The Big U

by Neal Stephenson

  “Really? You’re a free lance?”

  “I help them and they help me. It is a free exchange of services. You needn’t know the details.”

  I was willing to accept that restriction. Virgil had told me enough so that what he was doing made sense to me. Still, it was very abstract work, consisting mostly of reading long strings of numbers off the terminal and typing new ones in. On the night I sat in, the Worm had eaten all of the alumni records for people living in states beginning with “M.” (“M!,” said Virgil, “the worst letter it could have picked.”) Virgil was puttering around in various files to see if the information had been stored elsewhere. He found about half of Montana hidden between lines of an illegal video game program, retrieved the data, erased the illegal program and caused the salvaged information to be printed out on a string of payroll check forms in a machine in the administrative bloc.

  On this night, the first of the new school year, Virgil was not nobly saving erased data from the clutches of the Worm. He was actually arranging his living situation for the coming year. He had about five choice rooms around the Plex, which he filled with imaginary students in order to keep them vacant—an easy matter on the computer. To support his marijuana and ale habits he extracted a high salary from various sources, sending himself paychecks when necessary. For this he felt neither reluctance nor guilt, because Fred Fine was right: without Virgil, whose official job was to work in the Science Shop, scientific research at the Big U would simply stop. To support himself he took money from research accounts in proportion to the extent they depended on him. This was only fair. An indispensable place like the Science Shop needed a strong leader, someone bold enough to levy appropriate taxes against its users and spend the revenues toward the ends those users desired. Virgil had figured out how to do it, and made himself a niche at the Big U more comfortable than anyone else’s.

  Sarah lived in a double room just five floors above me and Ephraim Klein and John Wesley Fenrick, on E12S—E Tower, twelfth floor, south wing. The previous year she had luxuriated in a single, and resolved never to share her private space again; this double made her very angry. In the end, though, she lucked out. Her would-be roommate had only taken the space as a front, to fake out her pay-rents, and was actually living in A Tower with her boyfriend. Thus Sarah did not have to live four feet away from some bopper who would suffer an emotional crisis every week and explore the standard uses of sex and drugs and rock-and-roll in noisy experimental binges on the other side of the room.

  Sarah’s problem now was to redecorate what looked like the inside of a water closet. The cinderblock walls were painted chocolate brown and absorbed most light, shedding only the garish parts of the spectrum. The shattered tile floor was gray and felt sticky no matter how hard she scrubbed. On each side of the perfectly symmetrical room, long fluorescent light fixtures were bolted to the walls over the beds, making a harsh light nearby but elsewhere only a dull greenish glow. After some hasty and low-budget efforts at making it decent, Sarah threw herself into other activities and resigned herself to another year of ugliness.

  On Wednesday of the term’s second week there was a wing meeting. American Megaversity’s recruitment propaganda tried to make it look as though the wings did everything as a jolly group, but this had not been true on any of Sarah’s previous wings. This place was different.

  When she had dragged her duffel bags through the stairwell door on that first afternoon, a trio of well-groomed junior matrons had risen from a lace-covered card table in the lobby, helped her with the luggage, pinned a pink carnation on her sweaty T-shirt and welcomed her to “our wing.” Under her pillow she had found a “starter kit” comprising a small teddy bear named Bobo, a white candle, a GOLLYWHATA FACE-brand PERSONAL COLOUR SAMPLER PACQUET, a sack of lemon drops, a red garter, six stick-on nametags with SARA written on them, a questionnaire and a small calligraphied Xeroxed note inviting her to the wing meeting. All had been wrapped in flowery pastel wrapping paper and cutely beribboned.

  Most of it she had snarlingly punted into the nether parts of her closet. The wing meeting, however, was quasi-political, and hence she ought to show up. A quarter of an hour early, she pulled on a peasant blouse over presentable jeans and walked barefoot down the hall to the study lounge by the elevator lobby.

  She was almost the last to arrive. She was also the only one not in a bathrobe, which was so queer that she almost feared she was having one of those LSD flashbacks people always warn you about. Her donut tasted like a donut, though, and all seemed normal otherwise, so it was reality—albeit a strange and distant branch thereof.

