Cryptonomicon

by Neal Stephenson

So Waterhouse goes to the dance, ransacking his mind for opening lines that he can use with Mary. He comes up with several possibilities: “Do you realize that Nipponese industry is only capable of producing forty bulldozers per year?” To be followed up with: “No wonder they use slave labor to build their revetments!” Or, “Because of antenna configuration limitations inherent in their design, Nipponese naval radar systems have a blind spot to the rear—you always want to come in from dead astern.” Or, “The Nip Army’s minor, low-level codes are actually harder to break than the important high-level ones! Isn’t that ironic?” Or, “So, you’re from the outback . . . do you can a lot of your own food? It might interest you to know that a close relative of the bacterium that makes canned soup go bad is responsible for gas gangrene.” Or, “Nip battleships have started to blow up spontaneously, because the high-explosive shells in their magazines become chemically unstable over time.” Or, “Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations.” And much more in this vein. So far he has not hit on anything that is absolutely guaranteed to sweep her off her feet. He doesn’t, in fact, have the first idea what the fuck he’s going to do. Which is how it’s always been with Waterhouse and women, which is why he has never really had a girlfriend before.