Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

Some of the people who were here last time are gone now, and there's a few new ones she doesn't recognize.

There's a couple of people actually wearing duct-tape straitjackets. That's a fashion statement reserved for the ones who are totally out of control, rolling and thrashing around on the ground. And there's a few more who are spazzing out, but not as bad, and one or two who are just plain messed up, like plain old derelicts that you might see at the Snooze 'n' Cruise.

"Hey, look!" someone says. "It's our friend the Kourier! Welcome, friend!"

She's got her Liquid Knuckles uncapped, available, and shaken well before use. She's got high-voltage, high-fashion metallic cuffs around her wrists in case someone tries to grab her by same. And a bundy stunner up her sleeve. Only the most tubular throwbacks carry guns. Guns take a long time to work (you have to wait for the victim to bleed to death), but paradoxically they end up killing people pretty often. But nobody hassles you after you've hit them with a bundy stunner. At least that's what the ads say.

So it's not like she exactly feels vulnerable or anything. But still, she'd like to pick her target. So she maintains escape velocity until she's found the woman who seemed friendly - the bald chick in the torn-up Chanel knockoff - and then zeroes in on her.

"Let's get off into the woods, man," Y.T. says, "I want to talk to you about what's going on with what's left of your brain."

The woman smiles, struggles to her feet with the good-natured awkwardness of a retarded person in a good mood. "I like to talk about that," she says. "Because I believe in it."

Y.T. doesn't stop to do a lot of talking, just grabs the woman by the hand, starts leading her uphill, into the scrubby little trees, away from the road. She doesn't see any pink faces lurking up here in the infrared, it ought to be safe. But there are a couple behind her, just ambling along pleasantly, not looking directly at her, like they just decided it was time to go for a stroll in the woods in the middle of the night. One of them is the High Priest.

The woman's probably in her mid-twenties, she's a tall gangly type, nice- but not good-looking, probably was a spunky but low-scoring forward on her high school basketball team. Y.T. sits her down on a rock out in the darkness.

"Do you have any idea where you are?" Y.T. says.

"In the park," the woman says, "with my friends. We're helping to spread the Word."

"How'd you get here?"

"From the Enterprise. That's where we go to learn things."

"You mean, like, the Raft? The Enterprise Raft? Is that where you guys all came from?"

"I don't know where we came from," the woman says. "Sometimes it's hard to remember stuff. But that's not important."

"Where were you before? You didn't grow up on the Raft, did you?"

"I was a systems programmer for 3verse Systems in Mountain View, California," the woman says, suddenly whipping off a string of perfect, normal-sounding English.

'Then how did you get to be on the Raft?"

"I don't know. My old life stopped. My new life started. Now I'm here." Back to baby talk.

"What's the last thing you remember before your old life stopped?"

"I was working late. My computer was having problems."

"That's it? That's the last normal thing that happened to you?"

"My system crashed," she said. "I saw static. And then I became very sick. I went to the hospital. And there in the hospital, I met a man who explained everything to me. He explained that I had been washed in the blood. That I belonged to the Word now. And suddenly it all made sense. And then I decided to go to the Raft."

"You decided, or someone decided for you?"

"I just wanted to. That's where we go."

"Who else was on the Raft with you?"

"More people like me."

"Like you how?"

"All programmers. Like me. Who had seen the Word."

"Seen it on their computers?"

"Yes. Or sometimes on TV."

"What did you do on the Raft?"

The woman pushes up one sleeve of her raggedy sweatshirt to expose a needle-pocked arm.

"You took drugs?"

"No. We gave blood."

"They sucked your blood out?"

"Yes. Sometimes we would do a little coding. But only some of us."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. They move us here when our veins don't work anymore. We just do things to help spread the Word -drag stuff around, make barricades. But we don't really spend much time working. Most of the time we sing songs, pray, and tell other people about the Word."

"You want to leave? I can get you out of here."

"No," the woman says, "I've never been so happy."

"How can you say that? You were a big-time hacker. Now you're kind of a dip, if I may speak frankly."

"That's okay, it doesn't hurt my feelings. I wasn't really happy when I was a hacker. I never thought about the important things. God. Heaven. The things of the spirit. It's hard to think about those things in America. You just put them aside. But those are really the important things - not programming computers or making money. Now, that's all I think about."

Y.T. has been keeping an eye on the High Priest and his buddy. They keep moving closer, one step at a time. Now they're close enough that Y.T. can smell their dinner. The woman puts her hand on Y.T.'s shoulder pad.

"I want you to stay here with me. Won't you come down and have some refreshments? You must be thirsty."

"Gotta run," Y.T. says, standing up.

"I really have to object to that," the High Priest says, stepping forward. He doesn't say it angrily. Now he's trying to be like Y.T.'s dad. "That's not really the right decision for you."

"What are you, a role model?"

"That's okay. You don't have to agree. But let's go down and sit by the campfire and talk about it."

"Let's just get the fuck away from Y.T. before she goes into a self-defense mode," Y.T. says.

All three Falabalas step back away from her. Very cooperative. The High Priest is holding up his hands, placating her. "I'm sorry if we made you feel threatened," he says.

"You guys just come on a little weird," Y.T. says, flipping her goggles back onto infrared.

In the infrared, she can see that the third Falabala, the one who came up here with the High Priest, is holding a small thing in one hand that is unusually warm.

She nails him with her penlight, spotlighting his upper body in a narrow yellow beam. Most of him is dirty and dun colored and reflects little light. But there is a brilliant glossy red thing, a shaft of ruby.

It's a hypodermic needle. It's full of red fluid. Under infrared, it shows up warm. It's fresh blood.

And she doesn't exactly get it - why these guys would be walking around with a syringe full of fresh blood. But she's seen enough.

The Liquid Knuckles shoots out of the can in a long narrow neon-green stream, and when it nails the needle man in the face, he jerks his head back like he's just been axed across the bridge of the nose and falls back without making a sound. Then she gives the High Priest a shot of it for good measure. The woman just stands there, totally, like, appalled.

Y.T. pumps herself up out of the canyon so fast that when she flies out into traffic, she's going about as fast as it is. As soon as she gets a solid poon on a nocturnal lettuce tanker, she gets on the phone to Mom.

"Mom, listen. No, Mom, never mind the roaring noise. Yes, I am riding my skateboard in traffic. But listen to me for a second, Mom - "

She has to hang up on the old bitch. It's impossible to talk to her. Then she tries to make a voice linkup with Hiro. That takes a couple of minutes to go through.

"Hello! Hello! Hello!" she's shouting. Then she hears the honk of a car horn. Coming out of the telephone.

"Hello?"

"It's Y.T."