The Big U

by Neal Stephenson

  Here in the lobby the sixteen elevators and four fire stairs of E Tower emptied together into a desert of vandalized furniture, charred bulletin boards and overflowing wastebaskets. I didn’t know about events on E13S yet, and my guests were doubtless still considering the charred remains of Bert Nix, so we were not suspicious when elevators 2, 4 and 1 remained frozen at the thirteenth floor for ten minutes. Only number 3 moved. When it got to us, it was packed with students. Two got off, but the rest explained in dull voices that they had missed their floor and were staying on for the return trip. Therefore the journalists and protesters found no room in the compartment; only the four of us could squeeze in.

  This chummy group rode to the Terrorist-controlled ninth floor, where everyone else got off. As the doors slid shut, a burnout who had just disembarked turned around to say, “Sweet dreams, S. S. Krupp.”

  We started up again. “Shit!” said Krupp. “We’ve got a problem. Everyone get on the floor. Tex, you got your .44?”

  Of course he did. Much to the concern of the SUB, Tex was massively armed at all times, on the theory that you never knew when degens might come and shoot up the clinic looking for purer highs. He was prepared to go out like a true AM administrator. Dropping stiffly to the floor, he paused on his knees to whip a humongous revolver out of his briefcase and hand it to Krupp.

  “Hope we don’t have to shoot it out on thirteen,” he said. We agreed. Krupp tore from Tex’s briefcase a medicine bottle, struggled with the childproof cap, yanked out the cotton wad, tore it in half and stuffed it into his ears. At this point I began to experience terror, more of Krupp than of whatever he was planning to dismember with that howitzer.

  We passed the twelfth floor and the elevator crashed to a stop. Above us, from the elevators still halted on thirteen, we heard excited yelling.

  “I get it.” Krupp cocked the revolver and we all plugged our ears as he pointed it at the ceiling.

  The bullet vaporized the latch on the trap door and flipped the door open as well. We saw light above us. Krupp’s second shot annihilated the light in our car. I felt as though my fingers had been driven three inches deep into my ears; my eyelids fluttered in shock and my nose complained of dense smoke. Krupp now stood up in the darkness and fired the remaining three rounds through the trapdoor. With a sigh and a thump, a corpse crashed into our roof.

  At a great distance I heard Tex say, “Sep. Here’s a speed loader.” After some clicking and cursing, Krupp fired two more rounds—the natives were getting restless—and tugged at my shirt. “Leg up!” he shouted.

  I stood and made a step of my hands, and he used it to propel himself through the trap door. Once he had scrambled through, I jumped and dragged myself to the roof after him. The only thing I was scared of was touching the corpse; other than that, one place was as dangerous as another. Krupp, who did not share my fear, retrieved a revolver from the body and handed it to me.

  He began scaling the emergency ladder on the shaft wall. When he got to thirteen, he pounded the wall switch and the doors slid open. Seeing him jump through the aperture onto thirteen, I began to follow him up the ladder, not really thinking about what I’d do when I arrived. The two adjacent elevators began to head down, and as they passed, someone on a roof fired off a wild shot in my direction.

  A tremendous roar rang up and down the shaft. It came in three bursts, and not until the third one did I realize it was machine-gun fire. I had been dimly aware of it—“Oh, that’s a machine gun being fired”—but it was not for a few moments that I comprehended that machine guns were in use at my institution of higher learning. There were also three WHAMs, and then silence.

  Taking this as a good sign, I dove through onto thirteen and lay there dazed, looking at an elevator lobby dotted with strings of machine-gun fire and blood pools, tracked and smeared by hasty tennis-shoe footprints that converged on the two elevators.

  I sat up timidly. Krupp went to the far side of a large pillar and retrieved an assault rifle from a dead soldier. “See,” he said, pounding hollowly on the pillar with the butt of the rifle, “these pillars are just for show. Just a little girder in the middle and the rest is plaster and chicken wire. Don’t want to hide behind them.” Judging from the bullet holes in the pillar and the unmoving legs and feet on the other side, someone had recently been in dire need of Krupp’s architectural knowledge. “Can’t believe they’re handing out loaded Kalashnikovs to cretins like that, whoever it is that’s running this show,” he grumbled. “These youths need ROTC training if they’re going to pack ordnance like this.”

