Hiro orbits back around to the Hacker1 Quadrant. Da5id's shuffling2 hypercards around on his table -- business stats on The Black Sun, film and video clips, hunks of software, scrawled3 telephone numbers.
"There's a little blip in the operating system that hits me right in the gut4 every time you come in the door," Da5id says. "I always have this premonition that The Black Sun is headed for a crash."
"Must be Bigboard," Hiro says. "It has one routine that patches some of the traps in low memory, for a moment."
"Ah, that's it. Please, please throw that thing away," Da5id says.
"What, Bigboard?"
"Yeah. It was totally rad at one point, but now it's like trying to work on a fusion5 reactor6 with a stone ax."
"Thanks."
"I'll give you all the headers you need if you want to update it to something a little less dangerous," Da5id says. "I wasn't impugning7 your abilities. I'm just saying you need to keep up with the times."
"It's fucking hard," Hiro says. "There's no place for a freelance hacker anymore. You have to have a big corporation behind you."
"I'm aware of that. And I'm aware that you can't stand to work for a big corporation. That's why I'm saying, I'll give you the stuff you need. You're always a part of The Black Sun to me, Hiro, even since we parted ways."
It is classic Da5id. He's talking with his heart again, bypassing his head. If Da5id weren't a hacker, Hiro would despair of his ever having enough brains to do anything.
"Let's talk about something else," Hiro says. 'Was I just hallucinating, or are you and Juanita on speaking terms again?"
Da5id gives him an indulgent smile. He has been very kind to Hiro ever since The Conversation, several years back. It was a conversation that started out as a friendly chat over beer and oysters8 between a couple of longtime comrades-in-arms. It was not until three-quarters of the way through The Conversation that it dawned on Hiro that he was, in fact, being fired, at this very moment. Since The Conversation, Da5id has been known to feed Hiro useful bits of intel and gossip from time to time.
"Fishing for something useful?" Da5id asks knowingly. Like many bitheads, Da5id is utterly9 guileless, but at times like this, he thinks he's the reincarnation of Machiavelli.
"I got news for you, man," Hiro says. "Most of the stuff you give me, I never put into the Library."
"Why not? Hell, I give you all my best gossip. I thought you were making money off that stuff."
"I just can't stand it," Hiro says, "taking parts of my private conversations and whoring them out. Why do you think I'm broke?"
There's another thing he doesn't mention, which is that he's always considered himself to be Da5id's equal, and he can't stand the idea of feeding off Da5id's little crumbs10 and tidbits, like a dog curled up under his table.
"I was glad to see Juanita come in here -- even as a black-and-white," Da5id says. "For her not to use The Black Sun -- it's like Alexander Graham Bell refusing to use the telephone."
"Why did she come in tonight?"
"Something's bugging11 her," Da5id says. "She wanted to know if I'd seen certain people on the Street."
"Anyone in particular?"
"She's worried about a really large guy with long black hair," Da5id says. "Peddling12 something called -- get this -- Snow Crash."
"Has she tried the Library?"
"Yeah. I assume so, anyway."
"Have you seen this guy?"
"Oh, yeah. It's not hard to find him," Da5id says. "He's right outside the door. I got this from him."
Da5id scans the table, picks up one of the hypercards, and shows it to Hiro.
SNOW CRASH tear this card in half to release your free sample
"Da5id," Hiro says, "I can't believe you took a hypercard from a black-and-white person."
Da5id laughs. "This is not the old days, my friend. I've got so much antiviral medicine in my system that nothing could get through. I get so much contaminated shit from all the hackers13 who come through here, it's like working in a plague ward14. So I'm not afraid of whatever's in this hypercard."
"Well, in that case, I'm curious," Hiro says.
"Yeah. Me, too." Da5id laughs.
"It's probably something very disappointing."
"Probably an animercial," Da5id agrees. "Think I should do it?"
"Yeah. Go for it. It's not every day you get to try out a new drug," Hiro says.
"Well, you can try one every day if you want to," Da5id says, "but it's not every day you find one that can't hurt you." He picks up the hypercard and tears it in half.
For a second, nothing happens. "I'm waiting," Da5id says. An avatar materializes on the table in front of Da5id, starting out ghostly and transparent15, gradually becoming solid and three-dimensional. It's a really trite16 effect, Hiro and Da5id are already laughing,
The avatar is a stark17 naked Brandy. It doesn't even look like the standard Brandy; this looks like one of the cheap Taiwanese Brandy knockoffs. Clearly, it's just a daemon. She is holding a pair of tubes in her hands, about the size of paper-towel rolls.
