Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

  So she spends until about eleven A.M. reading, re-reading, and understanding the new changes in the Project. There are many of these, because this is a Monday morning and Marietta and her higher-ups spent the whole weekend closeted on the top floor, having a catfight about this Project, changing everything.

  Then she starts going back over all the code she has previously written for the Project and making a list of all the stuff that will have to be rewritten in order to make it compatible with the new specifications. Basically, she's going to have to rewrite all of her material from the ground up. For the third time in as many months.

  But hey, it's a job.

  About eleven-thirty, she looks up, startled, to see that half a dozen people are standing around her workstation. There's Marietta. And a proctor. And some male Feds. And Leon the polygraph man.

  “I just had mine on Thursday,” she says.

  “Time for another one,” Marietta says. “Come on, let's get this show on the road.”

  “Hands out where I can see them,” the proctor says.

  38

  Y.T.'s mom stands up, hands to her sides, and starts walking. She walks straight out of the office. None of the other people look up. Not supposed to. Insensitive to co-workers' needs. Makes the testee feel awkward and singled out, when in fact the polygraph is just part of the whole Fed way of life. She can hear the snapping footsteps of the proctor behind her, walking two paces behind, watching, keeping her eyes on those hands so they can't be doing anything, like popping a Valium or something else that might throw off the test.

  She stops in front of the bathroom door. The proctor walks in front of her, holds it open, and she walks in, followed by the proctor.

  The last stall on the left is oversized, big enough for two people. Y.T.'s mom goes in, followed by the proctor, who closes and locks the door. Y.T.'s mom pulls down her panty hose, pulls up her skirt, squats over a pan, pees. The proctor watches every drop go into the pan, picks it up, empties it into a test tube that is already labeled with her name and today's date.

  Then it's back out to the lobby, followed again by the proctor. You're allowed to use the elevators on your way to the polygraph room, so you won't be out of breath and sweaty when you get there.

  It used to be just a plain office with a chair and some instruments on a table. Then they got the new, fancy polygraph system. Now it's like going in for some kind of high-tech medical scan. The room is completely rebuilt, no vestige of its original function, the window covered over, everything smooth and beige and smelling like a hospital. There's only one chair, in the middle. Y.T.'s mom goes and sits down in it, puts her arms on the arms of the chair, nestles her fingertips and palms into the little depressions that await. The neoprene fist of the blood-pressure cuff gropes blindly, finds her arm, and seizes it. Meanwhile, the room lights are dimming, the door is closing, she's all alone. The crown of thorns closes over her head, she feels the pricks of the electrodes through her scalp, senses the cool air flowing down over her shoulders from the superconducting quantum-interference devices that serve as radar into her brain. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, she knows, half a dozen personnel techs are sitting in a control room, looking at a big-screen blow-up of her pupils.

  Then she feels a burning prick in her forearm and knows she's been injected with something. Which means it's not a normal polygraph exam. Today she's in for something special. The burning spreads throughout her body, her heart thumps, eyes water. She's been shot up with caffeine to make her hyper, make her talkative.

  So much for getting any work done today. Sometimes these things go for twelve hours.

  “What is your name?” a voice says. It's an unnaturally calm and liquid voice. Computer generated. That way, everything it says to her is impartial, stripped of emotional content, she has no way to pick up any cues as to how the interrogation is going.

  The caffeine, and the other things that they inject her with, screw up her sense of time also.

  She hates these things, but it happens to everyone from time to time, and when you go to work for the Feds, you sign on the dotted line and give permission for it. In a way, it's a mark of pride and honor. Everyone who works for the Feds has their heart in it. Because if they didn't, it would come out plain as day when it is their turn to sit in this chair.

  The questions go on and on. Mostly nonsense questions. “Have you ever been to Scotland? Is white bread more expensive than wheat bread?” This is just to get her settled down, get all systems running smoothly. They throw out all the stuff they get from the first hour of the interrogation, because it's lost in the noise.

  She can feel herself relaxing into it. They say that after a few polygraphs, you learn to relax, the whole thing goes quicker. The chair holds her in place, the caffeine keeps her from getting drowsy, the sensory deprivation clears out her mind.

  “What is your daughter's nickname?”

  “Y.T.”

  “How do you refer to your daughter?”

  “I call her by her nickname. Y.T. She kind of insists on it.”

  “Does Y.T. have a job?”

  “Yes. She works as Kourier. She works for RadiKS.”

  “How much money does Y.T. make as a Kourier?”

  “I don't know. A few bucks here and there.”

  “How often does she purchase new equipment for her job?”

  “I'm not aware. I don't really keep track of that.”

  “Has Y.T. done anything unusual lately?”

  “That depends on what you mean.” She knows she's equivocating. “She's always doing things that some people might label as unusual.” That doesn't sound too good, sounds like an endorsement of nonconformity. “I guess what I'm saying is, she's always doing unusual things.”

