Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

"Yes."

"Why didn't I get sick?"

"Too far away. Your eyes couldn't resolve the bitmap. It has to be right up in your face."

"I'll think about that one," Hiro says. "But I have another question. Raven also distributes another drug - in Reality - called, among other things, Snow Crash. What is it?"

"It's not a drug," Juanita says. "They make it look like a drug and feel like a drug so that people will want to take it. It's laced with cocaine and some other stuff."

"If it's not a drug, what is it?"

"It's chemically processed blood serum taken from people who are infected with the metavirus," Juanita says. "That is, it's just another way of spreading the infection."

"Who's spreading it?"

"L. Bob Rife's private church. All of those people are infected."

Hiro puts his head in his hands. He's not exactly thinking about this; he's letting it ricochet around in his skull, waiting for it to come to rest. "Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing - is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"

Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?"

That Juanita is talking this way does not make it any easier for Hiro to get back on his feet in this conversation.

"How can you say that? You're a religious person yourself."

"Don't lump all religion together."

"Sorry."

"All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us. Now, religion used to be essentially viral - a piece of information that replicated inside the human mind, jumping from one person to the next. That's the way it used to be, and unfortunately, that's the way it's headed right now. But there have been several efforts to deliver us from the hands of primitive, irrational religion. The first was made by someone named Enki about four thousand years ago. The second was made by Hebrew scholars in the eighth century B.C., driven out of their homeland by the invasion of Sargon II, but eventually it just devolved into empty legalism. Another attempt was made by Jesus - that one was hijacked by viral influences within fifty days of his death. The virus was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but we're in the middle of a big epidemic that started in Kansas in 1900 and has been gathering momentum ever since."

"Do you believe in God or not?" Hiro says. First things first.

"Definitely."

"Do you believe in Jesus?"

"Yes. But not in the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus."

"How can you be a Christian without believing in that?"

"I would say," Juanita says, "how can you be a Christian with it? Anyone who takes the trouble to study the gospels can see that the bodily resurrection is a myth that was tacked onto the real story several years after the real histories were written. It's so National Enquirer-esque, don't you think?"

Beyond that, Juanita doesn't have much to say. She doesn't want to get into it now, she says. She doesn't want to prejudice Hiro's thinking "at this point."

"Does that imply that there's going to be some other point? Is this a continuing relationship?" Hiro says.

"Do you want to find the people who infected Da5id?"

"Yes. Hell, Juanita, even if it weren't for the fact that he is my friend, I'd want to find them before they infect me."

"Look at the Babel stack, Hiro, and then visit me if I get back from Astoria."

"If you get back? What are you doing there?"

"Research."

She's been putting on a businesslike front through this whole talk, spitting out information, telling Hiro the way it is. But she's tired and anxious, and Hiro gets the idea that she's deeply afraid.

"Good luck," he says. He was all ready to do some flirting with her during this meeting, picking up where they left off last night. But something has changed in Juanita's mind between then and now. Flirting is the last thing on her mind.

Juanita's going to do something dangerous in Oregon. She doesn't want Hiro to know about it so that he won't worry.

"There's some good stuff in the Babel stack about someone named Inanna," she says.

"Who's Inanna?"

"A Sumerian goddess. I'm sort of in love with her. Anyway, you can't understand what I'm about to do until you understand Inanna."

"Well, good luck," Hiro says. "Say hi to Inanna for me."

"Thanks."

"When you get back, I want to spend some time with you."

"The feeling is mutual," she says. "But we have to get out of this first."

"Oh. I didn't realize I was in something."

"Don't be a sap. We're all in it."

Hiro leaves, exiting into The Black Sun.

There is one guy wandering around the Hacker Quadrant who really stands out. His avatar doesn't look so hot. And he's having trouble controlling it. He looks like a guy who's just goggled into the Metaverse for the first time and doesn't know how to move around. He keeps bumping into tables, and when he wants to turn around, he spins around several times, not knowing how to stop himself.

Hiro walks toward him, because his face seems a little familiar. When the guy finally stops moving long enough for Hiro to resolve him clearly, he recognizes the avatar. It's a Clint. Most often seen in the company of a Brandy.

The Clint recognizes Hiro, and his surprised face comes on for a second, is then replaced by his usual stern, stiff-lipped, craggy appearance. He holds up his hands together in front of him, and Hiro sees that he is holding a scroll, just like Brandy's.

Hiro reaches for his katana, but the scroll is already up in his face, spreading open to reveal the blue glare of the bitmap inside. He sidesteps, gets over to one side of the Clint, raising the katana overhead, snaps the katana straight down and cuts the Clint's arms off.

As the scroll falls, it spreads open even wider. Hiro doesn't dare look at it now. The Clint has turned around and is awkwardly trying to escape from The Black Sun, bouncing from table to table like a pinball.

If Hiro could kill the guy - cut his head off - then his avatar would stay in The Black Sun, be carried away by the Graveyard Daemons. Hiro could do some hacking and maybe figure out who he is, where he's coming in from.

But a few dozen hackers are lounging around the bar, watching all of this, and if they come over and look at the scroll, they'll all end up like Da5id.

Hiro squats down, looking away from the scroll, and pulls up one of the hidden trapdoors that lead down into the tunnel system. He's the one who coded those tunnels into The Black Sun to begin with; he's the only person in the whole bar who can use them. He sweeps the scroll into the tunnel with one hand, then closes the door.

Hiro can see the Clint, way over near the exit, trying to get his avatar aimed out through the door. Hiro runs after him. If the guy reaches the Street, he's gone - he'll turn into a translucent ghost. With a fifty-foot head start in a crowd of a million other translucent ghosts, there's just no way. As usual, there's a crowd of wannabes gathered on the Street out front. Hiro can see the usual assortment, including a few black-and-white people.

One of those black-and-whites is Y.T. She's loitering out there waiting for Hiro to come out.

"Y.T.!" he shouts. "Chase that guy with no arms!"

Hiro gets out the door just a few seconds after the Clint does. Both the Clint and Y.T. are already gone.

He turns back into The Black Sun, pulls up a trapdoor, and drops down into the tunnel system, the realm of the Graveyard Daemons. One of them has already picked up the scroll and is trudging in toward the center to throw it on the fire.

"Hey, bud," Hiro says, "take a right turn at the next tunnel and leave that thing in my office, okay? But do me a favor and roll it up first."

He follows the Graveyard Daemon down the tunnel, under the Street, until they're under the neighborhood where Hiro and the other hackers have their houses. Hiro has the Graveyard Daemon deposit the rolled-up scroll in his workshop, down in the basement - the room where Hiro does his hacking. Then Hiro continues upstairs to his office.