SNOW CRASH

complex, and your background in that area isso deficient, I don’t know where to begin.”

“Hey, I went to church every week in high school. I sang in the choir.”

“I know. That’s exactly the problem. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people’s minds.”

“So none of that stuff I learned in church has anything to do with what you’re talking about?”

Juanita thinks for a while, eyeing him. Then she pulls a hypercard out of her pocket. “Here. Take this.”

As Hiro pulls it from her hand, the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic, cream-colored, finely textured piece of stationery. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of words

9

The world freezes and grows dim for a second. The Black Sun loses its smooth animation and begins to move in fuzzy stop-action. Clearly, his computer has just taken a major hit; all of its circuits are busy processing a huge bolus of data-the contents of the hypercard-and don’t have time to redraw the image of The Black Sun in its full, breathtaking fidelity.

“Holy shiti” he says, when The Black Sun pops back into full animation again. “What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!”

“And a librarian to boot,” Juanita says, “to help you sort

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