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

The spotlight lingers for a minute. The broad square of the pizza box,
bearing the CosaNostra logo, is mute testimony. They hover, shoot a little
tape just in case.
Y.T. is bored. She gets on her plank. The wheels blossom and become
circular. She guides a tight wobbly course around the
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cars, coasts down into the street. The spotlight follows her for a
moment, maybe picking up some stock footage. Videotape is cheap. You never
know when something will be useful, so you might a~ well, videotape it.
People make their living that way-people in the intel business. People
like Hiro Protagonist. They just know stuff, or they just go around and
videotape stuff. They put it in the Library. When people want to know the
particular things that they know or watch their videotapes, they pay them
money and check it out of the Library, or just buy it outright. This is a
weird racket, but Y.T. likes the idea of it. Usually, the CIC won't pay any
attention to a Kourier. But apparently Hiro has a deal with them. Maybe she
can make a deal with Hiro. Because Y.T. knows a lot of interesting little
things.
One little thing she knows is that the Mafia owes her a favor.




As Hiro approaches the Street, he sees two young couples, probably
using their parents' computers for a double date in the Metaverse, climbing
down out of Port Zero, which is the local port of entry and monorail stop.
He is not seeing real people, of course. This is all a part of the
moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming
down the fiber-optic cable. The people are pieces of software called
avatars. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with
each other in the Metaverse. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street, too, and if
the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction, they can see
him, just as he's seeing them. They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in
the U-Stor-It in L.A. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb
of Chicago, each with their own laptop. But they probably won't talk to each
other, any more than they would in Reality. These are nice kids, and they
don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's
packing a couple of swords.
Your avatar can look any way you want it to, up to the limitations of
your equipment. If you're ugly, you can make your avatar
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beautiful. If you've just gotten out of bed, your avatar can still be
wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. You can look
like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Spend
five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these.
Hiro's avatar just looks like Hiro, with the difference that no matter
what Hiro is wearing in Reality, his avatar always wears a black leather
kimono. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars, because they know