Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

  People are moving out of the way; something big and inexorable is plunging through the crowd, shoving avatars this way and that. Only one thing has the ability to shove people around like that inside The Black Sun, and that's a bouncer daemon.

  As they get closer, Hiro sees that it's a whole flying wedge of them, gorillas in tuxedos. Real gorillas. And they seem to be headed toward Hiro.

  He tries to back away, but he quickly runs into something. Looks like Bigboard finally got him in trouble; he's on his way out of the bar.

  “Da5id,” Hiro says. “Call them off, man, I'll stop using it.”

  All of the people in his vicinity are staring over Hiro's shoulder, their faces illuminated by a stew of brilliant colored lights.

  Hiro turns around to look at Da5id. But Da5id's not there anymore.

  Instead of Da5id, there is just a jittering cloud of bad digital karma. It's so bright and fast and meaningless that it hurts to look at. It flashes back and forth from color to black and white, and when it's in color, it rolls wildly around the color wheel as though being strafed with high-powered disco lights. And it's not staying within it's own body space; hair-thin pixel lines keep shooting off to one side, passing all the way across The Black Sun and out through the wall. It is not so much an organized body as it is a centrifugal cloud of lines and polygons whose center cannot hold, throwing bright bits of body shrapnel all over the room, interfering with people's avatars, flickering and disappearing.

  The gorillas don't mind. They shove their long furry fingers into the midst of the disintegrating cloud and latch onto it somehow and carry it past Hiro, toward the exit. Hiro looks down as it goes past him and sees what looks very much like Da5id's face as viewed through a pile of shattered glass. It's just a momentary glimpse. Then the avatar is gone, expertly drop-kicked out the front door, soaring out over the Street in a long flat arc that takes it over the horizon. Hiro looks up the aisle to see Da5id's table, empty, surrounded by stunned hackers. Some of them are shocked, some are trying to stifle grins.

  Da5id Meier, supreme hacker overload, founding father of the Metaverse protocol, creator and proprietor of the world-famous Black Sun, has just suffered a system crash. He's been thrown out of his own bar by his own daemons.

  10

  About the second or third thing they learned how to do when studying to become Kouriers was how to shiv open a pair of handcuffs. Handcuffs are not intended as long-term restraint devices, millions of Clink franchisees to the contrary. And the longtime status of skateboarders as an oppressed ethnic group means that by now all of them are escape artists of some degree.

  First things first. Y.T. has many a thing hanging off her uniform. The uniform has a hundred pockets, big flat pockets for deliveries and eensy narrow pockets for gear, pockets sewn into sleeves, thighs, shins. The equipment stuck into these multifarious pockets tends to be small, tricky, lightweight: pens, markers, penlights, penknives, lock picks, bar-code scanners, flares, screwdrivers, Liquid Knuckles, bundy stunners, and lightsticks. A calculator is stuck upside-down to her right thigh, doubling as a taxi meter and a stopwatch.

  On the other thigh is a personal phone. As the manager is locking the door upstairs, it begins to ring. Y.T. offhooks it with her free hand. It is her mother.

  “Hi, Mom. Fine, how are you? I'm at Tracy's house. Yeah, we went to the Metaverse. We were just fooling around at this arcade on the Street. Pretty bumpin'. Yes, I used a nice avatar. Nah, Tracy's mom said she'd give me a ride home later. But we might stop off at the Joyride on Victory for a while, okay? Okay, well, sleep tight, Mom. I will. I love you, too. See you later.”

  She punches the flash button, killing the chat with Mom and giving her a fresh dial tone in the space of about half a second. “Roadkill,” she says.

  The telephone remembers and dials Roadkill's number.

  Roaring sounds. This is the sound of air peeling over the microphone of Roadkill's personal phone at some terrifying velocity. Also the competing whooshes of many vehicles' tires on pavement, broken by chuckhole percussion; sounds like the crumbling Ventura.

  “Yo, Y.T.,” Roadkill says, “'sup?”

  “'Sup with you?”

  “Surfing the Tura. 'Sup with you?”

  “Maxing The Clink.”

