Termination Shock

by Neal Stephenson

The battery of viral tests that Willem had gone through at Schiphol had come back with generally favorable results that had been duly piped into PanScan, which had deemed it acceptable for him to sit under an umbrella at a canal-side pub, provided it wasn’t too crowded, and have a beer with his husband.

“I imagine a large, new, stylish, high-tech building in Beijing, brilliant hackers showing up every morning to engineer these sites, manipulate the social media feeds, track the metrics—” “You’re making it out to be much more difficult than it is,” Bo protested. “We don’t need brilliant hackers in flashy buildings. Macedonian teenagers in their parents’ basements are more than sufficient. We use brilliant hackers for other things.”

“A more holistic approach is better. Climate is just part of it. When we see hotels exploding and helicopters being thrown off hospitals by excited mobs of doctors and men with penis gourds, in an area that bestrides our copper lifeline, it forces us to ask tough questions about whether our Indonesian friends really have the situation in hand.”

“I’m not one of those old Chinese men who is always trotting out quotations from Sun Tzu’s Art of War,” Bo said. “Tried to read it once. That guy is, what do you call it in the West? Captain Obvious.”