Snow Crash

While working in a cafeteria, YT meets Raven onboard the Raft. He explains to her that he is Aleut, an ethnic group that has traditionally made its living close to the sea and has been mistreated “worse than any other people in history” (245). Raven offers to help YT get off the Raft. Hesitantly, she agrees. As a cafeteria worker tries to intervene, Raven snatches YT and hauls her onto his shoulders. He carries her out of the cafeteria and rappels down the side of the Raft. As they escape, he explains that his real name is Dmitri Ravinoff, and he has spent the past eight years in recovery for his alcohol addiction. These days, he lists his job as a harpooner. To YT, their conversation feels almost as though she is “on a date with him” (248).

Hiro rides in the lifeboat with Fisheye, the glass-eyed Mafia representative. Also on the lifeboat are a sniper named Vic and Eliot Chung, the captain of the now-sunken Kowloon. Fisheye carries a “large, fat black suitcase” (249). The boat appears to be nuclear-powered.

The men spend days on the lifeboat, drifting aimlessly. During this time, Fisheye says that the Mafia was trying to rescue YT as the Mafia is dependent on personal relationships. Such relationships save members from becoming trapped in a “self-perpetuating ideology” (251). While onboard the lifeboat, Hiro begins a computer programming project. He is not quite sure of the project’s purpose, but he is concerned that the Metaverse is vulnerable. He wants to protect the people that use it, especially if it is a place where people can die or be hurt thanks to viruses like Snow Crash. He writes a program to counter Snow Crash, names it SnowScan, and returns to an old script that will allow him to traverse the Metaverse on a motorcycle.

A “pirate vessel” passes the lifeboat. At Fisheye’s instruction, Hiro and Eliot lure the pirates by stripping naked. The pirate captain calls himself Bruce Lee and wears a vest made of human scalps. Using Eliot to translate, Fisheye and Bruce Lee haggle. The pirate believes that Fisheye is some kind of “pimp,” and that Hiro is a sex worker. When the pirates begin to speak in a babbling, incoherent way, the men on the lifeboat realize that they have been infected with the same virus that has infected the people on the Raft.

Fisheye detonates his suitcase weapon. The weapon is named Reason, and it is a hypervelocity rail gun that kills all the pirates with “teeny little metal splinters” (259). The men steal the pirate ship, and given their lack of fuel, they head for the Raft. Fisheye wants to rescue YT, and Hiro agrees, provided they also attempt to rescue Juanita.

Raven and YT go to a distant part of the Raft where someone has set up a restaurant filled with “lowlife revelry.” They order food; Raven talks to YT, telling her about how badly his people were treated by the Russians, the Japanese, and the Americans. His father was affected by nuclear tests, having been in a prison camp in Nagasaki and near a nuclear test site in 1972. He was saved by the Russian Orthodox believers, and he is now briefly allied with them, appreciating their “simple lifestyle.” Raven’s explanation about why he felt the need to return to a simple lifestyle is interrupted by a waiter, who passes along a message summoning Raven to do “a job.” He leaves YT in the restaurant.

The men on the pirate ship approach the Raft. They know that it is filled with starving, desperate refugees. According to Eliot, they should shoot “the people’s antennas coming out of their heads” (265) as they are able to communicate with each other. At first, the boarding goes well, but then Raven appears and kills Fisheye with a harpoon. Vic and Eliot also die as Hiro fights using his sword and his gun. A cabin boy seems to have been infected by Snow Crash. As the pirate ship becomes tangled into the Raft’s structure, Hiro agrees to be led aboard the Raft by the infected cabin boy.

After the incident, Raven returns to the restaurant. He invites YT to view the Core, which is where the “people who run this whole place” (270) are located. After agreeing, she asks Raven why he is on board, seeing as he is so different from everyone else. Raven admits that he is trying to navigate events without becoming too deeply involved. He compares his efforts to riding waves on his kayak, using their momentum to propel him. YT, a courier who hitches rides from cars while on her skateboard, completely understands his perspective.

Raven explains that he expects that their date will end with a sexual encounter, and YT agrees. As they begin having sex, however, she forgets to deactivate her anti-rape dentata cybernetics. She orgasms, and seeing that Raven is asleep, she assumes that he has also done so, but then she remembers that he has been drugged by the dentata. Leaving Raven, she explores the Raft. She finds a landing zone for a helicopter and a terminal that she can use to access the Metaverse. She realizes that Rife is working with the United States government and Reverend Wayne.

Hiro agrees to follow the cabin boy, whose name is “Transubstanciacion […] Tranny for short” (275). As they prepare to go onboard the Raft, Hiro examines one of the radio antennas on the dead people’s skulls. Rife is broadcasting “a steady stream of Raft babble” (276) into people’s brains. Hiro and his guide explore the Raft in a small zodiac boat, noticing how the construction is assembled from many smaller boats tied together. Tranny lives aboard the Raft, and he takes Hiro to his family’s home.