  “Maybe this is someone’s ROTC program,” I suggested, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Krupp frowned. “Maybe this is someone’s ROTC,” I shouted, remembering the cotton. He nodded in deep thought. “Very good. What’s your field again?”

  “Remote sensing. Remote sensing. Involves geography, geology and electrical engineering.”

  “I’m listening,” Krupp assured me in the middle of my sentence, as he walked to the two corners of the lobby to peer down the hallways. “But you’ll have to speak up,” he added, squeezing off a half-second blast at something. There was an answering blast, muffled by the fire doors between the combatants, but it apparently went into the ceiling. Impressed, Krupp nodded.

  “Well, we’ve got two basic tactical options here,” he continued, ejecting the old clip and inserting a fresh one taken from the dead SUBbie. “We can seize the wing, or retreat. Based on what we’ve seen of these sandbox insurrectionists, I don’t doubt we can stage a takeover. The question is: is this wing a worthwhile strategic goal in and of itself, or is my strong inclination to seize it singlehandedly—almost, excuse me—just what we call a macho complex these days? Not that I’m trying to draw us into psychobabble.” He glared at me, one eyebrow raised contemplatively.

  “Depends on what kind of forces they have elsewhere.”

  “Well, you’re saying it’s easier to make tactical decisions when one has more perfect information, a sort of strategic context from which to plan. That’s a predictable attitude for a remote-sensing man. The areal point of view comes naturally to a generalistic, left-handed type like you.” He nodded at my revolver, which I was holding, naturally, in my left hand. “But lacking that background, we’ll have to use a different method of attack—using ‘attack’ in a figurative sense now—and use the more linear way of thinking that would suggest itself to, say, a right-handed low-level Catholic civil engineer. Follow?”

  “I suppose,” I shouted, looking down the elevator shaft at Tex’s face, barely visible in the dim light.

  “For example,” continued Krupp, “our friends below, though we must be concerned for them, are irrelevant now. Presumably, the students on this wing will do the rational thing and not attack us, because to attack means coming into the halls and exposing themselves to our fire. So we control entry and exit. If we leave now, we’ll just have to retake it later. Secondly, this lobby fire stair here ensures our safety; we can always escape. Third, our recent demonstration should delay a reinforcement action on their part. What I figure is that if we move along room by room disarming the occupants, they’ll be too scared by what happened to that guy in the hall to try any funny stuff. Christ on fishhooks!” Krupp dove back into the safety of the lobby as a barrage of fire ripped down the hall, blowing with it the remains of the fire doors. We made for the stairway and began skittering down the steps as quickly as we could. By the time we had descended three flights, the angry shouts of Terrorists and SUBbies were pursuing us. The shouters themselves prudently remained on their own landing.

  “We’re okay unless they have something like a hand grenade or satchel charge they can drop down this central well,” said Krupp. “Hold it right there, son! That’s right! Keep those paws in the air! Say, I know you.”

  We had surprised Casimir Radon on a landing. He merely stared at S. S. Krupp’s AK-47, dumbfounded.

  “Let’s all hold onto our pants for a second and ask Casimir what he’s up
to,” Krupp suggested.

  “Well,” said Casimir, taking off his glacier glasses to see us better in the dim stairwell. “I was going to visit Sarah. Things are getting pretty wild now, you know. I guess you do know,” he concluded, looking again at the assault rifle.

  “Physics problem:” said Krupp, “how far does a hand grenade fall in the seven seconds between handle release and boom?”

  “Well, air resistance makes that a toughie. It’s pretty asymmetrical, and it would probably tumble, which makes the differential equation a son-of-a-bitch to solve. You’d have to use a numerical method, like…”

  “Estimate, son! Estimate!”

  “Eight hundred feet.”

  “No problem. But what if they counted to three? How far in four seconds?”

  “Sixteen times four…two hundred fifty-six feet.”

  “If they count to five?”

  “Two seconds…sixty-four feet.”

  “That’s terrible. That’s six stories. That would be about the sixth floor, which is where we make the run into the lobby. Do you think they’d be dumb enough to pull the pin and count to five?”

  “Not with a Soviet grenade.”

  “Good point.”

