The Big U

by Нил Стивенсон

  Casimir had been drawing up a budget for it on this particular evening, because budget time for the Student Government was coming up soon. Not long after the exterminator's visit, Casimir got stuck. Many of the supplies he needed were standard components that were easy for him to get, but certain items, such as custom-wound electromagnets, were hard to budget for. This was the sort of fabrication that had to be done at the Science Shop, and that meant dealing with Virgil Gabrielsen. After nailing down as much as he could, Casimir gathered his things and set out on the half-hour elevator ride to the bottom of the Burrows.

  In the interests of efficiency, security, ease of design and healthy interplay among the departments, the designers of the Campustructure had put all the science departments together in a single bloc. It was known as the Burrows because it was mostly below street level, and because of the allegedly Morlockian qualities of its inhabitants. At the top of the Burrows were the departmental libraries and conference rooms. Below were professors' offices and departmental headquarters, followed by classrooms, labs, stockrooms and at the very bottom, forty feet below ground level, the enormous CC— Computing Center— and the Science Shop. Any researcher wanting glass blown, metal shaped, equipment fixed, circuits designed or machines assembled, had to come down and beg for succor at the feet of the stony-hearted Science Shop staff. This meant trying to track down Lute, the hyperactive Norwegian technician, rumored to have the power of teleportation, who held smart people in disdain because of their helplessness in practical matters, or Zap, the electronics specialist, a motorcycle gang sergeant-at-arms who spent his working hours boring out engine blocks for his brothers and threatening professors with bizarre and deadly tortures. Zap was the cheapest technician the Science Shop steering committee had been able to find, Lute had been retained at high salary after dire threats from all faculty members and Virgil, to the immense relief of all, had been hired three years earlier as a part-time student helper and had turned the place around.

  Science Shop was at the end of a dark unmarked hallway that smelled of machine oil and neoprene, half blocked by junked and broken equipment. When Casimir arrived he relaxed instantly in the softly lit, wildly varied squalor of the place, and soon found Virgil sipping an ale and twiddling painstakingly with wires and pulleys on an automatic plotter.

  They went into his small office and Virgil provided himself and Casimir with more ale. "What's the latest on Sharon?" he asked. "The same. No word," Casimir said, pushing the toes of his tennis shoes around in the sawdust and metal filings on the floor. Not quite in a coma, definitely not all there. Whatever he lost from oxygen starvation isn't coming back."

  "And they haven't caught anyone."

  "Well, E14 is the Performing Arts Floor. They used to have a room with a piano in It. The E13S people didn't like it because the Performing Artists were always tap dancing."

  "We know how sensitive those poor boys are to noise." "A couple of days before the piano crash, the piano was stolen from E14. Two of the tap-dancers had their doors ignited the same night. A couple of days later, E13S had a burning-furniture-throwing contest, and it just happens that at the same time a piano crashed through Sharon's ceiling. Circumstantial evidence only."

  Virgil clasped his hands over his flat belly and looked at the ceiling. "Though a pattern of socio-heterodox behaviors has been exhibited by individuals associated with E13S, we find it preferable to keep them within the system and counsel them constructively rather than turn them over to damaging outside legal interference which would hinder resocialization. The Megaversity is a free community of individuals seeking to grow together toward a more harmonious and enlightened future, and introduction of external coercion merely stifles academic freedom and— "

  "How did you know that?" asked Casimir, amazed. "That's word for word what they said the other day."

  Virgil shrugged. "Official policy statement. They used it two years ago, in the barbell incident. E13 dropped a two-hundred-pound barbell through the roof of the Cafeteria's main kitchen area. It crashed into a pressure vat and caused a tuna-nacho casserole explosion that wounded fifteen. And the pressure is so high in those vats, you know, that Dr. Forksplit, the Dean of Dining Services, who was standing nearby, had a nacho tortilla chip shard driven all the way through his skull. He recovered, but they've called him Wombat ever since. The people who handle this in the Administration don't understand how deranged these students are. Now, Kruno and his people would like to pour molten lead down their throats, but they can't do anything about it— the decisions are made by a committee of tenured faculty."

