NEAL STEPHENSON
153
He must be a psycho. He must be in love with her. This is all a twisted psycho love plot.
But it’s a little late now. She stays with him, looking for a way out of this burning and rotting neighborhood.
They are approaching a big, nasty-looking Mafia roadblock. He guns the gas pedal, headed straight for death. She can see the destination franchise ahead. At the last second, he whips the car around and squeals sideways to a halt.
He couldn’t have been more helpful. She unpoons as he’s giving her this last little kick of energy and sails through the checkpoint at a safe and sane speed. The guards keep their guns pointed at the sky, swivel their heads to look at her butt as she rolls past them.
___________ The Compton Nova Siciia franchise is a grisly scene. It is a jamboree of Young MafIa. These youths are even duller than the ones from the all-Mormon Deseret Burbclave The boys are wearing tedious black suits. The girls are encrusted with pointless femininity. Girls can’t even be in the Young Mafla they have to be in the Girls’ Auxiliary and serve macaroons on silver plates. “Girls” is too fine a word for these organisms, too high up the evolutionary scale. They aren’t even chicks.
She’s going way too fast, so she kicks the board around sideways, plants pads, leans into it, skids to a halt, roiling up a wave of dust and grit that dulls the glossy shoes of several Young Mafia who are milling out front, nibbling dinky Italo-treats and playing grown-up. It condenses on the white lace stockings of the Young Mafia protochicks. She falls off the board, appearing to catch her balance at the last moment. She stomps on the edge of the plank with one foot, and it bounces four feet into the air, spinning rapidly around its long axis, up into her armpit, where she clamps it tight under one arm. The spokes of the smartwheels all retract so that the wheels are barely larger than their hubs. She slaps the MagnaPoon into a handy socket on the bottom of the plank so that her gear is all in one handy package.
“YT.,” she says. “Young, fast, and female. Where the flick’s Enzo?”
The boys decide to get all “mature” on Y.T. Males of this age