YT reaches the Raft’s reception area. She asks for a terminal with which she can access the Metaverse, explaining that she is “with Raven.”

Hiro enters the Metaverse. He finds the Librarian and talks about “ultima ratio regum” (280), translated as the last argument of kings. The phrase was stamped on each of King Louis XIV’s cannons. Hiro then goes to Ng Security, hoping that they have a patch for Reason. He is taken to a back room to talk to Mr. Ng, Mr. Lee, and Uncle Enzo. Hiro explains that he has nearly figured out what is happening. Enzo pays him 25 million Hong Kong dollars via bank transfer, telling him to split the money with YT.

Hiro details his findings. He believes that the neurolinguistic virus attacks the brain stem and cuts off higher functions. Whereas society was previously organized around verbal programs—called “me”—that were issued by priests according to star charts, Hiro believes that Enki was the first human who was fully conscious and able to fight back against these programs, as he “had the unusual ability to write new me” (285). By creating the nam-shub of Enki, a countervirus, he released humanity from the shackles of me so that civilization could advance. Part of this advancement was a new understanding of the dual nature of good and evil.

However, the cult of Asherah kept the old virus alive in the form of a religion and an actual virus. New languages and religions such as Hebrew and Judaism respectively were able to manage the data of neurolinguistics. An example of this management is the Torah. Succeeding religious revelations and schisms were eventually co-opted, however, and powerful people took over. Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity were outlawed by traditional Christian churches because they represent a modern-day version of the cult of Asherah, especially when these religions’ followers speak in tongues. Reverend Wayne’s Pearly Gates is an example of how “the cult of Asherah lives” (288). 

Rife stole his idea from Lagos and expanded upon it so that his “glossolalia cult is the most successful religion since the creation of Islam” (289). He donated vast sums of money to Pentecostal churches and spread the physical Asherah virus around the world by disguising it as a vaccine.

One form of this virus is Snow Crash, which controls an infected person and transmits the “me” instructions to anyone with an antenna fitted into their skull. Rife has also developed a digital version of Snow Crash that functions inside the Metaverse. This version allows Rife to control hackers and computer programmers, who are particularly vulnerable as they are creative people. Now, Rife has “an informational warfare agent for him to use at his discretion” (290) to take over the world.

The only way to stop the spread of the virus is to do what Enki did. They must find the nam-shub of Enki, left behind by him in a coded form, and spread it to the infected refugees before Rife turns them into an army. Hiro asks Enzo and the others for help. As Mr. Ng repairs Reason, Enzo promises to help by sending helicopters.

Hiro finds YT in the streets of the Metaverse. YT tells him about her new relationship with Raven and mentions that she is scared for her life. Hiro is still looking for Juanita, as he believes he has a newfound understanding of their relationship. YT points out that Juanita never wanted Hiro to understand her; she wanted Hiro to “understand [himself].”

Realizing that his hiding place is under attack, Hiro logs out and exits, leaving behind some money for the people who protected him. He sees Rife’s security team firing uncaringly into the refugees. Hiro says that YT should take his avatar in the Metaverse to his office. Meanwhile, he escapes the gunfire from the security team and asks the Librarian to send him “blueprints of the aircraft carrier Enterprise” (297). He escapes from the Raft and tells YT that he now thinks that the people who are threatening YT’s life will “listen to Reason” (297).

Hiro reads the instruction manual for Reason via his computer. He goes through the aircraft carrier, systemically destroying it from the inside using his understanding of the ship’s schematics. Once in a safe spot, he uses Reason against the hull of the ship, climbs through the large hole, and “draws his katana” (300).

YT is grabbed from the Metaverse terminal by Raft passengers with antennae fitted to their heads. When a helicopter lands nearby, a medical team disembarks and rushes to “reanimate” Raven. YT is placed in a cage and lowered onto a helipad, where Rife is waiting to meet her. He puts her inside his helicopter, hoping to keep her as a “hostage” (304) as a way to protect himself from Uncle Enzo. Also aboard the helicopter is an old clay tablet. YT is surprised when Greg Ritchie, the President of the United States, also boards the helicopter. People must look at him a moment before they recognize him.

Rife orders the helicopter pilot to take them to Los Angeles. Hiro fights his way onto the deck and sees the helicopter about to depart. He sees Rife and demands the tablet. Rife reveals that he has YT as a hostage, and Hiro knows that he cannot do anything. The helicopter takes off; as it does so, YT kicks the clay tablet out so that Hiro can grab it.