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

perfect clarity. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars,
hoping that Da5id-The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief----wffl invite
them inside. They flicker and merge together into a hysterical wall.
Stunningly beautiful women, computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two
frames a second, like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional-these are
would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. Wild-looking abstracts,
tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are hoping that Da5id will notice
their talent, invite them inside, give them a job. A liberal sprinkling of
black-and-white people-persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap
public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy black and white. A
lot of these are run.of.the-mill psycho fans, devoted to the fantasy of
stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in
Reality, so they goggle into the Metaverse to stalk their prey. Thereare
would-be rock stars done up in laser light, as though they just stepped off
the concert stage, and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen, exquisitely
rendered by their fancy equipment, but utterly reserved and boring in their
suits.
There's one black-and-white who stands out because he's taller than the
rest. The Street protocol states that your avatar can't be any taller than
you are. This is to prevent people from walking around a mile high. Besides,
if this guy's using a pay terminal-which he must be, to judge from the image
quality-it can't jazz up his avatar. It just shows him the way he is, except
not as well. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a
person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine, repeatedly pounding the
copy button, while you stand by the
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output tray pulling the sheets out one at a time and looking at them.
He has long hair, parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a
tattoo ~n his forehead. Given the shifty resolution, there's no way to see
the tattoo clearly, but it appears to consist of words. He has a wispy Fu
Manchu mustache.
Him realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back, looking
him up and down, paying particular attention to the swords.
A grin spreads across the black-and-white guy's face. It is a satisfied
grin. A grin of recognition. The grin of a man who knows something Him
doesn't. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded
across his chest, like a man who is bored, who's been waiting for something,
and now his arms drop to his sides, swing loosely at the shoulders, like an
athlete limbering up. He steps as close as he can and leans forward; he's so
tall that the only thing behind him is empty black sky, torn with the
glowing vapor trails of passing animercials.
"Hey, Hiro," the black-and-white guy says, "you want to try some Snow
Crash?"


__________ Alot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying
weird things. You ignore them. But this gets Hiro's attention.
Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro's name. But people have ways of
getting that information. It's probably nothing.