From Hiro's front yard to L. Bob Rife1's black cube at Port 127 is halfway2 around the Metaverse, a distance of 32,768 kilometers. The only hard part, really, is getting out of Downtown. He can ride his bike straight through the avatars as usual, but the Street is also cluttered4 with vehicles, animercials, commercial displays, public plazas6, and other bits of solid-looking software that get in his way.
Not to mention a few distractions7. Off to his right, about a kilometer away from The Black Sun, is a deep hole in the hyperManhattan skyline. It is an open plaza5 about a mile wide, a park of sorts where avatars can gather for concerts and conventions and festivals. Most of it is occupied by a deep-dish amphitheater that is capable of seating close to a million avatars at once. Down at the bottom is a huge circular stage.
Normally, the stage is occupied by major rock groups. Tonight, it is occupied by the grandest and most brilliant computer hallucinations that the human mind can invent. A three-dimensional marquee hangs above it, announcing tonight's event: a benefit graphics8 concert staged on behalf of Da5id Meier, who is still hospitalized with an inexplicable9 disease. The amphitheater is half filled with hackers11.
Once he gets out of Downtown, Hiro twists his throttle12 up to the max and covers the remaining thirty-two thousand and some kilometers in the space of about ten minutes. Over his head, the express trains are whooshing13 down the track at a metaphorical14 speed of ten thousand miles per hour, he passes them like they're standing15 still. This only works because he's riding in an absolutely straight line. He's got a routine coded into his motorcycle software that makes it follow the monorail track automatically so that he doesn't even have to worry about steering16 it.
Meanwhile, Juanita's standing next to him in Reality. She's got another pair of goggles17; she can see all the same things that Hiro sees.
"Rife's got a mobile uplink on his corporate18 chopper, just like the one on commercial airliners19, so he can patch into the Metaverse when he's in the air. As long as he's airborne, that's his only link to the Metaverse. We may be able to hack10 our way into that one link and block it or something ... "
"That low-level communications stuff is too full of medicine for us to mess with it in this decade," Hiro says, braking his motorcycle to a stop. "Holy shit. It's just like Y.T. described it."
He's in front of Port 127. Rife's black cube is there, just as Y.T. described it. There's no door.
Hiro starts walking away from the Street, toward the cube. It reflects no light at all, so he can't tell whether it's ten feet or ten miles away from him until the security daemons begin to materialize. There are half a dozen of them, all big sturdy avatars in blue coveralls, sort of quasi-military looking, but without rank. They don't need rank because they're all running the same program. They materialize around him in a neat semicircle with a radius20 of about ten feet, blocking Hiro's way to the cube.
Hiro mumbles21 a word under his breath and vanishes -- he slips into his invisible avatar. It would be very interesting to bang around and see how these security daemons deal with it, but right now he has to get moving before they get a chance to adjust.
They don't, at least not very well. Hiro runs between two of the security daemons and heads for the wall of the cube. He finally gets there, slamming into it, coming to a dead stop. The security daemons have all turned around and are chasing him. They can figure out where he is -- the computer tells them that much -- but they can't do much to him. Like the bouncer daemons in The Black Sun, which Hiro helped write, they shove people around by applying basic rules of avatar physics. When Hiro is invisible, there is very little for them to shove. But if they are well written, they may have more subtle ways of messing him up, so he's not wasting any time. He pokes22 his katana through the side of the cube and follows it through the wall and out the other side.
This is a hack. It is really based on a very old hack, a loophole that he found years ago when he was trying to graft23 the sword-fighting rules onto the existing Metaverse software. His blade doesn't have the power to cut a hole in the wall -- this would mean permanently24 changing the shape of someone else's building -- but it does have the power to penetrate25 things. Avatars do not have that power. That is the whole purpose of a wall in the Metaverse; it is a structure that does not allow avatars to penetrate it. But like anything else in the Metaverse, this rule is nothing but a protocol26, a convention that different computers agree to follow. In theory, it cannot be ignored. But in practice, it depends upon the ability of different computers to swap27 information very precisely28, at high speed, and at just the right times. And when you are connected to the system over a satellite uplink, as Hiro is, out here on the Raft, there is a delay as the signals bounce up to the satellite and back down. That delay can be taken advantage of, if you move quickly and don't look back. Hiro passes right through the wall on the tail end of his all-penetrating katana.
Rifeland is a vast, brightly lit space occupied by elementary shapes done up in primary colors. It is like being inside an educational toy designed to teach solid geometry to three-year-olds: cubes, spheres, tetrahedrons, polyhedrons, connected with a web of cylinders29 and lines and helices. But in this case, it has gone way, way out of control, as if every Tinkertoy set and Lego block ever made had been slapped together according to some long-forgotten scheme.
Hiro's been around the Metaverse long enough to know that despite the bright cheery appearance of this thing, it is, in fact, as simple and utilitarian30 as an Army camp. This is a model of a system. A big complicated system. The shapes probably represent computers, or central nodes in Rife's worldwide network, or Pearly Gates franchises31, or any other kind of local and regional offices that Rife has going around the world. By clambering over this structure and going into those bright shapes, Hiro could probably uncover some of the code that makes Rife's network operate. He could, perhaps, try to hack it up, as Juanita suggested.