  Casimir resisted an impulse to scream, got up and paced around talking through clenched teeth. "This shit really, really pisses me off. It's incredible, Law doesn't exist here, you can do what you please." "Well," said Virgil, still blasи, "I disagree. There's always law. Law is just the opinion of the guy with the biggest gun. Since outside law rarely matters in the Plex, we make our own law, using whatever power— whatever guns— we have. We've been very successful in the Science Shop."

  "Oh, yeah? I suppose this was something to do with what you said the other day about some unofficial work here for me." "That's a perfect example. The researchers of American Megaversity need your services. It's illegal, but the scientific faculty have more power than the rule-enforcers, so we make our own law regarding technical work. You keep track of what you do, and I pay you through the vitality fund.

  "The what?"

  "The fund made up of donations from various professors and firms who have a vested interest in keeping the Science Shop running smoothly. Hell, it's all just grant money. In the egalitarian system we had before, nobody got anything done."

  "Look." Casimir shook his head and sat back down. "I don't want even to hear all this. You know, all I've ever wanted to be is a normal student. They won't let me take decent classes, okay, so I work on the mass driver. Now I come here to get your help and you start talking about local law and free enterprise. I just want some estimates from you on getting these electromagnets wound for the mass driver. Okay? Forget free enterprise." Casimir dropped a page of diagrams and specifications on Virgil's desk.

  Virgil looked it over. "Well, it depends," he finally said. "If we pretend you're just a normal student, then I will charge you, oh, about ten thousand dollars for this stuff and have it done by the time you graduate. Now, unofficially, I could log it in as something much simpler and charge you less. But you can't put that into a formal budget proposal. Very unofficially, I might do it for a small bribe, like some help from you around the Shop. But that's really abnormal to put in a budget. Looks like you're stuck."

  "It wouldn't really take you three years."

  "It would take me." Virgil waved at the door. "Zap could do it in a week. Want to ask him? He's not hard to wake up." Casimir brooded momentarily. "Well, look. I don't really care how it gets done. But it's necessary to have something on paper, you know?"

  Virgil shook his head, smiling. "Casimir. You don't think anyone pays any attention to those budgets, do you?"

  "Aw, shit. This is too weird for me."

  "It's not weird, you're just not used to it yet. Here is what we'll do. We work out a friendly gentlemen's agreement by which I make the magnets for you, probably over Christmas vacation, in exchange for a little of your expert help around the Science Shop. When I'm done with the magnets I put them in an old box and mark it, say, 'SPARE PARTS, 1932 AUTOMATIC BOMBSIGHT PROTOTYPE.' I dump it in the storeroom. When budget time comes around you say, 'Oh, gee, it happens I've designed this thing to use existing parts, I know just where they are.' Ridiculous, but no one knows that, and those who understand won't want to meddle in any arrangement of mine."

  "Okay!" Casimir threw up his hands. "Okay. Fine. Ill do it. Just tell me what to do and don't let me see any of this illegal stuff." "It's not illegal, I said it was legal. Hang on a sec while I Xerox these pages."

  Virgil opened the door and was met by a clamor of voices from several advanced acade
mic figures. Casimir looked around the room: a firetrap stuffed with books and papers and every imaginable variety of electronic junk. A Geiger counter hung out the window into a deep air shaft, clicking every second or two. In one corner a 1940's radio was hooked up to a technical power supply and wired into the guts of a torn-open telephone so that Virgil could make hands-off phone calls. An old backless TV in another corner enabled Virgil to monitor the shop outside. Electronic parts, hunks of wire, junk-food wrappers and scraps of paper littered the floor. And in three separate places sat those little plastic trays Casimir saw everywhere, overflowing with tiny seeds— rat poison.

  "Damn!" spat Casimir as Virgil reentered. "There's enough of that poison in this room alone to kill every rat in this city. What's their problem with that stuff anyway?"

  Virgil snorted. Everyone knew the rat poison was ubiquitous; the wastebaskets might go a month without emptying, but when it came to rat poison the B-men were fearsomely diligent, seeming to pass through walls and locked doors like Shaolin priests to scatter the poison-saturated kernels. "It's cultural," he explained. "They hate rats. You should read some Scythian mythology. In Crotobaltislavonia it's a capital crime to harbor them. That's why they had a revolution! The old regime stopped handing out free rat poison."