  “Has Y.T. broken anything in the house recently?”

  “Yes.” She gives up. The Feds already know this, her house is bugged and tapped, it's a wonder it doesn't short out the electrical grid, all the extra stuff wired into it. “She broke my computer.”

  “Did she give an explanation for why she broke the computer?”

  “Yes. Sort of. I mean, if nonsense counts as an explanation.”

  “What was her explanation?”

  “She was afraid—this is so ridiculous—she was afraid I was going to catch a virus from it.”

  “Was Y.T. also afraid of catching this virus?”

  “No. She said that only programmers could catch it.”

  Why are they asking her all of these questions? They have all of this stuff on tape.

  “Did you believe Y.T.'s explanation of why she broke the computer?”

  That's it.

  That's what they're after.

  They want to know the only thing they can't directly tap—what's going on in her mind. They want to know whether she believes Y.T.'s virus story.

  And she knows she's making a mistake just thinking these thoughts. Because those supercooled SQUIDs around her head are picking it up. They can't tell what she's thinking. But they can tell that something's going on in her brain, that she's using parts of her brain right now that she didn't use when they were asking the nonsense questions.

  In other words, they can tell that she is analyzing the situation, trying to figure them out. And she wouldn't be doing that unless she wanted to hide something.

  “What is it you want to know?” she says. “Why don't you just come out and ask me directly? Let's talk about this face to face. Just sit down together in a room like adults and talk about it.”

  She feels another sharp prick in her arm, feels numbness and coldness spreading all across her body over an interval of a couple of seconds as the drug mixes with her bloodstream. It's getting harder to follow the conversation.

  “What is your name?” the voice says.

  39

  The Alcan—the Alaska Highway—is the world's longest franchise ghetto, a one-dimensional city two thousand miles long and a hundred feet wide, and growing at the rate of a hundred miles a year,
or as quickly as people can drive up to the edge of the wilderness and park their bagos in the next available slot. It is the only way out for people who want to leave America but don't have access to an airplane or a ship.

  It's all two-lane, paved but not well paved, and choked with mobile homes, family vans, pickup trucks with camper backs. It starts somewhere in the middle of British Columbia, at the crossroads of Prince George, where a number of tributaries feed in together to make a single northbound highway. South of there, the tributaries split into a delta of feeder roads that crosses the Canadian/American border at a dozen or more places spread out over five hundred miles from the fjords of British Columbia to the vast striped wheatlands of central Montana. Then it ties into the American road system, which serves as the headwaters of the migration. This five-hundred-mile swath of territory is filled with wouldbe arctic explorers in great wheeled houses, optimistically northbound, and more than a few rejects who have abandoned their bagos in the north country and hitched a ride back down south. The lumbering bagos and top-heavy four-wheelers form a moving slalom course for Hiro on his black motorcycle.

  All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they'd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain't what it used to be.

  The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

  For a fee, you can drive into a Snooze 'n' Cruise franchise and umbilical your bago. The magic words are “We Have Pull-Thrus,” which means you can enter the franchise, hook up, sleep, unhook, and drive out without ever having to shift your land zeppelin into reverse.

  They used to claim it was a campground, tried to design the franchise with a rustic motif, but the customers kept chopping up those log-and-plank signs and wooden picnic tables and using them for cooking fires. Nowadays, the signs are electric polycarbonate bubbles, the corporate identity is all round and polished and smooth, in the same way that a urinal is, to prevent stuff from building up in the cracks. Because it's not really camping when you don't have a house to go back to.

  Sixteen hours out of California, Hiro pulls into a Snooze 'n' Cruise on the eastern slope of the Cascades in northern Oregon. He's several hundred miles north of where the Raft is, and on the wrong side of the mountains. But there's a guy here he wants to interview.

  There are three parking lots. One out of sight down a pitted dirt road marked with falling-down signs. One a little bit closer, with scary hairys hanging around its edges, silvery disks flashing and popping under the full moon as they aim the bottoms of their beer cans at the sky. And one right in front of the Towne Hall, with gun-toting attendants. You have to pay to park in that lot. Hiro decides to pay. He leaves his bike pointing outward, puts the bios into warm shutdown so he can hot-boot it later if he has to, throws some Kongbucks at an attendant. Then he turns his head back and forth like a hunting dog, sniffing the still air, trying to find the Glade.

  There's an area a hundred feet away, under the moonlight, where a few people have been adventurous enough to pitch a tent; usually, these are the ones with the most guns, or the least to lose. Hiro goes in that direction, and pretty soon he can see the spreading canopy over the Glade.

  Everyone else calls it the Body Lot. It is, simply, an open patch of ground, formerly grass covered, now covered with successive truckloads of sand that have become mingled with litter, broken glass, and human waste. A canopy is stretched over it to keep out the rain, and big mushroom-shaped hoods stick out of the ground every few feet, exhaling warm air on cold nights. It is pretty cheap to sleep in the Glade. It is an innovation that was created by some of the franchises farther south and has been spreading northward along with its clientele.