But there is no point in messing with something he doesn't understand. He might waste hours fooling around with some piece of code only to find out that it was the software to control the automatic toilet flushers at Rife Bible College. So Hiro keeps moving, keeps looking up at the tangle32 of shapes, trying to find a pattern. He knows, now, that he has found his way into the boiler33 room of the entire Metaverse. But he has no idea what he's looking for.
This system, he realizes, really consists of several separate networks all tangled34 together in the same space. There's an extremely complicated tangle of fine red lines, millions of them, running back and forth35 between thousands of small red balls. Just as a wild guess, Hiro figures that this may represent Rife's fiber-optics network, with its innumerable local offices and nodes spread all over the world. There are a number of less complicated networks in other colors, which might represent coaxial lines, such as they used to use for cable television, or even voice phone lines.
And there is a crude, heavily built, blocky network all done up in blue. It consists of a small number -- fewer than a dozen -- of big blue cubes. They are connected to each other, but to nothing else, by massive blue tubes; the tubes are transparent36, and inside of them, Hiro can see bundles of smaller connections in various colors. It has taken Hiro a while to see all of this, because the blue cubes are nearly obscured; they are all surrounded by little red balls and other small nodes, like trees being overwhelmed with kudzu. It appears to be an older, preexisting network of some kind, with its own internal channels, mostly primitive37 ones like voice phone. Rife has patched into it, heavily, with his own, higher-tech systems.
Hiro maneuvers38 until he can get a closer look at one of the blue cubes, peering through the clutter3 of lines that has grown around it. The blue cube has a big white star on each of its six faces.
"It's the Government of the United States," Juanita says.
"Where hackers go to die," Hiro says. The largest, and yet the least efficient, producer of computer software in the world.
Hiro and Y.T. have eaten a lot of junk food together in different joints39 all over L.A. -- doughnuts, burritos, pizza, sushi, you name it -- and all Y.T. ever talks about is her mother and the terrible job that she has with the Feds. The regimentation40. The lie-detector tests. The fact that for all the work she does, she really has no idea what it is that the government is really working on.
It's always been a mystery to Hiro, too, but then, that's how the government is. It was invented to do stuff that private enterprise doesn't bother with, which means that there's probably no reason for it; you never know what they're doing or why. Hackers have traditionally looked upon the government's coding sweatshops with horror and just tried to forget that all of that shit ever existed.
But they have thousands of programmers. The programmers work twelve hours a day out of some twisted sense of personal loyalty41. Their software-engineering techniques, while cruel and ugly, are very sophisticated. They must have been up to something.
"Juanita?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't ask me why I think this. But I think that the government has been undertaking42 a big software development project for L. Bob Rife."
"Makes sense," she says. "He has such a love-hate relationship with his programmers -- he needs them, but he won't trust them. The government's the only organization he would trust to write something important. I wonder what it is?"
"Hold on," Hiro says. "Hold on."
He is now a stone's throw away from a big blue cube sitting at ground level. All the other blue cubes sort of feed into it. There is a motorcycle parked next to the cube, rendered in color, but just one notch43 above black and white: big jaggedy pixels and a limited color palette. It has a sidecar. Raven44's standing next to it.
He is carrying something in his arms. It is another simple geometric construction, a long smooth blue ellipsoid a couple of feet in length. From the way he's moving, Hiro thinks that Raven has just removed it from the blue cube; he carries it over to the motorcycle and nestles it into the sidecar.
"The Big One," Hiro says.
"It's exactly what we were afraid of," Juanita says. "Rife's revenge."
"Headed for the amphitheater. Where all the hackers are gathered in one place. Rife's going to infect all of them at once. He's going to burn their minds."
收听单词发音 |
1
rife
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| adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的 | |
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halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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clutter
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| n.零乱，杂乱；vt.弄乱，把…弄得杂乱 | |
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cluttered
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| v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满… | |
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plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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plazas
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| n.（尤指西班牙语城镇的）露天广场( plaza的名词复数 )；购物中心 | |
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distractions
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| n.使人分心的事[人]( distraction的名词复数 )；娱乐，消遣；心烦意乱；精神错乱 | |
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graphics
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| n.制图法，制图学；图形显示 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 | |
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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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throttle
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| n.节流阀，节气阀，喉咙；v.扼喉咙，使窒息，压 | |
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whooshing
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| v.（使）飞快移动( whoosh的现在分词 ) | |
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metaphorical
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| a.隐喻的，比喻的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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goggles
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| n.护目镜 | |
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corporate
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| adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的 | |
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airliners
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| n.客机，班机( airliner的名词复数 ) | |
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radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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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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pokes
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| v.伸出( poke的第三人称单数 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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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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swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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cylinders
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| n.圆筒( cylinder的名词复数 )；圆柱；汽缸；（尤指用作容器的）圆筒状物 | |
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utilitarian
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| adj.实用的，功利的 | |
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franchises
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| n.（尤指选举议员的）选举权( franchise的名词复数 )；参政权；获特许权的商业机构（或服务）；（公司授予的）特许经销权v.给…以特许权，出售特许权( franchise的第三人称单数 ) | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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boiler
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| n.锅炉；煮器(壶，锅等) | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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maneuvers
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| n.策略，谋略，花招( maneuver的名词复数 ) | |
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joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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regimentation
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| n.编组团队；系统化，组织化 | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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notch
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| n.(V字形)槽口，缺口，等级 | |
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raven
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| n.渡鸟，乌鸦；adj.乌亮的 | |
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