NEAL STEPHENSON

trillions of dollars. The Deiverator has two things on his agenda now: He is going to shake this street scum, whatever it takes, and deliver the fucking pizza all in the space of

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the next five minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

This is it-got to pay more attention to the road-he swings into the side street, no warning, hoping maybe to whipsaw the Kourier into the street sign on the corner. Doesn’t work. The smart ones watch your front tires, they see when you’re turning, can’t surprise them. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long, longer than he remembered-natural when you’re in a hurry. Sees the glint of cars up ahead, cars parked sideways to the road-these must be parked in the circle. And there’s the house. Light blue vinyl clapboard two-story with one-story garage to the side. He makes that driveway the center of his universe, puts the Kourier out of his mind, tries not to think about Uncle Enzo, what he’s doing right now-in the bath, maybe, or taking a crap, or making love to some actress, or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters.

The slope of the driveway slams his front suspension halfway up into the engine compartment, but that’s what suspensions are for. He evades the car in the driveway-rnust have visitors tonight, didn’t remember that these people drove a Lexus-cuts through the hedge, into the side yard, looks for that shed, that shed he absolutely must not run into

it’s not there, they took it down

next problem, the picnic table in the next yard

hang on, there’s a fence, when did they put up a fence?

This is no time to put on the brakes. Got to build up some speed, knock it down without blowing all this momentum. It’s just a four-foot wooden thing,

The fence goes down easy, he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. But strangely, it looked like an old fence, maybe he made a wrong turn somewhere-he realizes, as he catapults into an empty backyard swimming pooL

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