  About half a dozen of them are scattered around under the warm-air vents, bandaged against the chill in their army blankets. A couple of them have a small fire going, are playing cards by its light. Hiro ignores them, starts wandering around through the remainder.

  “Chuck Wrightson,” he says. “Mr. President, are you here?”

  The second time he says it, a pile of wool off to his left begins to writhe and thrash around. A head comes out of it. Hiro turns toward him, holds up his hands to prove he's unarmed.

  “Who is that?” he says. He is abjectly terrified. “Raven?”

  “Not Raven,” Hiro says. “Don't worry. Are you Chuck Wrightson? Former President of the Temporary Republic of Kenai and Kodiak?”

  “Yeah. What do you want? I don't have any money.”

  “Just to talk. I work for CIC, and my job is to gather intelligence.”

  “I need a fucking drink,” Chuck Wrightson says.

  The Towne Hall is a big inflatable building in the middle of the Snooze 'n' Cruise. It is Derelict Las Vegas: convenience store, video arcade, laundromat, bar, liquor store, flea market, whorehouse. It always seems to be ruled by that small percentage of the human population that is capable of partying until five in the morning every single night, and that has no other function.

  Most Towne Halls have a few franchises-within-franchises. Hiro sees a Kelley's Tap, which is about the nicest trough you are likely to find at a Snooze 'n' Cruise, and leads Chuck Wrightson into it. Chuck is wearing many layers of clothing that used to be different colors. Now they are the same color as his skin, which is khaki.

  All the businesses in a Towne Hall, including this bar, look like something you'd see on a prison ship—everything nailed down, brightly lit up twenty-four hours a day, all of the personnel sealed up behind thick glass barriers that have gone all yellow and murky. Security at this Towne Hall is provided by The Enforcers, so there are a lot of steroid addicts in black armorgel outfits, cruising up and down the arcade in twos and threes, enthusiastically violating people's human rights.

  Hiro and Chuck grab the closest thing they can find to a corner table. Hiro buttonholes a waiter and surreptitiously orders a pitcher of Pub Special, mixed half and half with nonalcoholic beer. This way, Chuck ought to remain awake a little longer than he would otherwise.

  It doesn't take much to make him open up. He's like one of these old guys from a disgraced presidential administration, forced out by scandal, who devotes the rest of his life to finding people who will listen to him.

  “Yeah, I was president of TROKK for two years. And I still consider myself the president of the government in exile.”

  Hiro tries to keep himself from rolling his eyes. Chuck seems to notice.

  “Okay, okay, so that's not much. But TROKK was a thriving country, for a while. There's a lot of people who'd like to see something like that rise again. I mean, the only thing that forced us out—the only way those maniacs were able to seize power—was just totally, you know—” He doesn't seem to have words for it. “How could you have expected something like that?”

  “How were you forced out? Was there a civil war?”

  “There were some uprisings, early on. And there were remote parts of Kodiak where we never had a firm grip on power. But there was never a civil war per se. See, the Americans liked our government. The Americans had all the weapons, the equipment, the infrastructure. The
Orthos were just a bunch of hairy guys running around in the woods.”

  “Orthos?”

  “Russian Orthodox. At first they were a tiny minority. Mostly Indians—you know, Tlingits and Aleuts who'd been converted by the Russians hundreds of years ago. But when things got crazy in Russia, they started to pour across the Dateline in all kinds of different boats.”

  “And they didn't want a constitutional democracy.”

  “No. No way.”

  “What did they want? A tsar?”

  “No. Those tsar guys—the traditionalists—stayed in Russia. The Orthos who came to TROKK were total rejects. They had been forced out by the mainline Russian Orthodox church.”

  “Why?”

  “Yeretic. That's how Russians say ‘heretic.' The Orthos who came to TROKK were a new sect—all Pente-costals. They were tied in somehow with the Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates. We had missionaries from Texas coming up all the goddamn time to meet with them. They were always speaking in tongues. The mainline Russian Orthodox church thought it was the work of the devil.”

  “So how many of these Pentecostal Russian Orthodox people came over to TROKK?”

  “Jeez, a hell of a lot of them. At least fifty thousand.”

  “How many Americans were in TROKK?”

  “Close to a hundred thousand.”

  “Then how exactly did the Orthos manage to take the place over?”

  “Well, one morning we woke up and there was an Airstream parked in the middle of Government Square in New Washington, right in the middle of all the bagos where we had set up the government. The Orthos had towed it there during the night, then took the wheels off so it couldn't be moved. We figured it was a protest action. We told them to move it out of there. They refused and issued a proclamation, in Russian. When we got this damn thing translated, it turned out to be an order for us to pack up and leave and turn over power to the Orthos.

  “Well, this was ridiculous. So we went up to this Airstream to move it out of there, and Gurov's waiting for us with this nasty grin on his face.”