"Neal Stephenson - Spew" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

dangling back and picking up detritus from the carpet as he swings his head back
and forth.
This whole setup is depressingly familiar: it is just like high school, when I
had a crush on some girl, and even though I was in the same room with her,
breathing the same air, sharing the same space, she didn't know I existed; she
had her own network of friends, all grooving on some frequency I couldn't pick
up, existing on another plane that I couldn't even see.
There's a note on the dresser, scrawled on hotel stationery with a dried-up
hotel ball-point. WELCOME CHAZ, it says, JACK IN AND JOIN US! followed by 10
lines of stuff like:
A073 49D2 CD01 7813 000F B09B 323A E040
which are obviously an encryption key, written in the hexadecimal system beloved
of hackers. It is the key to whatever plane you and your buds are on at the
moment.
But I am not Chaz.
I open the desk drawer to reveal the room's fax machine, a special Kensington
Place feature that Marie extolled to me most tediously. I put the note into it
and punch the Copy key, shove the copy into my pocket when it's finished and
leave the note where I found it. I leave the two six-packs on the dresser as a
ritual sacrifice, and slink out of the room, not looking back. An elevator is
coming up toward me, L M 2 3 4 5 6 and then DING and the doors open, and out
steps a slacker who can only be Chaz, thousands of snowflakes caught in his
hair, glinting in the light like he's just stepped out of the Land of Faerie.
He's got kind of a peculiar expression on his face as he steps out of the
elevator, and as we trade places, and I punch the button for the lobby, I
recognize it: Chaz is happy. Happier than me.



Neal Stephenson has written several novels, some of which have actually been
published: Zodiac: The Eco-Thriller and Snow Crash. The Diamond Age will be
released early next year by Bantam.