  Obviously they had not all been bathing, because their hair was dry and their makeup fresh. There were terry robes, silk robes, Winnie-the-Pooh robes, long plush robes, plain velvety robes, designer robes, kimonos and even a few nightshirts on the cute and skinny. Also, many slippers, too many of them high-heeled. Once she was sure her brain was okay, she edged up to a nearby wingmate and mumbled, “Did I miss something? Everyone’s in bathrobes!”

  “Shit, don’t ask me!” hissed the woman firmly. “I just took a shower, myself.”

  Looking down. Sarah saw that the woman was indeed clean of face and wet of hair. She was shorter than average and compact but not overweight, with pleasant strong features and black-brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Her bathrobe was short, old and plain, with a clothesline for a sash.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Sarah. “So you did. Uh, I’m Sarah, and my bathrobe is blue.”

  “I know. President of the Student Government.”

  Sarah shrugged and tried not to look stuck-up.

  “What’s the story, you’ve never lived on one of these floors?” The other woman seemed surprised.

  “What do you mean, ‘one of these floors?’”

  She sighed. “Ah, look. I’m Hyacinth. I’ll explain all this later. You want to sit down? It’ll be a long meeting.” Hyacinth grasped Sarah’s belt loop and led her politely to the back row of chairs, where they sat a row behind the next people up. Hyacinth turned sideways in her chair and examined Sarah minutely.

  The Study Lounge was not a pretty place. Designed to be as cheery as a breath mint commercial, it had aged into something not quite so nice. Windows ran along one wall and looked out into the elevator lobby, where the four wings off E12S came together. It was furnished with the standard public-area furniture of the Plex: cubical chairs and cracker-box sofas made of rectangular beams and slabs of foam covered in brilliant scratchy polyester. The carpet was a membrane of compressed fibers, covered with the tats and cigarette burns and barfstains of years. Overhead, the ubiquitous banks of fluorescent lights cheerfully beamed thousands of watts of pure bluish energy down onto the inhabitants. Someone was always decorating the lounge, and this week the theme was football; the decorations were cardboard cutouts of well-known cartoon characters cavorting with footballs.

  The only other nonrobed person in the place was the RA, Mitzi, who sat bolt upright at the lace-covered card table in front, left hand still as a dead bird in her lap, right hand three inches to the side of her jaw and bent back parallel to the tabletop, fingers curled upward holding a ballpoint pen at a jaunty but not vulgar forty-five-degree angle. She bore a fixed, almost manic smile which as far as Sarah could tell had nothing to do with anything—charm school, perhaps, or strychnine poisoning. Mitzi wore an overly formal dress and a kilogram of jewelry, and when she spoke, though not even her jawbone moved, one mighty earring began to swing violently.

  Among other things, Mitzi welcomed new “members.” There were three: another woman, Hyacinth and Sarah, introduced in that order. The first woman explained that she was Sandi and she was into like education and stuff. Then came Hyacinth; she was into apathy. She announced this loudly and they all laughed and complimented Hyacinth on her sense of humor.

  Sarah was introduced last, being famous. “What are you into, Sarah Jane?” asked Mitzi. Sarah surveyed the glistening, fiercely smiling faces turned round to ai
m at her.

  “I’m into reality,” she said. This brought delighted laughter, especially from Hyacinth, who screamed like a sow.

  The meeting then got underway. Hyacinth leaned back, crossed her arms and tilted her head back until she was staring openmouthed at the ceiling. As the meeting went on she combed her hair, bit her nails, played with loose threads from her robe, cleaned her toes and so on. The thing was, Sarah found all of this more interesting than the meeting itself. Sarah looked interested until her face got tired. She had spoken in front of groups enough to know that Mitzi could see them all clearly, and that to be obviously bored would be rude. Sometimes politeness had to give way to sanity, though, and before she knew it she found herself trying to swing the tassels at the ends of her sleeves in opposite directions at the same time. Hyacinth watched this closely and patted her on the back when she succeeded.