Da5id is leaning back in his chair, enjoying this. There is something hilariously18 tawdry about the entire scene.
The Brandy leans forward, beckoning19 Da5id toward her. Da5id leans into her face, grinning broadly. She puts her crude, ruby-red lips up by his ear and mumbles20 something that Hiro can't hear.
When she leans back away from Da5id, his face has changed. He looks dazed and expressionless. Maybe Da5id really looks that way; maybe Snow Crash has messed up his avatar somehow so that it's no longer tracking Da5id's true facial expressions. But he's staring straight ahead, eyes frozen in their sockets21.
The Brandy holds the pair of tubes up in front of Da5id's immobilized face and spreads them apart. It's actually a scroll22. She's unrolling it right in front of Da5id's face, spreading it apart like a flat two-dimensional screen in front of his eyes. Da5id's paralyzed face has taken on a bluish tinge23 as it reflects light coming out of the scroll.
Hiro walks around the table to look. He gets a brief glimpse of the scroll before the Brandy snaps it shut again. It is a living wall of light, like a flexible, flat-screened television set, and it's not showing anything at all. Just static. White noise. Snow.
Then she's gone, leaving no trace behind. Desultory24, sarcastic25 applause sounds from a few tables in the Hacker Quadrant.
Da5id's back to normal, wearing a grin that's part snide and part embarrassed. "What was it?" Hiro says. "I just glimpsed some snow at the very end."
"You saw the whole thing," Da5id says. "A fixed26 pattern of black-and-white pixels, fairly high-resolution. Just a few hundred thousand ones and zeroes for me to look at."
"So in other words, someone just exposed your optic nerve to what, maybe a hundred thousand bytes of information," Hiro says.
"Noise, is more like it."
"Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code," Hiro says.
"Why would anyone show me information in binary27 code? I'm not a computer. I can t read a bitmap."
"Relax, Da5id, I'm just shitting you," Hiro says.
"You know what it was? You know how hackers are always trying to show me samples of their work?"
"They do?"
"Sure. All the time. Some hacker came up with this scheme to show me his stuff. And everything worked fine until the moment the Brandy opened the scroll -- but his code was buggy, and it snow-crashed at the wrong moment, so instead of seeing his output, all I saw was snow."
"Then why did he call the thing Snow Crash?"
"Gallows28 humor. He knew it was buggy."
"What did the Brandy whisper in your ear?"
"Some language I didn't recognize," Da5id says. "Just a bunch of babble29."
Babble. Babel.
"Afterward30, you looked sort of stunned31."
Da5id looks resentful. "I wasn't stunned. I just found the whole experience so weird32, I guess I just was taken aback for a second."
Hiro is giving him an extremely dubious33 look. Da5id notices it and stands up. "Want to go see what your competitors in Nippon are up to?"
"What competitors?"
"You used to design avatars for rock stars, right?"
"Still do."
"Well, Sushi K is here tonight."
"Oh, yeah. The hairdo the size of a galaxy34."
"You can see the rays from here," Da5id says, waving toward the next quadrant, "but I want to see the whole getup."
It does look as though the sun is rising somewhere in the middle of the Rock Star Quadrant. Above the heads of the milling avatars, Hiro can see a fan of orange beams radiating outward from some point in the middle of the crowd. It keeps moving, turning around, shaking from side to side, and the whole universe seems to move with it. On the Street, the full radiance of Sushi K's Rising Sun hairdo is suppressed by the height and width regulations. But Da5id allows free expression inside The Black Sun, so the orange rays extend all the way to the property lines.
"I wonder if anyone's told him yet that Americans won't buy rap music from a Japanese person," Hiro says as they stroll over there.
"Maybe you should tell him," Da5id suggests, "charge him for the service. He's in L.A. right now, you know."
"Probably staying in a hotel full of bootlickers telling him what a big star he's going to be. He needs to be exposed to some actual biomass."
They inject themselves into a stream of traffic, winding35 a narrow channel through a rift36 in the crowd.
"Biomass?" Da5id says.
"A body of living stuff. It's an ecology term. If you take an acre of rain forest or a cubic mile of ocean or a square block of Compton and strain out all the nonliving stuff -- dirt and water -- you get the biomass."
Da5id, ever the bithead, says, "I do not understand." His voice sounds funny; there's a lot of white noise creeping into his audio.
"Industry expression," Hiro says. "The Industry feeds off the human biomass of America. Like a whale straining krill from the sea."