  "I'm serious," said Casimir. "I've got an illegal kitten in my room, and If they keep breaking in to spread poison, they'll find it or let it out or poison it."

  "Or eat it. Seriously, you should have mentioned it, Casimir. Let me help you out."

  Casimir rested his face in his hand. "I suppose you also have an arrangement with the B-men."

  "No, no, much too complicated. I do almost all my work at the computer terminal, Casimir. You can accomplish anything there. See, a few years ago a student had a boa constrictor in his room that got poisoned by the B-men, and even though it was illegal he sued the university for damages and won. There are still a lot of residents with pets whom the administration doesn't want to antagonize, because of connections or whatever. Some students are even allergic to the poison. So, they keep a list of rooms which are not to be given any poison. All I have to do is put your room on it."

  Casimir was staring intently at Virgil. "Wait a minute. How did you get that kind of access? Aren't there locks? Access checks?" "There are some annoyances involved."

  "I suppose with photographic memory you could do a lot on the computer."

  "Helps to have the Operator memorized too."

  "Oh, fuck! No!"

  Casimir, I am sure, was just as surprised as I had been. The Operator was an immense computer program consisting entirely of numbers— machine code. Without it, the machine was a useless lump. With the Operator installed, it was a tool of nearly infinite power and flexibility. It was to the computer as memory, instinct and intelligence are to the human brain.

  Virgil handed Casimir a canister of paper computer tape. The label read, "1843 SURINAM CENSUS DATA VOLUME 5. FIREWOOD USAGE ESTIMATES AND PROJECTIONS."

  "Ignore that," said Virgil. "It's a program in machine code. It'll put your room on the no-poison list, and your cat will be safe, unless the B-men forget or decide to ignore the rule, which is a possibility." Casimir barely looked at the tape and stared distantly at Virgil. "What have you been doing with this knowledge?" he whispered. "You could get back at E13S."

  Virgil smiled. "Tempting. But when you can do what I can, you don't go for petty revenge. All I do, really, is fight the Worm, which is really my only passion these days. It's why I stay around instead of getting a decent job. It's a sabotage program. It's probably the greatest intellectual achievement of the nineteen-eighties, and it's the only thing I've ever found that is so indescribably difficult and complex and beautiful that I haven't gotten bored with it."

  "Why would anyone do such a thing? It must be costing the Megaversity millions."

  "I don't know," said Virgil, "but it's great to have a challenge."

  Sarah and I were in her room with my toolbox. Outside, the Terrorists were trying to get in. I sat on her bed, as she had commanded, silent and neutral.

  "When did they start calling themselves the Terrorists," she asked during a lull.

  "Who knows? Maybe Wild and Crazy Guys was too old-fashioned."

  "Maybe the hijacking of that NATO tank yesterday gave them the idea. That got lots of coverage. Shit, here they are again." Cheerfully screaming, another Airhead was dragged down the hail to be given her upside-down cold shower. The original Terrorist plan had been to drag the Airheads to the bathroom by their hair, as in olden times, but after a few tries they were convinced that this really was painful, so now they were holding on to the feet.

  "Terrorists, Terrorists, we're a mean, sonofabitch," came a hoarse chant as a new group gathered in front of Sarah's door. "Come on, Sarah," their leader shouted in a heavy New York accent. He was trying to sound fatherly and patient, but instead sounded anxious and not very bright. "It'll be a lot better for you if you just come out now. We're tickling Mitzi right now and she's going to tell us where the master key is, and once we get that we'll come in and you'll get ad-dition-al pun-ish-ment."

  "God," Sarah whispered to me, "these dorks think I'm just playing hard-to-get. Hope they enjoy it."

  "Give the word and I'll shoo them off," I said again.

  "Wouldn't help. I have to deal with this myself. Don't be so macho."

  "Sorry. Sometimes it works to be macho, you know."

  Their previous effort to flash her out of her room had failed. "Flashing" was the technique of squirting lighter fluid Under a door and throwing in a match. It wasn't as dangerous as it sounded, but it invariably smoked the victim out. Powdering was a milder form of this: an envelope was filled with powder, its mouth slid under the door, and the envelope stomped on, exploding a cloud of powder into the room. Three days earlier this had been done to Sarah by some Air-heads. A regular vacuum cleaner just blew the powder out again, so we brought my wet-dry vacuum up and filled it with water and had better results, though she and her room still smelled like babies. She had purchased a heavy rubber weatherstrip from the Mall's hardware store and we had just finished installing it when the flashing attempt had taken place. From listening to the Terrorists on the other side of the door, I had now become as primitive as they had— it was no longer a negotiable situation— and was itching to knock heads.