  “Whoa! Who popped you?”

  “MetaCops. Affixed me to the gate of White Columns with a loogie gun.”

  “Whoa, how very! When you leaving?”

  “Soon. Can you swing by and give me a hand?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Men. “You know, give me a hand. You're my boyfriend,” she says, speaking very simply and plainly. “If I get popped, you're supposed to come around and help bust me out.” Isn't everyone supposed to know this stuff? Don't parents teach their kids anything anymore?

  “Well, uh, where are you?”

  “Buy 'n' Fly number 501,762.”

  “I'm on my way to Bernie with a super-ultra.”

  As in San Bernardino. As in super-ultra-high-priority delivery. As in, you're out of luck.

  “Okay, thanks for nothing.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Surfing safety,” Y.T. says, in the traditional sarcastic sign off.

  “Keep breathing,” Roadkill says. The roaring noise snaps off.

  What a jerk. Next date, he's really going to have to grovel. But in the meantime, there's one other person who owes her one. The only problem is that he might be a spaz. But it's worth a try.

  “Hello?” he says into his personal phone. He's breathing hard and a couple of sirens are dueling in the background.

  “Hiro Protagonist?”

  “Yeah, who's this?”

  “Y.T. Where are you?”

  “In the parking lot of a Safeway on Oahu,” he says. And he's telling the truth; in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.

  “I'm kind of busy now, Whitey—but what can I do for you?”

  “It's Y.T.,” she says, “and you can help bust me out of The Clink.” She gives him the details.

  “How long ago did he put you there?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Okay, the three-ring binder for Clink franchises states that the manager is supposed to check on the detainee half an hour after admission.”

  “How do you know this stuff?” she says accusingly.

  “Use your imagination. As soon as the manager pulls his half-hour check, wait for another five minutes, and then make your move. I'll try to give you a hand. Okay?”

  “Got it.”

  At half an hour on the dot, she hears the back door being unlocked. The lights come on. Her Knight Visions save her from wracking eyeball pains. The manager thunks down a couple of steps, glares at her, glares at her for rather a long time. The manager, clearly, is tempted. That momentary glimpse of flesh has been ricocheting around in his brain for half an hour. He is wracking his mind with vast cosmological dilemmas. Y.T. hopes that he does not try anything, because the dentata's effects can be unpredictable.

  “Make up your fucking mind,” she says.

  It works. This fresh burst of culture shock rattles the jeek out of his ethical conundrum. He gives Y.T. a disapproving glower—she, after all, forced him to be attracted to her, forced him to get horny, made his head swim—she didn't have to get arrested, did she?—and so on top of everything else he's angry with her. As if he has a right to be.

  This is the gender that invented the polio vaccine?

  He turns, goes back up the steps, kills the light, locks the door.

  She notes the time, sets her alarm watch for five minutes from now—the only North American who actually knows how to set the alarm on her digital wrist-watch—pulls her shiv kit from one of the narrow pockets on her sleeve. She also hauls out a lightstick and snaps it so she can see 'sup. She finds one piece of narrow, flat spring steel, slides it up into the manacle's innards, depresses the spring-loaded pawl. The cuff, formerly a one-way ratchet that could only
get tighter, springs loose from the cold-water pipe.

  She could take it off her wrist, but she has decided she likes the look of it. She cuffs the loose manacle onto her wrist, right next to the other one, forming a double bracelet. The kind of thing her mom used to do, back when she was a punk.

  The steel door is locked, but Buy 'n' Fly safety regs mandate an emergency exit from the basement in case of fire. Here, it's a basement window with mondo bars and a big red multilingual fire alarm bolted onto it. The red looks black in the green glow of the lightstick. She reads the instructions that are in English, runs through it once or twice in her mind, then waits for the alarm to go off. She whiles away the time by reading the instructions in all the other languages, wondering which is which. It all looks like Taxilinga to Y.T.

  The window is almost too grungy to see through, but she sees something black walking past it. Hiro.

