{"id":16949,"date":"2016-11-25T21:20:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T05:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/?p=16949"},"modified":"2017-10-06T20:04:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-07T03:04:20","slug":"ack-ack-ngs-wheelchair-part-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/?p=16949","title":{"rendered":"Ack-Ack (Ng’s Wheelchair, Part 01)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from the novel Snow Crash<\/a> \"icon-external-link-12x12\" \"icon-search-12x12\" by Neal Stephenson<\/a> \"icon-external-link-12x12\" \"icon-search-12x12\"<\/p>\n

\"neal-stephenson-000001-formatted\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     Recognizing his van is easy enough. It is enormous. It is eight feet high and wider than it is high, which would have made it a wide load in the old days when they had laws. The construction is boxy and angular; it has been welded together out of the type of flat, dimpled steel plate usually used to make manhole lids and stair treads. The tires are huge, like tractor tires with a more subtle tread, and there are six of them: two axles in back and one in front. The engine is so big that, like an evil spaceship in a movie, Y.T. feels its rumbling in her ribs before she can see it; it is kicking out diesel exhaust through a pair of squat vertical red smokestacks that project from the roof, toward the rear. The windshield is a perfectly flat rectangle of glass about three by eight feet, smoked so black that Y.T. can\u2019t make out an outline of anything inside. The snout of the van is festooned with every type of high-powered light known to science, like this guy hit a New South Africa franchise on a Saturday night and stole every light off every roll bar, and a grille has been constructed across the front, welded together out of rails torn out of an abandoned railroad somewhere. The grille alone probably weighs more than a small car.
\n     The passenger door swings open. Y.T. walks over and climbs into the front seat. \u201cHi,\u201d she is saying. \u201cYou need to take a whiz or anything?\u201d
\n     Ng isn\u2019t there.
\n     Or maybe he is.
\n     Where the driver\u2019s seat ought to be, there is a sort of neoprene pouch about the size of a garbage can suspended from the ceiling by a web of straps, shock cords, tubes, wires, fiber-optic cables, and hydraulic lines. It is swathed in so much stuff that it is hard to make out its actual outlines.
\n     At the top of this pouch, Y.T. can see a patch of skin with some black hair around it—the top of a balding man\u2019s head. Everything else, from the temples downward, is encased in an enormous goggle\/mask\/headphone\/feeding-tube unit, held onto his head by smart straps that are constantly tightening and loosening themselves to keep the device comfortable and properly positioned.
\n     Below this, on either side, where you\u2019d sort of expect to see arms, huge bundles of wires, fiber optics, and tubes run up out of the floor and are seemingly plugged into Ng\u2019s shoulder sockets. There is a similar arrangement where his legs are supposed to be attached, and more stuff going into his groin and hooked up to various locations on his torso. The entire thing is swathed in a one-piece coverall, a pouch, larger than his torso ought to be, that is constantly bulging and throbbing as though alive.
\n     \u201dThank you, all my needs are taken care of,\u201d Ng says.
\n     The door slams shut behind her. Ng makes a yapping sound, and the van pulls out onto the frontage road, headed back toward 405.
\n     \u201dPlease excuse my appearance,\u201d he says, after a couple of awkward minutes. \u201cMy helicopter caught fire during the evacuation of Saigon in 1974—a stray tracer from ground forces.\u201d
\n     \u201dWhoa. What a drag.\u201d
\n     \u201dI was able to reach an American aircraft carrier off the coast, but you know, the fuel was spraying around quite a bit during the fire.\u201d
\n     \u201dYeah, I can imagine, uh huh.\u201d
\n     \u201dI tried prostheses for a while—some of them are very good. But nothing is as good as a motorized wheelchair. And then I got to thinking, why do motorized wheelchairs always have to be tiny pathetic things that strain to go up a little teeny ramp? So I bought this—it is an airport firetruck from Germany—and converted it into my new motorized wheelchair.\u201d
\n     \u201dIt\u2019s very nice.\u201d
\n     \u201dAmerica is wonderful because you can get anything on a drive-through basis. Oil change, liquor, banking, car wash, funerals, anything you want—drive through! So this vehicle is much better than a tiny pathetic wheelchair. It is an extension of my body.\u201d
\n     \u201dWhen the geisha rubs your back [in the metaverse]?\u201d
\n     Ng mumbles something and his pouch begins to throb and undulate around his body. \u201cShe is a daemon, of course. As for the massage, my body is suspended in an electrocontractive gel that massages me when I need it. I also have a Swedish girl and an African woman, but those daemons are not as well rendered.\u201d
\n     \u201dAnd the mint julep?\u201d
\n     \u201dThrough a feeding tube. Nonalcoholic, ha ha.\u201d
\n     \u201dSo,\u201d Y.T. says at some point, when they are way past LAX, and she figures it\u2019s too late to chicken out, \u201cwhat\u2019s the plan? Do we have a plan?\u201d
\n     \u201dWe go to Long Beach. To the Terminal Island Sacrifice Zone. And we buy some drugs,\u201d Ng says. \u201cOr you do, actually, since I am indisposed.\u201d
\n     \u201dThat\u2019s my job? To buy some drugs?\u201d
\n     \u201dBuy them, and throw them up in the air.\u201d
\n     \u201dIn a Sacrifice Zone?\u201d
\n     \u201dYes. And we\u2019ll take care of the rest.\u201d
\n     \u201dWho\u2019s we, dude?\u201d
\n     \u201dThere are several more, uh, entities that will help us.\u201d
\n     \u201dWhat, is the back of the van full of more—people like you?\u201d
\n     \u201dSort of,\u201d Ng says. \u201cYou are close to the truth.\u201d
\n     \u201dWould these be, like, nonhuman systems?\u201d
\n     \u201dThat is a sufficiently all-inclusive term, I think.\u201d
\n     Y.T. figures that for a be yes<\/em>.
\n     \u201dYou tired? Want me to drive or anything?\u201d
\n     Ng laughs sharply, like a distant ack-ack, and the van almost swerves off the road. Y.T. doesn\u2019t get the sense that he is laughing at the joke; he is laughing at what a jerk Y.T. is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson      Recognizing his van is easy enough. It is enormous. It is eight feet high and wider than it is high, which would have made it a wide load in the old … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[252],"tags":[203,596,411],"class_list":["post-16949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-books","tag-neal-stephenson","tag-ngs-wheelchair","tag-snow-crash"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3DQCb-4pn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16950,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16949\/revisions\/16950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unwisdom.org\/chadspace\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}