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

personal fortune. It won't pay the rent, but that's okay-when you live in a
shithole, there's always the Metaverse, and in the Metaverse, Hiro
Protagonist is a warrior prince.
His tongue is stinging; he realizes that, back in Reality, he has
forgotten to swallow his beer.
It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech,
black-and-white avatar. She was the one who figured out a way to make
avatars show something close to real emotion. That is a fact Hiro has never
forgotten, because she did most of her work when they were together, and
whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse,
he sees an echo of himself or Juanita-the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse.
Makes it hard to forget.
Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced, The Black Sun really took
off. And once they got done counting their money, marketing the spinoffs,
soaking up the adulation of others in the hacker community, they all came to
the realization that what made this place a success was not the
collision-avoidance algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other
stuff. It was Juanita's faces.
Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. They come here to
talk turkey with suits from around the world, and they consider it just as
good as a face-to-face. They more or less ignore what is being said-a lot
gets lost in translation, after all. They pay attention to the facial
expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. And that's
how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from
the vapor of nuance.
Juanita refused to analyze this process, insisted that it was something
ineffable, something you couldn't explain with words. A radical,
rosary-toting Catholic, she has no problem with that kind of thing. But the
bitheads didn't like it. Said it was irrational mysticism. So she quit and
took a job with some Nipponese company. They don't have any problem with
irrational mysticism as long as it makes money.
But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed
at Da5id and the other hackers who never appreci
SNOW CRASH
ated her work. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus.
That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is distorting the way people
talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.
Da5id notices Hiro, indicates with a flick of his eyes that this is not
a good time. Normally, such subtle gestures are lost in the system's noise,
but Da5id has a very good personal computer, and Juanita helped design his
avatar-so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling.
Hiro turns away, saunters around the big circular bar in a slow orbit.
Most of the sixty-four bar stools are filled with lower-level Industry
people, getting together in twos and threes, doing what they do best: gossip
and intrigue.
"So I get together with the director for a story conference. He's got
this beach house-"
"Incredible?"
"Don't get me started."
"I heard. Debi was there for a party when Frank and Mitzi owned it."