SNOW CRASH

eyes. He is standing on a skateboard. Or falling off of a skateboard. Or coasting, slowly, arms splayed wildly out to the sidcs, chased by nervous security personnel.

A piece of paper is wrapped around the pictures. It says:

“Y.T.-Thanks for your help. As you can see from these pictures, I tried to train for this assignment, but it’s going to take some practice. Your friend, Uncle Enzo.”

Y.T. wraps the pictures up just the way they were, puts them back in her pocket, stifles a smile, returns to business matters.

The girl in the robe is still performing her transaction behind the counter. The transactee isa stocky Spanish-speaking wom~an in an orange dress.

The girl types some stuff into the computer. The custonrier snaps her Visa card down on the fake wood altar top; it sounds like a rifle shot. The girl pries the card up using her inch-lonig fingernails, a dicey and complicated operation that makes Y.’.T. think of insects climbing out of their egg sacs. Then she performs the sacrament, swiping the card through its electromagnetic silot with a carefully modulated sweep of the ann, as though teariing back a veil, handing over the slip, mumbling that she needls a signature and daytime phone number. She might as well have been speaking Latin, but that’s okay, since this customer is farniliar with the liturgy and signs and numbers it before the words are fully spoken.

Then it just remains for the Word from On High. But computers and communications are awfully good these days, and it uisually doesn’t take longer than a couple of seconds to perform a charge-card verification. The little machine beeps out its approval code, heavenly tunes sing out from tinny speakers, anal a wide pair of pearlescent doors in the back of the room swing majestically open.

“Thank you for your donation,” the girl says, slurring ‘the words together into a single syllable.

The customer stomps toward the double doors, drawn irs by iypnotic organ strains. The interior of the chapel is weirdly cot)red, illuminated partly by fluorescent fixtures wedged into the eiling and partly by large colored light boxes that simuilate tamed-glass windows. The largest of these, shaped like a fat:ened Gothic arch, is bolted to the back wall, above the altar, and