Snow Crash

by Neal Stephenson

he reaches out with one hand, picks up his beer, takes a pull on the bottle, and lets it roll around in his mouth, a bundle of waves clashing inside a small space.

“Fuck!” T-Bone says. It is a disappointed fuck, but a fuck with a heavy undertone of overwhelming frustration and not a little fear.

This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?” Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world.

Then, because this seems as good a time as any, he draws his katana.