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

enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from
the vapor of nuance."
Condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Hiro has never forgotten the
sound of her speaking those words, the feeling that came over him as he
realized for the first time how smart Juanita was.
She continued. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about
ten years later, as a grad student, trying to build a user interface that
would convey a lot of data very quickly, for one of these baby-killer
grants." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department.
"I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to
implant electrodes directly into the brain. Then I remembered my grandmother
and reali~ed, my Cod, the human mind can absorb and process an incredible
amount of information-if it comes in the right format. The right interface.
If you put the right face on it. Want some coffee?"
Then he had an alarming thought: What had he been like back in college?
How much of an asshole had he been? Had he left Juanita with a bad
impression?
Another young man would have worried about it in silence, but Hiro has
never been restrained by thinking about things too hard, and so he asked her
out for dinner and, after having a couple of drinks (she drank club sodas),
just popped the question:
Do you think I'm an asshole?
She laughed. He smiled, believing that he had come up with a good,
endearing, flirtatious bit of patter.
He did not realize until a couple of years later that this question
was, in effect, the cornerstone of their relationship. Did Juanita think
that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer
was yes, but nine times out often she insisted the answer was no. It made
for some great arguments and some great sex, some dramatic failings out and
some passionate reconciliations, but in the end the wildness was just too
much for them-they were exhausted by work-and they backed away from each
other. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of
him, and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. And
she, maybe, was begin. fling to think that if Him was so convinced in his
own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn't.
NEAL STEPHENSON
57
Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences, except that her
parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor, and his father made
more money than many college professors. But the class idea still held sway
in his mind, because class is more than income-it has to do with knowing
where you stand in a web of social relationships. Juanita and her folks knew
where they stood with a certitude that bordered on dementia. Him never knew.
His father was a sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people
had been mine slaves in Nippon, and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or
Asian or just plain Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant,
talented or lucky. He didn't even have a part of the country to call home
until he moved to California, which is about as specific as saying that you
live in the Northern Hemisphere. In the end, it was probably his general
disorientation that did them in.