  “If I’m not mistaken, sir,” said Casimir, “they all have impact fuses on them anyway. So it’d go off on six in any case.”

  “Oh. Well…what the hell?” said Krupp, and started to run down the stairs again.

  “Wait!” I said. Krupp stopped on the next landing. “You don’t want to go up there,” I told Casimir.

  “Yeah. If you think it’s wild down there, you should see thirteen. It’s wilder than a cat on fire, thirteen. Those people are irrational,” said Krupp.

  “Are you going to stop me by force?” asked Casimir.

  “Well, anyone traveling with S. S. Krupp today is a prime target, so I couldn’t justify that,” said Krupp.

  “Then I’m going,” said Casimir, and resumed his climb.

  “Let’s get a move on. Let’s build up a good head of steam here so we can charge right through the danger zone at the bottom. I think the twenty-third psalm is in order.”

  Reluctantly, I left Casimir to his own dreams and we began to charge down the steps side by side, crossing paths at each turn, listening upward. I saw a 7 painted on the wall. We were practically diving down the last flight when I heard someone yell “Five!” We were on the level now, sprinting for a door with a small rectangular window and a sign reading E TOWER MAIN LOBBY.

  “Did he say five, or fire?” Krupp wondered as we neared the door. We punched it open together and were in the lobby. And there, waiting for us, were three Crotobaltislavonians with UZIs. “Professionals, I see,” said Krupp. He had gone through on the hinged side of the door and now pushed it all the way around so that it was flat against the lobby wall, where he leaned against it. Back in the stairwell there was a series of metallic clanks, like something heavy bouncing off an iron pipe. Having seen many TV shows involving foreigners with submachine guns, I had already raised my hands; I now took the opportunity to clap them over my ears.

  Krump. Bits of fire shot out the door at incredible speed. The three janitors just seemed to melt and soften, sagging to the floor quietly.

  “It worked,” said Krupp, sounding drunken and amazed. Trying to walk around, I found that the concussion had scrambled my inner ear; stars shot around like tracer bullets. I went to a wall phone, dialed Lucy and Hyacinth’s number, and listened to it ring.

  At each ring my head cleared a bit. They were not answering. Had the Terrorists taken twelve? I redialed; no answer. After eight rings I lost my mind, gripped the handset that had withstood untold vandalism attempts and jerked it out by its roots. I grabbed its shattered wires and swung it into the wall like a mace, ludicrously enraged, and began to stumble back toward the stairway.

  “Hate to bust in, but we’ve got to stop porch-setting here,” shouted Krupp from the lobby entryway. He lay on the floor with the AK-47 pointed down the hall.

  “What about these B-men?”

  “They’ll keep.”

  “I’m not leaving. My friends are up on twelve. Hey, look. These men are in pain, okay? I’m going to tell their friends upstairs they’ve got wounded down here.”

  “Could do that,” said Krupp, “but Casimir’s in the stairwell. If they come down this way, he’ll be like a hoppity toad in a snake stampede.”

  For the first time, we heard shouting and shooting from the main hallway which led to the Cafeteria. “Don’t look forward to fighting my way through whatever that sounds like,” said Krupp.

  “Shit. Shit in a brown bag. Great fucking ghost of Rommel,” I said. “That thing is a tank.”

  Indeed, a small tank was approaching our location. We retreated.

  For Fred Fine too it was a hell of a day. He was physically burned out to begin with. The Grand Army of Shekondar the Fearsome had stood at yellow alert for two days, and he had worked like an android the whole time, directing the stockpiling of supplies and material in the most secure regions of Plexor. Klystron may have been a haughty swordsman who reveled in single combat, but Chris the Systems Programmer was a master strategist who understood that, in a long war, food was power. The recent Mixture of Klystron and Chris was regrettable, but it did enable him to plan for the coming weeks with magical intuition and technological knowledge, a combination that proved extremely potent.

  Finally Consuela and Chip Dixon had insisted that he sleep, and Klystron/Chris had okayed the rec. He slept from the close of our expedition until 1200 hours on April First, then rolled smartly out of the sack, called an aide for a quick briefing and proceeded to the mess hall for some grub and a few cups of joe. It was there, in the Cafeteria, just as he had predicted, that the war began.