  Mainly what they were doing was filling a huge social calendar with parties and similar events. Sarah wanted to announce that she liked to do things by herself or with a few friends, but she saw no diplomatic way of saying so. She did resurface for the discussion of the theme for the Last Night Party, the social climax of the semester: Fantasy Island Nite.

  “Wonder how they’re going to tell it apart from all the other nights,” grumbled Hyacinth. Nearby wingmates turned and smiled, failing to understand but assuming that whatever Hyacinth said must be funny.

  Another phase of the social master plan was to form an official sister/brother relationship with the wing upstairs, known as the Wild and Crazy Guys. This in turn led to the wing-naming idea. After all, if E13S had a name for itself, shouldn’t E12S have one too? Mari Meegan, darling of the wing, made this point, and “Yeah!” s zephyred up all around.

  Sarah was feeling pretty sour by this point but said nothing. If they wanted a name, fine. Then the ideas started coming out: Love Boat, for example.

  “We could paint our lobby with a picture of the Love Boat like it looks at the start of the show, and we could, you know, do everything, like parties and stuff, with like that kind of a theme. Then on Fantasy Island Nite, we could pretend the Boat was visiting Fantasy Island!”

  This idea went over well and the meeting broke up into small discussions about how to apply this theme to different phases of existence. Finally, though, Sarah spoke up, and they all smiled and listened. “I’m not sure I like that idea. There are plenty of creeps on the floor already, because we’re all-female. If we name it Love Boat, everyone will think it’s some kind of outcall massage service, and we’ll never get a break.”

  Several seconds of silence. A few nods were seen, some “yeah” s heard, and Love Boat was dead. More names were suggested, most of them obviously dumb, and then Mari Meegan raised her hand. All quieted as her fingernails fluttered like a burst of redhot flak above the crowd. “I know,” she said.

  There was silence save for the sound of Hyacinth’s comb rushing through her hair. Mari continued. “We can call ourselves ‘Castle in the Air.’”

  The lounge gusted with oohs and aahs.

  “I like that.”

  “You’re so creative, Mari.”

  “We could do a whole Dark Ages theme, you know, castles and knights and shining armor.”

  “That’s nice! Really nice!”

  “Wait a sec.” This came from Hyacinth.

  At this some of the women were clearly exasperated, looking at the ceiling, but most wore expressions of forced tolerance.

  Hyacinth continued flatly. “Castle in the Air is derogatory. That mean’s it’s not-nice. When you talk about a castle in the air, you mean something with no basis in reality. It’s like saying someone has her head in the clouds.”

  They all continued to stare morosely, as though she hadn’t finished. Sarah broke in. “You can call it anything you want. She is just making the point that you’re using an unflattering name.”

  Mari was comforted by two friends. The rest of them defended the name, nicely. “I never heard that.”

  “I think it sounds nice.”

  “Like a Barry Manilow song.”

  “Like one of those little Chinese poems.”

  “I always thought if your head was in the clouds, that was nice, like you were really happy or something. Besides, castles are a neat theme for parties and stuff—can’t you see Mark dressed up like a knight?” Giggles.

  “And this way we can call ourselves the Airheads!” Screams of delight. Hyacinth’s objection having been thus obliterated, Castle in the Air was voted in unanimously, with two abstentions, and it was decided that paints and brushes would be bought and the wing would be painted in this theme during the weeks to come. Presently the meeting adjourned.

  “We’ve got forty minutes until the Candle Passing,” observed Mitzi, “and until then we can have a social hour. But not a whole hour.”

  The meeting dissolved into chattering fragments. Sarah leaned toward Hyacinth to whisper in her ear, and Hyacinth tensed. They had been whispering to each other in turns for the last half hour, and as both had ticklish ears this had caused much hysterical lip-biting and snorting. Sarah did not really have to whisper now, but it was her turn. “What candle passing?” she asked.

  Hyacinth’s attempt to whisper back was met by violent resistance from Sarah, so they laughed and made a truce. “It’s kind of complicated. It means something personal happened between someone and her boyfriend, so everyone else has to know about it. Listen. We’ve got to escape, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go to Room 103 when the alarm sounds.”

