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

sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up
holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on
his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deiverator.
Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment
and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always
been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid
of the gun, so the Dcliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no
demonstrations.
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its
batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo
box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through
gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer
down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have
tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your
tongue. The Deiverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the
size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road,
starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a
roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like
doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And
because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this
country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to
it-talking trade balances here-once we've brain-drained all our technology
into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making
NEAL STEPHENSON
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cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them
here-once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant
Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New
Zealand for a nickel-once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical
inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a
Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity-y'know what? There's
only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

The Deiverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if
life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s,
the Deliverator's report card would say: "Hiro is so bright and creative but
needs to work harder on his cooperation skills."
So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved-but
no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall,
your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take
his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job
for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never
delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.
Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to