Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

“I guess I'm just worried,” Aunt Nina says, “about having my preferences mediated by this supercomputer. I have tried to make it clear what I want. But will the computer understand that?” She has paused by the CERAMICS box in a way that is tantalizing Randy, who badly wants to have a look inside, but doesn't want to arouse suspicions. He's the referee and is sworn to objectivity. “Forget the china,” she says, “too old ladyish.”

Uncle Red wanders over and disappears behind one of the dead cars, presumably to take a leak. Aunt Nina says, “How about you, Randy? As the eldest son of the eldest son, you must have some feelings about this.”

“No doubt when my parents' time comes, they will pass on some of Grandma and Grandpa's legacy to me,” Randy says.

“Oh, very circumspect. Well done,” Aunt Nina says. “But as the only grandchild who has any memories of your grandfather at all, there must be something here that you might like to have.”

“There'll probably be some odds and ends that nobody wants,” Randy says. Then like an almost perfect moron—like an organism genetically engineered to be a total, stupid idiot—Randy glances directly at the Trunk. Then he tries to hide it, which only makes it more conspicuous. He guesses that his mostly beardless face must be an open book, and wishes he had never shaved. A bullet of ice strikes him in the right cornea with a nearly audible splot. The ballistic impact blinds him and the thermal shock gives him an ice-cream headache. When he recovers enough to see again, Aunt Nina is walking around the trunk, kind of spiraling in towards it in a rapidly decaying orbit. “Hmm. What's in here?” She grips the handle at one end and finds she can barely get it off the ground.

“Old Japanese code books. Bundles of ETC cards.”

“Marcus?”

“Yes, ma'am!” says Marcus Aurelius Shaftoe, returning from the double-negative quadrant.

“What is the angle exactly in between the +x and +y axes?” Aunt Nina asks. “I would ask the referee, here, but I'm beginning to have doubts about his objectivity.”

M.A. glances at Randy and decides he had best interpret this last comment as good-natured familial horsing-around. “Would you like that in radians or degrees, ma'am?”

“Neither. Just demonstrate it for me. Take this great big trunk on that strong back of yours and just split the middle between +x and +y axes and keep walking until I say when.”

“Yes, ma'am.” M.A. hefts the trunk and starts walking, frequently looking back and forth to verify that he's exactly in the middle. Robin stands off at a safe distance watching with interest.

Uncle Red, returning from his piss-break, watches this in horror. “Nina! Love! That's not worth the cost of shipping it home! What on earth are you doing?”

“Making sure I get what I want,” Nina says.

Randy gets a small part of what he wants two hours later, when his own mother breaks the seal on the CERAMICS box to verify that the china is in good condition. At the time, Randy and his father are standing next to the Trunk. It is rather late in his parent's value-plotting work and so pieces of fine furniture are now widely scattered across the parking lot, looking like the aftermath of one of those tornadoes that miraculously sets things down intact after whirling them through the skies for ten miles. Randy is trying to find a way to talk up the emotional value of this trunk without violating his oath of objectivity. The chances of anyone other than Nina ending up with this trunk are actually quite miserable, since she (to Red's horror) left almost everything clumped around the Origin except for it and the coveted Console. But if Dad would at least move the thing off dead center—which no one except Nina has done—then, if the Tera awards it to him tomorrow morning, Randy can plausibly argue that it's something other than a computer error. But Dad is taking most of his cues from Mom and is having none of it.

Mom has bitten her gloves off and is parting layer after layer of crumpled newsprint with magenta hands. “Oh, the gravy boat!” she exclaims, and hoists up something that is more of a heavy cruiser than a boat. Randy agrees with Aunt Nina that the design is old-ladyish in the extreme, but that's kind of tautological since he has only seen it in the house of his grandmother, who has been an old lady for as long as he has known her. Randy walks towards his mother with his hands in his pockets, still trying to play it cool for some reason. This obsession with secrecy may have gone a bit far. He has seen this gravy boat maybe twenty times in his life, always at family reunions, and seeing it now roils up a whole silt-cloud of long-settled emotions. He reaches out, and Mom remits it to his mittened hands. He pretends to admire it from the side, and then flips it over to read the words glazed on the bottom.

ROYAL ALBERT—LAVENDER ROSE.

For a moment he is sweating under a vertical sun, swaying to keep his balance on a rocking boat, smelling the neoprene of hoses and flippers. Then he's back in the Palouse. He begins thinking about how to sabotage the computer program to ensure that Aunt Nina gets what she wants, so that she'll give him what is rightfully his.

Lieutenant Ninomiya reaches Bundok about two weeks after Goto Dengo, accompanied by several bashed and scraped wooden cases. “What is your specialty?” asks Goto Dengo, and Lieutenant Ninomiya responds by opening up one of the cases to reveal a surveyor's transit swaddled in clean, oiled linen. Another case contains an equally perfect sextant. Goto Dengo gawks. The gleaming perfection of the instruments is a marvel. But even more marvelous is that they sent him a surveyor only twelve days after he requested one. Ninomiya grins at the look on his new colleague's face, revealing that he has lost all of his front teeth except for one, which happens to be mostly gold.

Before any engineering can be done, all of this wilderness must be brought into the realm of the known. Detailed maps must be prepared, watersheds charted, soil sampled. For two weeks Goto Dengo has been going around with a pipe and a sledgehammer taking core samples of the dirt. He has identified rocks from the streambeds, estimated the flow rates of the Yamamoto and Tojo Rivers, counted and catalogued trees. He has trudged through the jungle and planted flags around the approximate boundaries of the Special Security Zone. The whole time, he's been worrying about having to perform the survey himself, using primitive, improvised tools. And all of a sudden, here is Lieutenant Ninomiya with his instruments.

The three Lieutenants, Goto, Mori and Ninomiya, spend a few days surveying the flat, semi-open land straddling the lower Tojo River. The year, 1944, is turning out to be dry so far, and Mori does not want to construct his military barracks on land that will turn into a marsh after the first big rain. He is not concerned about the comfort of the prisoners, but he would at least like to ensure that they won't get washed away. The lay of the land is also important in setting up the interlocking fields of fire that will be necessary to put down any riots or mass escape attempts. They put Bundok's few enlisted men to work gathering bamboo stakes, then drive these in to mark the locations of roads, barracks, barbed-wire fences, guard towers, and a few carefully sited mortar emplacements from which the guards will be able to fill the atmosphere in any chosen part of the camp with shrapnel.

When Lieutenant Goto takes Lieutenant Ninomiya up into the jungle, clambering up the steep valley of the Tojo, Lieutenant Mori must stay behind—in accordance with Captain Noda's orders. This is just as well, since Mori has his work cut out for him down below. The captain has granted Ninomiya a special dispensation to see the Special Security Zone.