Neal Stephenson - Interface

The West Side Highway was not much of a highway at all until you got a little bit farther north and it became a proper limited-access affair with on-ramps and so on. At this hour it was always surprisingly free from traffic. The only people out tonight were a few nocturnal taxi drivers and one or two heavily burdened third­worldish vehicles, the lifeblood of the New Economy, out running errands.

Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center towered above the highway on concrete buttresses, like a hydroelectric project accidently constructed in the wrong place, appallingly large. Chase Merriam weaved through some complicated ramps and lanes under the George Washington Bridge, almost out of Manhattan now, and pulled up short behind a rickety, windowless gray-and-rust-colored van, bouncing along on bald tires and dead shocks, with a whole lot of shit piled on top of the roof. The driver was badly confused by all of those lanes, splitting and converging inexplicably under the distracting sight of the mighty bridge. Chase Merriam could have roared past him to one side or the other, but the driver of the van kept changing his mind as to which lane he should be in, making violent changes in his course, and each time he jerked the wheel toward this lane or that, his van, top-heavy with scrap metal, rocked dangerously on its overmatched suspension.

The gloom-slicing headlights of the Mercedes-Benz illuminated the rear bumper of the van, some kind of a home-made number welded together from diamond-tread steel plate. The owner, who was quite obviously in the scrap business, had manufactured the bumper himself. It was hardly less imposing than the black-and-yellow ram of the sideways impact simulator, and so Chase Merriam resolved to keep the gleaming perfection of his Mercedes far away from it.

The maker, upon finishing the structural part of the bumper, had turned his torch to decorative purposes. He had laid down a thick bead of molten iron on the back surface of the bumper, inscribing the following message on it in careening, heavy-metal cursive: SOLO DIOS SABE HACIA DONDE VOY.

Chase Merriam, who did not speak Spanish but who had developed a basic level of skill in Romance languages during his prep years, was mentally translating this phrase (ONLY GOD KNOWS something...) when a sleek aluminium-alloy wheel rim, freshly stripped from a hapless Acura Legend somewhere on the streets of the naked city, slid off the roof of the van, bounced once on the pavement, and plunged directly through his windshield, catching him in the forehead.

In the instant that the rim had taken its fateful bounce, glittering in his headlights like a meteor, the whole world had become a Mercedes-Benz crash-testing laboratory. Chase Merriam, of course, was the dummy. But he experienced it with the eerie clarity of the white-coated Teutonic engineers in the safety of their screening room, going over the silent videotapes. It all happened silently and very, very slowly, and when the car, at some point several minutes into the crash, slammed into some sort of a momentous object - he wasn't sure exactly what, but he had the sense that he was a great distance from the roadway proper at this point, and that the car hadn't been properly horizontal for a long, long time - he actually saw the air bag unfurl before him, fluttering like a white flag raised in a hurricane.

The car kept skidding and rolling and plowing through things for a long time, repeatedly changing direction, like the Magic Bullet meandering through Kennedy and Connally. Each little scrape and secondary impact probably did about five thousand dollars' worth of damage. After a while, it almost got boring; he must be leaving a trail of torn-up sod and flattened road signs all the way to Yonkers. But eventually, he stopped. His inner ear still told him he was riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, but by now his left arm had flopped outward, through the place where the double-glazed window was supposed to be, and was resting limply on some kind of a surface - hard-packed, inorganic New York dirt - and that surface sure wasn't moving.

So far he had not experienced even the smallest bit of physical pain, but something about the car just didn't feel right. Because his eyes got smeary with blood and then swelled shut pretty quickly, he had to figure out using other sensory inputs. But the upshot seemed to be that his Mercedes-Benz was upside-down now and he was hanging by the safety belt and the shoulder harness, his legs supported by the steering wheel, his knees poked uncomfortably by the turn-signal levers.

The phone was right there, he could find it by groping for it, he knew which button turned it on. Then all he had to do was dial 911. But he couldn't see the number buttons. He punched one of the presets, the one that dialed his home number. He would tell Elizabeth to call the NYPD. But it was now past eleven thirty and Elizabeth had turned off the ringer on the phone and gone to bed; all he got was his own answering machine.

He considered dictating a last message to the world. Elizabeth would find the light blinking on the machine tomorrow and listen to it; she would call the NYPD and they would at last find him, dead from boredom. They would play the tape at his memorial service. It would be dry, calm, witty, noble, and brave.

But he could always call back later and do that. So he hung up to consider his options. All the other presets were business numbers. No one would answer them at this time of the night. Dialing 911 was harder than it sounded, because the phone had too many buttons and they all felt the same. "You okay?" a voice said. A man's voice. "Hello?" Chase Merriam said.

"Shit, man, that was incredible," the man said. "I can't believe you alive. That is a bitchin' car, man!"

He couldn't seem to move his left arm, which was still dangling on the ground. He reached across the body with his right hand and stuck the phone out the window. "Would you please dial 911?"

"Sure," the man said. Chase Merriam heard him shuffling the phone around in his hands, figuring out which way was up, then he heard the three electronic beeps.

"Hello, Officer," the man said, "I would like to report a car crash in Fort Washington Park. Down by the river. This car jumped the guardrail on the highway and now it's upside down. And I think you better get here real quick, because this dude is stuck inside the car, and this is a real bad area. It's full of bad criminals man, people who would cut this guy's heart out for a dollar, and they are all gathering around the vehicle right now, like jackals around a wounded beast, waiting for the right moment to strike. Huh? No, I'm sorry, I won't give you my name. Okay. Bye."

"Thank you," Chase Merriam said.

"No problem,"

"That business about the jackals - that wasn't for real was it?"

"Shit man, where do you think you are? Cape May?" the man said. "We are, like, just a couple of blocks from the biggest homeless shelter in New York City. The only ones here are the people they wouldn't let into the shelter because we're too big and bad and scary."

"Take whatever you want," Chase Merriam said. "I don't care."

"Okay. We'll begin with the watch," the man said. He picked up Merriam's arm, which instantly began to hurt, and after a little bit of fiddling around, figured out how to detach the watch. "What kind of watch is this, anyway? Looks like some cheap piece of digital shit."

"It's a long story."

"Well, if a guy was going to look for your wallet-"

"Beats me," Chase Merriam said. "I have to assume it fell out."

The man reached in the window and patted Merriam down, finding no wallets in the usual places. "Does this thing have a dome light?" he asked.

"I believe a dome light is standard on the big Mercedes. It's probably broken."

"Yeah," the man said, crestfallen. "I guess I'll just have to grope around."