"Neal Stephenson - Simoleon Caper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

At this point, big brother Joe feels the need to slam himself down on a park
bench, which must feel roughly like sitting on a block of dry ice. But he
doesn't care. He's beyond physical pain. I sort of expected to feel triumphant
at this point, but I don't.
So I let him off the hook. "I just came from your accounting firm," I say. "I
told them I had discovered an error in my calculations - that my set-top box had
a faulty chip. I supplied them with 27 new numbers, which I worked out by hand,
with pencil and paper, in a conference room in their offices, far from the
prying eye of the cable company. I personally sealed them in an envelope and
placed them in their vault."
"So the sweepstakes will come off as planned," he exhales. "Thank God!"
"Yeah - and while you're at it, thank me and the panarchists," I shoot back. "I
also called Mom and Dad, and told them that they should sell their stock - just
in case the government finds some new way to sabotage your contest."
"That's probably wise," he says sourly, "but they're going to get hammered on
taxes. They'll lose 40% of their net worth to the government, just like that."
"No, they won't," I say. "They aren't paying any taxes."
"Say what?" He lifts his chin off his mittens for the first time in a while,
reinvigorated by the chance to tell me how wrong I am. "Their cash basis is only
$10,000 - you think the IRS won't notice $20 million in capital gains?"
"We didn't invite the IRS," I tell him. "It's none of the IRS's damn business."
"They have ways to make it their business."
"Not any more. Mom and Dad aren't selling their stock for dollars, Joe."
"Simoleons? It's the same deal with Simoleons - everything gets reported to the
government."
"Forget Simoleons. Think CryptoCredits."
"CryptoCredits? What the hell is a CryptoCredit?" He stands up and starts pacing
back and forth. Now he's convinced I've traded the family cow for a handful of
magic beans.
"It's what Simoleons ought to be: E-money that is totally private from the eyes
of government."
"How do you know? Isn't any code crackable?"
"Any kind of E-money consists of numbers moving around on wires," I say. "If you
know how to keep your numbers secret, your currency is safe. If you don't, it's
not. Keeping numbers secret is a problem of cryptography - a branch of
mathematics. Well, Joe, the crypto-anarchists showed me their math. And it's
good math. It's better than the math the government uses. Better than Simoleons'
math too. No one can mess with CryptoCredits."
He heaves a big sigh. "O.K., O.K. - you want me to say it? I'll say it. You were
right. I was wrong. You studied the right thing in college after all."
"I'm not worthless scum?"
"Not worthless scum. So. What do these crypto-anarchists want, anyway?"
For some reason I can't lie to my parents, but Joe's easy. "Nothing," I say.
"They just wanted to do us a favor, as a way of gaining some goodwill with us."
"And furthering the righteous cause of World Panarchy?"
"Something like that."
Which brings us to Super Bowl Sunday. We are sitting in a skybox high up in the
Superdome, complete with wet bar, kitchen, waiters and big TV screens to watch
the instant replays of what we've just seen with our own naked, pitiful,
nondigital eyes.