  Many things contributed to its success. The MegaUnion finally found the secret elevator used to smuggle scab workers into the Caf, resulting in fights between the Haitian and Vietnamese cooks and the professors and clerical workers who stood in their way. The outcome was predictable, and when the battered progressives returned to the main picket outside the Caf entrance, Yllas Freedperson exhorted them to hang tough, to further peace and freedom in the Plex by finding the violent people who had hurt them and bashing their brains out.

  Mobs of hungry students broke through the picket lines empty-handed, obviously bent on eating scab food. The unionists were still so pissed off from the earlier fight that more scuffling and debris-throwing ensued. Twenty TUGgies carrying anti-communist signs took advantage of the confusion to set up a barrier around the SUB information table and erect their OM generator, a black box with big speakers used to augment their own personal OMs, which they now OMed through megaphones. A picket-sign duel broke out; it became clear that the SUB had reinforced their picket signs to make them into dangerous weapons. At a sign from their leader, Messiah #645, the TUGgies produced sawed-off pool cues and displayed highly developed kendo abilities.

  All the Terrorists then seemed to arrive together. Twenty Droogs, thirty-two Blue Light Specials, nineteen Roy G Bivs, eight Ninja with Big Wheels on their foreheads, four of the Flame Squad Brotherhood and forty-three of the Plex Branch of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army (Unofficial) marched in with their politically correct bag lunches and, shouting and waving sticks in the air, demanded that a large area be cleared of scab sympathizers and other scum so they could sit down. This section contained a table of twenty-five athletic team standouts, heavily drunk, as well as a number of people on ghetto scholarships who really knew how to handle unpleasant situations. Much hand-to-hand violence took place and the Terrorists were humiliated. There were more of them, though. A huge arena ring formed around the brawl and tables were herded to the walls to make room. The SUB showed up, decided that the brawl was ideologically impure, and began chanting and throwing food. This triggered the Cafeteria’s mass food fight emergency plan; but as the enforcers began to emerge from the serving bays, they were met by MegaUnion partisans
who wanted to get them out in the open. Short on brawling power because of the inexplicable absence of the Crotobaltislavonians, the MegaUnion was bested here.

  The Haitians and Vietnamese, who had built up fierce hatred for the Terrorists, took this opportunity to rush into the central brawl. The SUB tried to block them, without success. The TUGgies charged after the SUB to make sure they didn’t do anything illegal. The fight was frenzied now; a flying wedge of cooks speared back toward the kitchen to obtain big knives.

  Upstairs in the towers, SUB/Terrorist extremists who were apparently waiting for something like this began to bombard the roof of the vast kitchen complex with heavy projectiles. On cue, the administration’s anti-terrorism guards, stationed on Tar City and in some wings and on top of towers, responded by blasting tear gas grenades into the SUB/Terrorist strongholds. Already there were gaping holes in the roof; above the tumult, everyone in the Caf now heard the booms of the grenade launchers—every gun in the place was drawn for the first time.

  Shooting began, at first to scare and then to injure. People scrambled to the walls, throwing furniture through the wide plate-glass wall sections to escape. But some were unable to get out, and others were happy to stay and fight. After a minute of incomprehensible noise and violence, battle lines formed and things became organized.

  Obviously SUB and TUG were prepared. Both groups hoped to capture the kitchen by entering through the serving bays and vaulting the steam tables. Local fights hence developed along the approaches to all twelve serving bays. Squads from both groups made for the main serving bay, ducking sporadic fire. The SUB got there first, shot the lock out and kicked the door; but there was a senior TUGgie barricaded behind a steam table, with a heavy machine gun aimed at them and a smiling protégé holding the ammo belt. The gunner watched cheerfully as the SUBbies jumped back and rolled away from the door, but held his fire until the TUGgies behind them had jumped through the breach and scurried out of the line of fire. He immediately opened fire on a strategic SUB salad bar across the Cafeteria. This entailed shooting through several tables, but he had plenty of ammo, and as soon as the furniture was conveniently dissolved, a river of red tracer fire could swing around and demolish whatever it touched, such as a milk machine, a number of people, and, of course, the flimsy salad bar. The SUBbies retreated and joined their Terrorist allies in safer places.