about, there are some international organizations you can go to, but there’s not much the Student Senate can do. So I suggest you go live somewhere else and let someone else propose an amendment.”

  Shocked and devastated, the speaker gaped at Sarah as the TV lights slammed into action. He held the stare for several seconds to allow the camera operators to focus and adjust light level, then surveyed the cheering and OMming crowd, face filled with bewilderment and shock.

  “I don’t beleeeve this,” he said, staring into the lenses. “Who says we have freedom of speech? My God, I’ve come up here to express a free opinion, and just because I am opposed to fascism, the President of the Student Government tries to throw me out of the Plex! My home! That’s right, if these different people don’t like being oppressed, just throw them out of their homes into the dangerous city! I didn’t think this kind of savagery was supposed to exist in a university.” He shook his head in noble sadness, surveyed the derisive crowd defiantly, and marched away from the mike to grateful applause. Below, he answered questions from the media while the next student came to the microphone.

  He looked like a male cheerleader for a parochial school football team, being handsome, well groomed, and slightly pimpled. As he took possession of the mike the OM stopped. He kept his eye on a middle-aged fellow standing in the aisle not far away, who in turn watched the SUBbie’s press conference in front of the stage. Finally the older gentleman held up three fingers. The TUGgie shoved his fist between his arm and body and spoke loudly and sharply into the mike.

  “I’d like to announce that I have caught a bat here in my hand, and now I’m going to bite the head off it right here as a sacrifice to the God of Communism.”

  Below, the SUBbie found himself in absolute darkness, and tripped over a power cord. Simultaneously the TUGgie squinted as all lights were swung around to bear on him. He smiled and began to talk in a calm chantlike voice. “Well, well, well. I’ve got a confession. I’m not really going to bite the head off a bat, because I don’t even have one, and I’m not a Communist.” There was now a patter of what sounded like canned TV laughter from the TUG section. “I just did that as a little demonstration, to show you folks how easy it is to get the attention of the media. We can come and talk about serious issues and do real things, but what gets TV coverage are violent eye-catching events, a thing which the Communists who wish to destroy our society understand very well. But I’m not here to give a speech, I’m here to propose an amendment…” Here he was dive-bombed by the bat, who veered away at the last moment; the speaker jumped back in horror, to the amusement of almost everyone. The TUGgies laughed too, showing that, yes, they did have a sense of humor no matter what people said. The speaker struggled to regain his composure.

  “The speech! Resume the speech! The amendment!” shouted the older man.

  “My budget proposal is that we take away all funding for the Stalinist Underground Battalion and distribute it among the other activities groups.”

  The lecture hall exploded in outraged chanting, uproarious applause, and OM. Sarah sat for about fifteen seconds with her chin in her hand, then began smashing the gavel again. I was seated off to the side of the stage, poised to act as the strong-but-lovable authority figure, but did not have to stand up; eventually things quieted down.

  “Is there a second to the motion?” she asked wearily.

  The crowd screamed YES and NO.

  The speaker yielded to another TUGgie, who stood rigidly with a stack of 3 × 5 cards and began to drone through them. “At one time the leftist organizations of American Megaversity could claim that they represented some of the students. But the diverse organizations of the Left soon found that they all had one member who was very strident and domineering and
who would push the others around until he or she had risen to a position of authority within the organization. These all turned out to be secretly members of the Stalinist Underground Battalion who had worked themselves into the organizations in order to merge the Left into a single bloc with no diversity or freedom of thought. The SUB took over a women’s issues newsletter and turned it into the People’s Truth Publication, a highly libelous so-called newspaper. In the same way…”

  He was eventually cut off by Sarah. SUB spokespersons stated their views passionately, then another TUGgie. Finally a skinny man in dark spectacles came to the mike, a man whom Sarah recognized but couldn’t quite place. He identified himself as Casimir Radon and said he was president of the physics club Neutrino. He quieted the crowd down a bit, as his was the first speech of the evening that was not entirely predictable.

  “I’d like to point out that you’ve only given us four hundred dollars,” he said. “We need more. I’ve done some analysis of the way our activity money is budgeted, which I will just run through very quickly here—” he fumbled through papers as a disappointed murmur rose from the audience. How long was this nerd going to take? The cameramen put new film and tape in their equipment as lines formed outside by the restrooms.

  “Here we go. I won’t get too involved in the numerical details—it’s all just arithmetic—but if you look at the current budget, you see that a small group of people is receiving a hugely disproportionate share of the money. In effect, the average funding per member of the Stalinist Underground Battalion is $114.00, while the figure for everyone else averages out to about $46.00, and only $33.00 for Neutrino. That’s especially unfair because Neutrino needs to purchase things like books and equipment, while the expenses of a political organization are much lower. I don’t think that’s fair.”

  The SUB howled at this preposterous reasoning but everyone else listened respectfully.