"Big U, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

The American Megaversity Campustructure was three blocks on
a side, and squatted between the Megalopolitan Turnpike on the
north and the Ronald Reagan Parkway on the south. Megaversity
Stadium, the only campus building not inside the Plex proper, was to
the west, and on the east was an elaborate multilevel interchange
interconnecting the Pike, the Parkway, the Plex and University
Avenue. The Pike ran well below the base of the Plex, and so as I
emerged from the north wall of the building I found myself atop a
high embankment. Below me the semis and the Audis shot past
through the layered blue monoxide, and their noises blended into a
waterfall against the unyielding Plex wall. Aside from a few
wretched weeds growing from cracks in the embankment, no life
was to be seen, except for Casimir Radon.
He had just emerged from another emergency exit. We saw each
other from a hundred feet apart, waved and walked toward each
other. As we converged, I regarded a tall and very thin man with an
angular face and a dense five-o'clock shadow. He wore round
rimless glasses. His black hair was in disarray as usual; during the
year it was to vary almost randomly between close-cropped and
shoulder-length. I soon observed that Casimir could grow a shadow
before lunch, and a beard in three days. He and I were the same age,
though I was a recent Ph.D. and he a junior.
Later I was to think it remarkable that Casimir and I should
emerge from those fire doors at nearly the same moment, and meet.
On reflection I have changed my mind. The Big U was an unnatural
environment, a work of the human mind, not of God or plate
tectonics. If two strangers met in the rarely used stairways, it was not
unreasonable that they should turn out to be similar, and become
friends. I thought of it as an immense vending machine, cautiously
crafted so that any denomination too ancient or foreign or irregular
would rattle about randomly for a while, find its way into the
stairway system, and inevitably be deposited in the reject tray on the
barren back side. Meanwhile, brightly colored graduates with
attractively packaged degrees were dispensed out front every June,
swept up by traffic on the Parkway and carried away for leisurely
consumption. Had I understood this earlier I might have come to my
senses and immediately resigned, but on that hot September day,
with the exhaust abrading our lungs and the noise squashing our
conversation, it seemed worthwhile to circle around to the Main En-
trance and give it another try.
We headed east to avoid the stadium. On our right the wall
stretche and away for acres in a perfect cinderblock grid. Alter
passing dozens of fire doors we came to the corner and turned into
the access lot that stretched along the east wall. Above, at many
altitudes, cars and trucks screeched and blasted through the tight
curves of the interchange. People called it the Death Vortex, and
some claimed that parts of it extended into the fourth dimension. As
soon as it had been planned, the fine old brownstone neighborhood
that was its site plummeted into slumhood; Haitians and Vietnamese
filled the place up, and the feds airproofed the buildings and installed