SNOW CRASH

414

Twenty-five hundred Kouriers are massed on the reinforced-concrete banks of the L.A. River. Down in the bottom trench of the river, Vitaly Chernobyl and the Meltdowns are just hitting the really good part of their next major hit single, “Control Rod Jam.” A number of the Kouriers are taking advantage of this sound track to style up and down the banks of the river, only Vitaly, live, can get their adrenaline pumping hard enough to enable them to skate a sharp bank at eighty miles per hour plus without doing a wilson into the crete.

And then the dark mass of Meltdown fans turns into a gyrating, orange-red galaxy as twenty-five hundred new stars appear. It’s a mind-blowing sight, and at first they think it’s a new visual effect put together by Vitaly and his imageers. It is like a mass flicking of Bics, except brighter and more organized; each Kourier looks down on his or her belt to see that a red light is flashing on their personal telephone. Looks like some poor skater called in a Code.

In a Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong franchise on the outskirts of Phoenix, Rat Thing number B-782 comes awake.

Fido is waking up because the dogs are barking tonight.

There is always barking. Much of the barking is very far away. Fido knows that faraway barks are not as important as close barks, and so he often sleeps through these.

But sometimes a faraway bark will carry a special sound that makes Fido excited, and he can’t help waking up.

He is hearing one of those barks right now. It comes from far away but it is urgent. Some nice doggie somewhere is very upset. He is so upset that his barking has spread to all the other doggies m the pack.

Fido listens to the bark. He gets excited, too. Some bad strangers have just been very close to a nice doggie’s yard. They were in a flying thing. They had lots of guns.

Fido doesn’t like guns very much. A stranger with a gun shot him once and made him hurt. Then the nice girl came and helped him.

These are extremely bad strangers. Any nice doggie in his right mind would want to hurt them and make them go away. As Fido

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