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

him, like an educational demonstration, that the two are mutually exclusive.
The van's tiny engine downshifts, which makes it feel more powerful. He
holds his foot steady on the gas and, making the run down Cottage Heights
Road, the minivan's speed approaches one hun. dred kilometers.
Approaching the terminus of Cottage Heights Road, where it tees into
Bellewoode Valley Road, he espies a fire hydrant. TMAWH fire hydrants are
numerous, for safety, and highly designed, for property values, not the
squat iron things imprinted with the name of some godforsaken Industriab
Revolution foundry and furry from a hundred variously flaked layers of
NEAL STEPHENSON
cheap city paint. They are brass, robot-polished every Thursday
morning, dignified pipes rising straight up from the perfect, chemically
induced turf of the Burbclave lawns, flaring out to present potential
firefighters with a menu of three possible hose connections. They were
designed on a computer screen by the same aesthetes who designed the
DynaVictonan houses and the tasteful mailboxes and the immense marble street
signs that sit at each intersection like headstones. Designed on a computer
screen, but with an eye toward the elegance of things past and forgotten
about. Fire hydrants that tasteful people are proud to have on their front
lawns. Fire hydrants that the real estate people don't feel the need to
airbrush out of pictures.
This fucking Kourier is about to die, knotted around one of those fire
hydrants. Studley the Testosterone Boy will see to it. It is a maneuver he
has witnessed on television-which tells no lies-a trick he has practiced
many times in his head. Building up maximum speed on Cottage Heights, he
will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel. The ass end of the
minivan will snap around. The pesky Kourier will be cracked like a whip at
the end of her unbreakable cable. Into the fire hydrant she will go. Studley
the Teenager will be victorious, free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode
Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars, free to go
return his overdue videotape, Raft Warriors N: The Final Battle.
Y.T. does not know any of this for a fact, but she suspects it. None of
this is real. It is her reconstruction of the psychological environment
inside of that bimbo box. She sees the hydrant coming a mile away, sees
Studley reaching down to rest one hand on the parking brake. It is all so
obvious. She feels sorry for Studley and his ilk. She reels out, gives
herself lots of slack. He whips the wheel, jerks the brake. The minivan goes
sideways, overshooting its mark, and doesn't quite snap her around the way
he wanted; she has to help it. As its ass is rotating around, she reels in
hard, converting that gift of angular momentum into forward velocity, and
ends up shooting right past the van going well over a mile a minute. She is
headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. She leans
away from it, leans into a vicious turn, her spokes grip the pavement and
push her away from that gravestone, she can touch the
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pavement with one hand she is heeled over so hard, the spokes push her
onto the desired street. Meanwhile, she has clicked off the electromagnetic
force that held her pooned to the van. The poon head comes loose, caroms off
the pavement behind her as it is automatically reeled in to reunite with the