Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

Coming up with fantasies like this one helps to break the tedium of being in jail, and probably does a lot to explain Randy's jailmates' taste in videos, which they cannot actually watch but which they talk about incessantly in a mixture of English and Tagalog that he now almost understands. The videos, or rather the lack of them, has given rise to some kind of retrograde media-evolution phenomenon: an oral storytelling rooted in videos that these guys once saw. A particularly affecting description of, for example, Stallone in Rambo III cauterizing his abdominal bullet wound by igniting a torn-open rifle cartridge and shooting gunpowder-flames through it will plunge all of the men into several moments of reverent awe. It is about the only quiet time Randy gets now, and he has consequently begun cooking up a new plan: he will exploit his Californian provenance by asserting that he has seen martial-arts films that have not yet been bootlegged to the streets of Manila, and narrate them in terms so eloquent that the entire jailhouse will for a few minutes become a place of monastic contemplation, like the idealized Third-World prison that Randy wishes he were in. Randy read Papillon cover-to-cover a couple of times when he was a kid and has always imagined Third-World prisons as places of supreme and noble isolation: steep tropical sunlight setting the humid and smoky air aglow as it slants in over iron bars close-set in thick masonry walls. Sweaty, shirtless steppenwolves prowling back and forth in their cells, brooding about where it all went wrong. Prison journals furtively scribbled on cigarette papers.

Instead, the jail where they've been keeping Randy is just a really crowded urban society where some of the people cannot actually leave. Everyone there is extremely young except for Randy and an ever-rotating population of drunks. It makes him feel old. If he sees one more video-addled boy strutting around in a bootleg “Hard Rock Cafe” t-shirt and fronting hand gestures from American gangsta rappers, he may actually have to become a murderer.

Attorney Alejandro says, rhetorically, “Why 'Death to Drug Smugglers'?” Randy hasn't asked why, but Attorney Alejandro wants to share something with him about why. “The Americans were very angry that some people in this part of the world persisted in selling them the drugs that they want so very badly.”

“Sorry. What can I say? We suck. I know we suck.”

“And so as a gesture of friendship between our peoples, we instituted the death penalty. The law specified two, and only two, methods of execution,” Attorney Alejandro continues, “the gas chamber and the electric chair. As you can see, we took our lead—in this as in many other things, some wise and some foolish—from the Americans. Now, at the time, we did not have a gas chamber anywhere in the Philippines. A study was made. Plans were drawn up. Do you have any idea what is involved in constructing a proper gas chamber?” Attorney Alejandro now goes off on a fairly lengthy riff, but Randy finds it hard to concentrate until something in Attorney Alejandro's tone tells him that a coda is approaching. “… prison service said, 'How can you expect us to construct this space-age facility when we have not even the funds to purchase rat poison for the overcrowded prisons we already have?' As you can see they were just whining for more funding. You see?” Attorney Alejandro raises his eyebrows significantly and sucks in his cheeks, as he reduces a good two or three centimeters of a Marlboro to ash. That he feels it necessary to explain the underlying motivations of the prison service so baldly seems to imply that his estimate of Randy's intelligence is none too favorable, which given the way he was arrested at the airport might be fair enough. “So this left only the electric chair. But do you know what happened to the electric chair?”

“I can't imagine,” Randy says.

“It burned. Faulty wiring. So we had no way to kill people.” All of a sudden Attorney Alejandro, who has betrayed no amusement thus far, remembers to laugh. It is perfunctory, and by the time Randy has bestirred himself to show a little polite amusement, it's over and Alejandro's back to being serious. “But Filipinos are highly adaptable.”

“Once again,” Attorney Alejandro says, “we looked to America. Our friend, our patron, our big brother. You are familiar with the expression Ninong? Of course you are, I forget you have spent a whole lotta time here.” Randy is always impressed by the mixture of love, hate, hope, disappointment, admiration, and derision that Filipinos express towards America. Having actually been a part of the United States at one point, they can take digs at it in a way that's usually reserved for lifelong U.S. citizens. The failure of the United States to protect them from Nippon after Pearl Harbor is still the most important thing that ever happened to them. Probably just slightly more important than MacArthur's return to the country a few years later. If that doesn't inculcate a love-hate relationship…

“The Americans,” Attorney Alejandro continues, “were also reeling under the expense of executing people and having embarrassments with their electric chairs. Maybe they should have jobbed it out.”

“Pardon me?” Randy says. He gets the idea that Attorney Alejandro is just checking to see if he's awake.

“Jobbed it out. To the Nipponese. Gone to Sony or Panasonic or one of those guys and said (now reverting to a perfect American-yokel accent), We just love the VCRs that y'all've been sellin' us—why don't you make an electric chair that actually works?' Which the Nips would have done-it is the kind of thing they would excel at—and then after they sold Americans all of the electric chairs they needed, we could have purchased some factory seconds at cut-rate.” Whenever Filipinos slag America in earshot of an American, they usually try to follow it up with some really vile observations about the Nipponese, just to put everything in perspective.

“Where are we going with this?” Randy says.

“Please forgive my digression. The Americans had gone over to executing prisoners by lethal injection. And so we have once again decided to take a cue from them. Why didn't we just hang people? We have plenty of rope—this is where rope comes from, you know—”

“Yes.”

“—or shoot them? We have plenty of guns. But no, the congress wanted to be modern like Uncle Sam, and so lethal injection it was. But then we sent a delegation to see how the Americans lethally injected people, and you know what they reported when they came back?”

“It takes all kinds of special equipment.”

“It takes all kinds of special equipment, and a special room. This room has not yet been constructed. So, you know how many people we have on death row now?”

“I can't imagine.”

“More than two hundred and fifty. Even if the room were built tomorrow, most of them could not be executed, because it is illegal to carry out the execution until one year has passed since the final appeal.”

“Well, wait a minute! If you've lost your final appeal, then why wait a whole year?”

Attorney Alejandro shrugs.

“In America, they usually do the final appeal while the prisoner is lying strapped to the table with the needle in his arm.”

“Maybe they wait in case there is a miracle during that year. We are a very religious people—even some of the death row prisoners are very religious. But they are now begging to be executed. They cannot stand the wait any longer!” Attorney Alejandro laughs and slaps the table. “Now, Randy, all of these two hundred and fifty people are poor. All of them.” He stops significantly.

“I hear you,” Randy says. “Did you know that my net worth is less than zero, by the way?”