NEAL STBPHENSON

everyone sat on the floor. The van was jammed when they opened the rear doors. Twenty people were packed into it, all energetic, beaming youths. It looked impossible; YT. shrank away from it, backing right into Marla and Bonnie. But a cheerful roar came up from the van people, white teeth flashing in the dimness, and people began to scrunch out a tiny space for them.

She spent most of the next two days packed into the van between Bonnie and Maria, holding hands with them constantly, so she couldn’t even pick her nose without permission. They sang happy songs until her brain turned to tapioca. They played wacky games.

A couple of times every hour, someone in the van would start to babble, just like the Falabalas. Just like the Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates people. The babbling would spread throughout the van like a contagious disease, and soon everyone would be doing

it.

Everyone except forY.T. She couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. It just seemed embarrassingly stupid to her. So she just faked it.

Three times a day, they had a chance to eat and eliminate. It always happened in Burbclaves. Y.T. could feel them pulling off the interstate, finding their way down twisty development lanes, courts, ways, and circles. A garage door would rise electrically, the van would pull in, the door would shut behind them. They would go into a suburban house, except stripped of furniture and other family touches, and sit on the floor in empty bedrooms-one for boys, one for girls-and eat cake and cookies. This always happened in a totally empty room in a house, but there was always different decor: in one place, flowery countryish wallpaper and a lingering smell of rancid Glade. In another, bluish wallpaper featuring hockey players, football players, basketball players. In another, just plain white walls with old crayon marks on them. Sitting in these empty rooms, Y.T. would study the old furniture scrapes on the floors, the dents in the sheetrock, and muse over them like an archaeologist, wondering about the longdeparted families who had once lived here. But toward the end of the ride, she wasn’t paying attention anymore.

In the van, she could hear nothing but singing and chanting, See nothing but the jammed-together faces of her companions. When they stopped for gas, they did it in giant truck stops out in