"Нейл Стефенсон. Snow Crash (Снежная лавина, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

course of any mighty rivers that threaten to interrupt this street
plan-ergonomically designed to encourage driving safety. A Deliverator can
go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to
the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around.
But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few
times, you get to know its little secrets. The Deiverator is such a man. He
knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard-one yard-that prevents
you from driving straight in one entrance, across the Burbclave, and out the
other. If you are squeamish about driving on grass, it might take you ten
minutes to meander through TMAWH. But if you have the bails to lay tracks
across that one yard, you have a straight shot through the center.
The Deliverator knows that yard. He has delivered pizzas there. He has
looked at it, scoped it out, memorized the location of the shed and the
picnic table, can find them even in the dark-knows that if it ever came to
this, a twenty-three-minute pizza, miles to go, and a slowdown at CSV-5 and
Oahu-he could enter The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic
delivery-man's visa would raise the gate automatically), scream down
Heritage Boulevard, rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD
END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are
strung so liberally throughout TMAWH), thrash the speed bumps with his
mighty radials, blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle, cut a
hard left around the backyard shed, careen into the backyard of Number 84
Mayapple Place, avoid its picnic table (tricky), get into their driveway and
out onto Mayapple, which takes him to Bellewoode Valley Road, which runs
straight to the exit of the Burbclave. TMAWH security police might be
waiting for him at the exit, but
NEAL STEPHENSON
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their STDs, Severe Tire Damage devices, only point one way- they can
keep people out, but not keep them in.
This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut
as the Deiverator was entering Heritage Boulevard, he probably wouldn't be
able to swallow it until about the time the Deliverator was shrieking out
onto Oahu.
Thunk. And more red lights come up on the windshield: the perimeter
security of the Deliverator's vehicle has been breached.
No. It can't be.
Someone is shadowing him. Right off his left flank. A person on a
skateboard, rolling down the highway right behind him, just as he is laying
in his approach vectors to Heritage Boulevard.
The Deliverator, in his distracted state, has allowed himself to get
pooned. As in harpooned. It is a big round padded electromagnet on the end
of an arachnofiber cable. It has just thunked onto the back of the
Deliverator's car, and stuck. Ten feet behind him, the owner of this cursed
device is surfing, taking him for a ride, skateboarding along like a water
skier behind a boat.
In the rearview, flashes of orange and blue. The parasite is not just a
punk out having a good time. It is a businessman making money. The orange
and blue coverall, bulging all over with sintered armorgel padding, is the
uniform of a Kourier. A Kourier from RadiKS, Radikal Kourier Systems. Like a