SNOW CRASH

enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”

Condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words, the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was.

She continued. “I didn’t even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later, as a grad student, trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly, for one of these baby-killer grants.” This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department. “I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Then I remembered my grandmother and reali~ed, my Cod, the human mind can absorb and process an incredible amount of information-if it comes in the right format. The right interface. If you put the right face on it. Want some coffee?”

Then he had an alarming thought: What had he been like back in college? How much of an asshole had he been? Had he left Juanita with a bad impression?

Another young man would have worried about it in silence, but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard, and so he asked her out for dinner and, after having a couple of drinks (she drank club sodas), just popped the question:

Do you think I’m an asshole?

She laughed. He smiled, believing that he had come up with a good, endearing, flirtatious bit of patter.

He did not realize until a couple of years later that this question was, in effect, the cornerstone of their relationship. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes, but nine times out often she insisted the answer was no. It made for some great arguments and some great sex, some dramatic failings out and some passionate reconciliations, but in the end the wildness was just too much for them-they were exhausted by work-and they backed away from each other. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And she, maybe, was begin. fling to think that if Him was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn’t.