  “Alarm?” But Hyacinth was already gliding out.

  Sarah was quickly trapped in a conversation group including Mitzi and Mari. She accepted a cup of Kool-Aid/vodka punch and smiled when she could. Everyone was being nice to her in case she felt like an idiot for having said those things during the meeting. Mari asked if her boyfriend helped out with the hard parts of being President and Sarah had to say that just now she didn’t have a boyfriend.

  “Ahaa!” said everyone. “Don’t worry, Sarah, we’ll see what we can come up with. No prob, now you’re an Airhead.”

  Sarah was groping for an answer when the local smoke alarm howled and the Airheads moaned in disappointment. As they all trooped off to their rooms to make themselves a little more presentable, Sarah headed for Room 103, following a heavy trail of marijuana smoke with her nose. As this was only the smoke alarm, only the twelfth floor would be evacuated.

  Hyacinth pulled Sarah into the room and carefully fitted a wet reefer to her lips. It was dark, and a young black woman was slumped over a desk asleep, stereo on loud. Hyacinth went to the vent window and released an amazing primal scream toward F Tower. After some prompting from her hostess, Sarah gave back the joint and followed suit. Hyacinth’s sleeping roommate, Lucy, sat up, sighed, then went over and lay down on her bed. Sarah and Hyacinth sat on Hyacinth’s bed and drank milk from an illegal mini-fridge in the closet.

  They silently finished the joint, shaking their heads at each other and laughing in disbelief.

  “Ever done LSD?” asked Sarah.

  “No. Why? Got some?”

  “Oh, jeez, I wasn’t suggesting it. I was going to say, for a minute there I thought I was back on it. That’s how unreal those people are to me.”

  “You think they’re strange?” said Hyacinth. “I think they’re very normal.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. Your room is pretty nice; I feel very much at home here.” It was a nice room, one of the few Plex rooms I ever saw that was pleasant to be in. It was full of illegal cooking appliances and stashes of food, and the walls had been illegally painted white. Wall hangings and plants were everywhere.

  “Well, we were in the Army—Lucy and me,” said Hyacinth, carefully fitting a roach clip. “That’s almost like LSD.”

  By now their wing had been evacuated, and a couple of security guards were plodding up and down the hallways pretending to inspect for sources of smoke. Sarah and Hyacinth lean
ed together and spoke quietly.

  “You’re not real presidential,” said Hyacinth. “People like you aren’t supposed to take LSD.”

  “I don’t take it anymore. See, back when I was about fourteen, my older sister was really into it, and I did it a few times.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  Sarah squinted into the milk carton and said nothing. Outside, the guards cursed to each other about students in general. Sarah finally said. “I kept an eye on my sister, and when she got cut loose completely—lost track of what was real and stopped caring—I saw it wasn’t a healthy thing.”

  “So now you’re President. I don’t get it.”

  “The important thing is to get your life anchored in something. I think you have to make contact with the world in some way, and one way is to get involved.”

  “Student government?”

  “Well, it beats MTV.”

  A guard beat on their door, attracted by the stereo-noise.

  “Screw off,” said Hyacinth in a loud stage whisper, flipping the bird toward the door. Sarah put her face in her hands and bent double with suppressed laughter. When she recovered, the guard had left and Hyacinth was smiling brightly.

  “Jeezus!” said Sarah, “you’re pretty blatant, aren’t you?”

  “If it’s the quiet, polite type you want, go see the Airheads.”

  “You’ve lived with people like this before. Why don’t they kick you off the wing?”

  “Tokenism. They have to have tokens. Lucy is their token black, I’m their token individual. They love having a loudmouth around to disagree with them—makes them feel diverse.”

  “You don’t think diplomacy would be more effective?”

  “I’m not a diplomat. I’m me. Who are you?”

  Instead of answering this difficult question, Sarah leaned back comfortably against the wall and closed her eyes. They listened to music for a long time as the Airheads breezed back onto the wing.

  “I’d feel relaxed,” said Sarah, “except I’m actually kind of guilty about missing the Candle Passing.”