Hiro wedges himself between a couple of Nipponese businessmen. One is wearing uniform blue, but the other is a neotraditional, wearing a dark kimono. And, like Hiro, he's wearing two swords -- the long katana on his left hip37 and the one-handed wakizashi stuck diagonally in his waistband. He and Hiro glance cursorily38 at each other's armaments. Then Hiro looks away and pretends not to notice, while the neo-traditional is freezing solid, except for the corners of his mouth, which are curling downward. Hiro has seen this kind of thing before. He knows he's about to get into a fight.
People are moving out of the way; something big and inexorable is plunging39 through the crowd, shoving avatars this way and that. Only one thing has the ability to shove people around like that inside The Black Sun, and that's a bouncer daemon.
As they get closer, Hiro sees that it's a whole flying wedge of them, gorillas40 in tuxedos41. Real gorillas. And they seem to be headed toward Hiro.
He tries to back away, but he quickly runs into something. Looks like Bigboard finally got him in trouble; he's on his way out of the bar.
"Da5id," Hiro says. "Call them off, man, I'll stop using it"
All of the people in his vicinity are staring over Hiro's shoulder, their faces illuminated42 by a stew43 of brilliant colored lights.
Hiro turns around to look at Da5id. But Da5id's not there anymore.
Instead of Da5id, there is just a jittering44 cloud of bad digital karma. It's so bright and fast and meaningless that it hurts to look at. It flashes back and forth45 from color to black and white, and when it's in color, it rolls wildly around the color wheel as though being strafed with high-powered disco lights. And it's not staying within its own body space; hair-thin pixel lines keep shooting off to one side, passing all the way across The Black Sun and out through the wall. It is not so much an organized body as it is a centrifugal cloud of lines and polygons whose center cannot hold, throwing bright bits of body shrapnel all over the room, interfering46 with people's avatars, flickering47 and disappearing.
The gorillas don't mind. They shove their long furry48 fingers into the midst of the disintegrating49 cloud and latch50 onto it somehow and carry it past Hiro, toward the exit. Hiro looks down as it goes past him and sees what looks very much like Da5id's face as viewed through a pile of shattered glass. It's just a momentary51 glimpse. Then the avatar is gone, expertly drop-kicked out the front door, soaring out over the Street in a long flat arc that takes it over the horizon. Hiro looks up the aisle52 to see Da5id's table, empty, surrounded by stunned hackers. Some of them are shocked, some are trying to stifle53 grins. Da5id Meier, supreme54 hacker overlord, founding father of the Metaverse protocol55, creator and proprietor56 of the world-famous Black Sun, has just suffered a system crash. He's been thrown out of his own bar by his own daemons.
收听单词发音 |
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hacker
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| n.能盗用或偷改电脑中信息的人，电脑黑客 | |
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shuffling
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| adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式 | |
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scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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reactor
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| n.反应器；反应堆 | |
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impugning
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| v.非难，指谪( impugn的现在分词 )；对…有怀疑 | |
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oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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bugging
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| [法] 窃听 | |
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peddling
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| 忙于琐事的，无关紧要的 | |
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hackers
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| n.计算机迷( hacker的名词复数 )；私自存取或篡改电脑资料者，电脑“黑客” | |
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ward
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| n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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trite
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| adj.陈腐的 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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hilariously
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beckoning
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| adj.引诱人的，令人心动的v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的现在分词 ) | |
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mumbles
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| 含糊的话或声音，咕哝( mumble的名词复数 ) | |
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sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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scroll
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| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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desultory
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| adj.散漫的，无方法的 | |
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sarcastic
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| adj.讥讽的，讽刺的，嘲弄的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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binary
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| adj.二，双；二进制的；n.双(体)；联星 | |
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gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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babble
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| v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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cursorily
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| adv.粗糙地，疏忽地，马虎地 | |
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plunging
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| adj.跳进的，突进的v.颠簸( plunge的现在分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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gorillas
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| n.大猩猩( gorilla的名词复数 )；暴徒，打手 | |
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tuxedos
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| n.餐服，无尾晚礼服( tuxedo的名词复数 ) | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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stew
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| n.炖汤，焖，烦恼；v.炖汤，焖，忧虑 | |
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jittering
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| v.紧张不安，战战兢兢( jitter的现在分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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furry
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| adj.毛皮的；似毛皮的；毛皮制的 | |
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49
disintegrating
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的现在分词 ) | |
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latch
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| n.门闩，窗闩；弹簧锁 | |
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momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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52
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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53
stifle
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| vt.使窒息；闷死；扼杀；抑止，阻止 | |
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54
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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protocol
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| n.议定书，草约，会谈记录，外交礼节 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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