  About ten seconds later, her wristwatch goes off. She punches the emergency exit. The bell rings. The bars are trickier than she thought—good thing it's not a real fire—but eventually she gets them open. She throws her plank outside onto the parking lot, drags her body through just as she hears the rear door being unlocked. By the time the three-ringer has found that all-important light switch, she is banking a sharp turn into the front lot—which has turned into a jeek festival!

  Every jeek in Southern Cal is here, it seems, driving their giant, wrecked taxicabs with alien livestock in the back seat, reeking of incense and sloshing neon-hued Air-wicks! They have set up a giant eight-tubed hookah on the trunk of one of the cabs and are slurping up great mountain-man lungfuls of choking smoke.

  And they're all staring at Hiro Protagonist, who is just staring back at them. Everyone in the parking lot looks completely astounded.

  He must have made his approach from the rear—didn't realize that the front lot was full of jeeks. Whatever he was planning isn't going to work. The plan is screwed.

  The manager comes running around from the back of the Buy 'n' Fly, sounding a bloodcurdling Taxilinga tocsin. He's got missile lock on Y.T.'s ass.

  But the jeeks around the hookah don't care about Y.T. They've got missile lock on Hiro. They carefully hang the ornate silver nozzles on a rack built into the neck of the mega-bong. Then they start moving toward him, reaching into the folds of their robes, the inner pockets of their windbreakers.

  Y.T. is distracted by a sharp hissing noise. Her eyes glance back at Hiro, and she sees that he has withdrawn a three-foot, curved sword from a scabbard, which she did not notice before. He has dropped into a squat. The blade of the sword glitters painfully under the killer security lights of the Buy 'n' Fly.

  How sweet!

  It would be an understatement to say that the hookah boys are taken aback. But they are not scared so much as they are confused. Almost undoubtedly, most of them have guns. So why is this guy trying to bother them with a sword?

  She remembers that one of the multiple professions on Hiro's business card is Greatest sword fighter in the world. Can he really take out a whole clan of armed jeeks?

  The manager's hand clenches her upper arm—like this is really going to stop her. She reaches across her body with the other hand and lets him have it with a brief squirt of Liquid Knuckles. He makes a muffled, distant grunt, his head snaps back, he lets go of her arm and staggers back wildly until he sprawls against another taxi, jamming the heels of both hands into his eye sockets.

  Wait a sec. There's nobody in that particular taxi. But she can see a two-foot-long macramé keychain dangling from the ignition.

  She tosses her plank through the window of the taxi, dives in after it (she's small, opening the door is optional), climbs in behind the driver's seat, sinking into a deep nest of wooden beads and air fresheners, grinds the motor, and takes off. Backward. Headed for the rear parking lot. The car was pointed outward, in taxicab style, ready for a quick getaway, which would be fine if she were by herself—but there is Hiro to think of. The radio is screaming, alive with hollered bursts of Taxilinga. She backs all the way around behind the Buy 'n' Fly. The back lot is strangely quiet and empty.

  She shifts into drive and blasts back the way she came. The jeeks haven't quite had time to react, were expecting her to come out the other way. She screams it to a halt right next to Hiro, who has already had the presence of mind to put his sword back in its scabbard. He dives in the passenger-side window. Then she stops paying attention to him. She's got other stuff to look at, such as whether she's going to get broadsided as she pulls out onto the road.

  She doesn't get broadsided, though a car has to squeal around her. She guns it out onto the highway. It responds as only an ancient taxicab will.

  The only problem being that half a dozen other ancient taxicabs are now following them.

  Something is pressing against Y.T.'s left thigh. She looks down. It is a remarkably huge revolver in a net bag hanging on the door panel.

  She has to find someplace to pull into. If she could find a Nova Sicilia franchulate, that would do it—the Mafia owes her one. Or a New South Africa, which she hates. But the New South Africans hate jeeks even more.

  Scratch that; Hiro is black, or at least part black. Can't take him into New South Africa. And because Y.T. is a Cauc, they can't go to Metazania.

  “Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong,” Hiro says. “Half mile ahead on the right.”

  “Nice thinking—but they won't let you in with your swords, will they?”

  “Yes,” he says, “because I'm a citizen.”

