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

will make in his entire lifetime. Despite their efforts to stand out, they
all smear together, especially at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.
Still, it is easy
8
SNOW CRASH
to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard, which is wide
and tall even by current inflated standards. In fact, the squat franchise
itself looks like nothing more than a low-slung base for the great aramid
fiber pillars that thrust the billboard up into the trademark firmament.
Marca Registrada, baby.
The billboard is a classic, a chestnut, not a figment of some fleeting
Mafia promotional campaign. It is a statement, a monument built to endure.
Simple and dignified. It shows Uncle Enzo in one of his spiffy Italian
suits. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews. The pocket square is
luminous. His hair is perfect, slicked back with something that never comes
off, each strand cut off st.raight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's
cousin, Art the Barber, who runs the second-largest chain of low-end
haircutting establishments in the world. Uncle Enzo is standing there, not
exactly smiling, an avuncular glint in his eye for sure, not posing like a
model but standing there like your uncle would, and it says

The Mafia
you've got a friend in The Family!
paid for by the Our Thing Foundation


The bifiboard serves as the Deliverator's polestar. He knows that when
he gets to the place on CSV-5 where the bottom corner of the billboard is
obscured by the pseudo-Gothic stained-glass arches of the local Reverend
Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise, it's time for him to get over into the right
lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along, random, indecisive,
looking at each passing franchise's driveway like they don't know if it's a
promise or a threat.
He cuts off a bimbo box-a family minivan-veers past the Buy 'n' Fly
that is next door, and pulls into CosaNostra Pizza #3569. Those big fat
contact patches complain, squeal a little bit, but they hold on to the
patented Fairlanes, Inc. high-traction pavement and guide him into the
chute. No other Deliverators are waiting in the chute. That is good, that
means high turnover for him, fast action, keep moving that 'za. As he
scrunches to a stop, the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is
already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots, the door clicking
NEAL STEPHENSON
9
and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. The slots are
waiting. Waiting for hot pizza.
And waiting. The Deiverator honks his horn. This is not a nominal
outcome.
Window slides open. That should never happen. You can look at the
three-ring binder from CosaNostra Pizza University, cross-reference the
citation for window, chute, dispatcher's, and it will give you all the