  "Why don't you stop bothering me?" she yelled, trying too hard to sound strong and steady. "I really don't want to play this game with you. You got what you wanted from the others, so why don't you leave? You have no right to bother me."

  At this, they roared. "Listen, bitch, this is our sister floor, we decide what our rights are! No one escapes from the rule of the Terrorists, Terrorists, we're a mean, sonofabitch! We'll get in sooner or later— face up to it!"

  Another one played the nice guy. "Listen, Sarah— hey, is that her name? Right. Uh, listen, Sarah. We can make life pretty hard on you. We're just trying to initiate you into our sister floor— it's a new tradition. Remember, if you don't lock your door, we can come in; and if you do lock it, we can penny you in."

  The Airheads had once pennied Sarah in. The doors opened inward and locked with deadbolts. If the deadbolt was locked and the door pushed inward with great force, the friction between the bolt and its rectangular hole in the jamb became so great that it was impossible for the occupant to withdraw the bolt to unlock the door. One could not push inward on the door all the time, of course, but it was possible to wedge pennies between the front of the door and the projecting member of the jamb so tightly that the occupant was sealed in helplessly. Since this maneuver only worked when the owner of the room was inside with the door locked, it was used discourage people from the unfriendly habit of locking their doors. Sarah was pennied in just before a Student Government meeting, and she had to call me so that I could run upstairs and throw myself against the door until the pennies fell out.

  "Look," said Sarah, also taking a reasonable tack, "When are you going to ac
cept that I'm not coming out? I don't want to play, I just want peace and quiet." She knew her voice was wavering now, and she threw me an exasperated look.

  "Sarah," said the righteously perturbed Terrorist, "you're being very childish about this. You know we don't want that much. It doesn't hurt. You just have one more chance to be reasonable, and then it's ad-dition-al pun-ish-ment."

  "Swirlie! Swirlie! Swirlie!" chanted the Terrorists. "Fuck yourselves!" she yelled. Realizing what was about to happen, she yanked my pliers out of my toolbox and clamped their serrated jaws down on the lock handle just as Mitzi's master key was slid into the keyhole outside.

  She held it firm. The Terrorists found the lock frozen. The key-turner called for help, but only one hand can grip a key at a time. The handle did rotate a few degrees in the tussle, and the Terrorists then found they could not pull the key from the lock. Sarah continued to hold it at a slight twist as the Terrorists mumbled outside.

  "Listen, Sarah, you got a good point. We'll just leave you alone from now on."

  "Yeah," said the others, "Sorry, Sarah."

  Looking at me, Sarah snorted with contempt and held on to the pliers. A minute or so after the Terrorists noisily walked away, an unsuccessful yank came on the key.

  "Shit! Fuck you!" The Terrorist kicked and pounded viciously on the door, raging.

  After a few minutes I got on my belly and pried up the rubber strip and verified that the Terrorists were no longer waiting outside. Sarah opened her door, pulled out the master key, and pocketed it. She smiled a lot, but she was also shaking, and wanted no comfort from me. I was about to say she could sleep on my Sofa for a few days. Sometimes, though, I can actually be sensitive about these things. Sarah was obviously tired of needing my help. I felt she needed my protection, but that was my problem. Suddenly feeling that dealing with me might have been as difficult for her as dealing with the Terrorists, I made the usual obligatory offers of further assistance, and went home. Fortunately for what Sarah would call my macho side, I was on an intramural football team. So were all of the Terrorists. We met three times. I am big, they were average; they suffered; I had a good time and did not feel so proud of myself afterward. The Terrorists did not even understand that I didn't like them. Like a lot of whites, they didn't care much for blacks unless they were athletic blacks, in which case we could do whatever we wanted. To knock Terrorist heads for two hours, then have them pat me on the butt in admiration, was frustrating. As for Sarah, she had no such outlets for her feelings.