  Then she sees it. The sign stands out because it is a rare one. Don't see many of these. It is a green-and-blue sign, soothing and calm in a glare-torn franchise ghetto. It says:

  MR. LEE'S GREATER HONG KONG

  Explosive noise from in back. Her head smacks into the whiplash arrestor. Another taxi rear-ended them.

  And she screams into the parking lot of Mr. Lee's doing seventy-five. The security system doesn't even have time to rez her visa and drop the STD, so it's Severe Tire Damage all the way, those bald radials are left behind on the spikes. Sparking along on four naked rims, she shrieks to a stop on the lawngrid, which doubles as carbon dioxide-eating turf and impervious parking lot.

  She and Hiro climb out of the car.

  Hiro is grinning wildly, pinioned in the crossfire of a dozen red laser beams scanning him from every direction at once. The Hong Kong robot security system is checking him out. Her, too; she looks down to see the lasers scribbling across her chest.

  “Welcome to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, Mr. Protagonist,” the security system says through a P.A. speaker. “And welcome to your guest, Ms. Y.T.”

  The other taxis have stopped in formation along the curb. Several of them overshot the Hong Kong franchise and had to back up a block or so. A barrage of doors thunking shut. Some of them don't bother, just leave the engines running and the doors wide open. Three jeeks linger on the sidewalk, eyeing the tire shreds impaled on spikes: long streaks of neoprene sprouting steel and fiberglass hairs, like ruined toupees. One of them has a revolver in his hand, pointed straight down at the sidewalk.

  Four more jeeks run up to join them. Y.T. counts two more revolvers and a pump shotgun. Any more of these guys and they'll be able to form a government.

  They step carefully over the spikes and onto the lush Hong Kong lawngrid. As they do, the lasers appear once more. The jeeks turn all red and grainy for a second.

  Then something different happens. Lights come on. The security system wants better illumination on these people.

  Hong Kong franchulates are famous for their lawngrids—whoever heard of a lawn you could park on?—and for their antennas. They all look like NASA research facilities with their antennas. Some of them are satellite uplinks, pointed at the sky. But some of them, tiny little antennas, are pointed at the ground, at the lawngrid.

  Y.T. does not really get this, but these small antennas are millimeter-wave radar transceivers. Like any other radar, they are good at picking up metallic
objects. Unlike the radar in an air traffic control center, they can rez fine details. The rez of a system is only as fine as its wavelength; since the wavelength of this radar is about a millimeter, it can see the fillings in your teeth, the grommets in your Converse high-tops, the rivets in your Levi's. It can calculate the value of your pocket change.

  Seeing guns is not a problem. This thing can even tell if the guns are loaded, and with what sort of ammunition. That is an important function, because guns are illegal in Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong.

  11

  It doesn't seem polite to hang around and gawk over the fact that Da5id's computer crashed. A lot of the younger hackers are doing just that, as a way of showing all the other hackers how knowledgeable they are. Hiro shrugs it off and turns back in the direction of the Rock Star Quadrant. He still wants to see Sushi K's hairdo.

  But his path is being blocked by the Nipponese man—the neo-traditional. The guy with the swords. He's facing off against Hiro, about two sword-lengths apart, and it doesn't look like he intends to move.

  Hiro does the polite thing. He bows at the waist, straightens up.

  The businessman does the much less polite thing. He looks Hiro rather carefully up and down, then returns the bow. Sort of.

  “These—” the businessman says. “Very nice.”

  “Thank you, sir. Please feel free to converse in Nipponese if you prefer.”

  “This is what your avatar wears. You do not carry such weapons in Reality,” the businessman says. In English.

  “I'm sorry to be difficult, but in fact, I do carry such weapons in Reality,” Hiro says.

  “Exactly like these?”

  “Exactly.”

  “These are ancient weapons, then,” the businessman says.

  “Yes, I believe they are.”

  “How did you come to be in possession of such important family heirlooms from Nippon?” the businessman says.

  Hiro knows the subtext here: What do you use those swords for, boy, slicing watermelon?

  “They are now my family heirlooms,” Hiro says. “My father won them.”