Neal Stephenson - Interface

"Oh, on the contrary," Meyer said. "I've gone to great trouble to arrange a cell for you that I think will be to your liking." "You're not putting me in with crack dealers, are you?" "Absolutely not," Meyer said. "You'll be with people much like yourself."

"I thank you for that courtesy," Ogle said. They loaded him on to the chopper, strapped him into the seat, and lifted off, cutting forward across Constitution at a low angle. Ogle had a spectacular view of the Capitol dome out his window. He had gotten damn close. And now, in some way that no one had bothered to explain to him yet, he had lost.

It was okay. He was tied into the Network now. The Network needed him. As long as that was the case, he'd never have to worry about anything.

The chopper headed due south, crossing over the Southeast Freeway and then over Fort McNair, on the point of land where the Potomac and the Anacostia rivers came together. They cut down the center of the Potomac until they were south of National Airport, then banked into a gentle right turn and headed south-southeast, passing near the spire of the Masonic Memorial in Alexandria.

"Where are we going?" he asked twice. But the FBI agents either couldn't hear him or pretended they couldn't.

They flew for several miles across the suburban sprawl of northern Virginia, roughly paralleling I-395. The broad grassy lawns of Fort Belvoir were visible on the left. Perhaps they were using Fort Belvoir as a temporary camp for political prisoners. That wouldn't be so bad; folks in the Army called Belvoir the Country Club.

Instead, they came down in a yard amid enormous, drab buildings, surrounded by tall fences topped with swirls of razor ribbon.

Lorton. They were putting him in Lorton Reformatory. The District of Columbia was so small and so full of criminals that there wasn't room to build a big enough prison; they had built one out in Virginia instead. And now Ogle was going to be an inmate.

He reckoned they would put him in a minimum-security wing somewhere, maybe out in a nice wooded area. But they took him straight into one of the big prison buildings. Straight to a maximum-security wing, where all of the prisoners were locked in their cells all day long.

The prisoners hung on their bars and watched Ogle hungrily as he was led down the corridor in his nice suit and his polished shoes. They shouted things to him. Disgusting things.

Ogle was almost paralyzed with fear. Meyer had lied to him.

Finally they reached a cell that was empty. Maybe he'd be put there.

But they passed right on by it and continued to the next cell. This cell had one man in it, curled up on the upper bunk, not moving. Ogle just got a quick glimpse of him before he was shoved in through the door: his new roommate was small, stoop-shouldered, late middle-aged, wearing a dress shirt and slacks just like Ogle.

The massive iron door thudded shut behind him.

Ogle turned to greet his new cellmate. The man had risen up to his hands and knees and was now looking down at Ogle from the upper bunk like a jaguar perched in a tree. He was breathing rapidly and raggedly.

A huge bubble of mucous grew from Jeremiah Freel's left nostril and popped.

Freel launched himself from the bunk headfirst, trying to sink his teeth into Ogle's cheek. Ogle instinctively turned his head away and snapped his head back. The impact slammed him back against the bars. Freel tumbled to the floor.

Freel reached for Ogle's groin. Ogle bent over and shoved his finger into one of Freel's eyes. Freel moved his head at the last moment and sank his teeth into Ogle's finger. Ogle stomped on one of Freel's hands.

And then they started fighting. In cells all around them, the convicts from D.C. flocked to the bars shouting, laughing, and pumping their fists in exultation.

Several hundred feet beneath Cacher, Oklahoma, Otis Simpson was sitting in a swivel chair in the Communications Center, staring at a wall of dead screens. He had been staring at them ever since roughly 19:08 Greenwich Mean Time. At that moment, President Richmond had gone live to the world, flanked by the leaders of the legislative and judicial branches. Then all the screens had gone black. The faxes had gone silent. The computer links had been cut off. He had tried sending messages to the Network, but all the encryption keys had been changed.

Finally he stood up, harvested a few remaining faxes that had come out of the machines earlier that day, and fed them into the shredder. He typed a command into the computer system that would cause it to re-format all of its disks seven times in a row, destroying all of the information in the system.

Otho was lying in his bed. He had been lying there since earlier today and was now beginning to go into rigor mortis. Otis bent over him and closed his eyes and smoothed back what was left of his hair.

Then he climbed on the lift and took it up to the surface. It was a bleak midwinter day, a strong steady wind coming out of the northwest prairie, whistling and gusting between the heaps of lead tailings as it picked up a load of toxic metal dust. Otis put on his warm coat and his mittens and his hat with the earflaps. Then he started to walk down the shoulder of the highway, headed southward, where he thought it might be warmer.

Dr. Radhakrishnan V.R.J.V.V. Gangadhar was poised above his anaesthetized patient, just about to flick the power switch on his bone saw, when the first tendrils of noise began to infiltrate the reinforced-concrete walls of the Radhakrishnan Institute. It was a noise that was senses through the soles of the feet - not so much an actual sound as a change in the way the ground felt. Perhaps there had been another earthquake up in Uttar Pradesh. He flicked the switch and pressed the madly vibrating blade of the bone saw against the freshly peeled skull of Sasha Yakutin, a promising young up-and-coming Russian politician who had just been cut down in the prime of his life by a tragic stroke.

When he finished cutting a hatch through Mr. Yakutin's head and turned off the saw, the room became quiet - but not entirely quiet. A palpable noise was penetrating the walls of the operating room.

A nurse entered the operating theater. "Your brother Arun in on the telephone," she said.

"Can't you see I am in the middle of an operation?"

"He says it's an emergency. He says you should get out of the country."

A tremendous impact reverberated through the structure of the building, causing the steel instruments to vibrate against their trays. Down the hallway, someone screamed.

"Continue the operation," Dr. Radhakrishnan said to Toyoda, one of his most promising young proteges."

"Doctor?" Toyoda said.

Dr. Radhakrishnan stripped off his gloves and tossed them into a rubbish can.

When he stepped out into the corridor, the noise became louder; but it was still indistinct. He had heard something like this once in Elton. He had been awakened early in the morning by the most frightening noise, a noise that could peel paint from walls, the noise that madmen must hear in their nightmares, and had shivered under the covers for a few moments, thinking it was the end of the world; finally he had peered out under a windowshade and discovered that the trees in his front yard had been taken over by a vast flock of starlings, millions of them, all screeching at the tops of their lungs.

Dr. Radhakrishnan was approaching a closed door at the end of a hallway. The noise was coming through that door, seeping around its edges.

He opened the door. The sound was crushing, maddening, a noise that could cave your skull in. This room was a third-story office with a picture window that faced on to a major street. But the window had been smashed out. Slivers of smoked glass had been strewn explosively all over the room. A few rocks and bricks littered the floor, looking crude and dirty in this clean high-tech space. Hot polluted air streamed in through the window and blew over Dr. Radhakrishnan's face. He stepped forward, walking carefully on the broken glass, and looked out the window.