Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

"Yes," Hackworth said, "but you don't have to pay for it. Not with money, anyway."

. . .

The local climate lent itself to hot drinks. Maggie did not even take off her jacket before going into her kitchen and putting a kettle on to boil. The place was a log cabin, airier than it looked from the outside, and Maggie apparently shared it with several other people who were not there at the moment. Fiona, walking to and from the bathroom, was fascinated to see evidence of men and women living and sleeping and bathing together.

As they sat around having their tea, Hackworth persuaded Maggie to poke her finger into a thimble-size device. When he took this object from his pocket, Fiona was struck by a powerful sense of déjà vu. She had seen it before, and it was significant. She knew that her father had designed it; it bore all the earmarks of his style. Then they all sat around making small talk for a few minutes; Fiona had many questions about the workings of the R.D.R., which Maggie, a true believer, was pleased to answer. Hackworth had spread a sheet of blank paper out on the table, and as the minutes went by, words and pictures began to appear on it and to scroll up the page after it had filled itself up. The thimble, he explained, had placed some reconnaissance mites into Maggie's bloodstream, which had been gathering information, flying out through her pores when their tape drives were full, and offloading the data into the paper.

"It seems that you and I have a mutual acquaintance, Maggie," he said after a few minutes. "We are carrying many of the same tuples in our bloodstreams. They can only be spread through certain forms of contact."

"You mean, like, exchange of bodily fluids?" Maggie said blankly.

Fiona thought briefly of old-fashioned transfusions and probably would not have worked out the real meaning of this phrase had her father not flushed and glanced at her momentarily.

"I believe we understand each other, yes," Hackworth said.

Maggie thought about it for a moment and seemed to get irked, or as irked as someone with her generous and contented nature was ever likely to get. She addressed Hackworth but watched Fiona as she tried to construct her next sentence. "Despite what you Atlantans might think of us, I don't sleep ... I mean, I don't have s ... I don't have that many partners."

"I am sorry to have given you the mistaken impression that I had formed any untoward preconceptions about your moral standards," Hackworth said. "Please be assured that I do not regard myself as being in any position to judge others in this regard. However, if you could be so forthcoming as to tell me who, or with whom, in the last year or so . . ."

"Just one," Maggie said. "It's been a slow year." Then she set her tea mug down on the table (Fiona had been startled by the unavailability of saucers) and leaned back in her chair, looking at Hackworth alertly. "Funny that I'm telling you this stuff– you, a stranger."

"Please allow me to recommend that you trust your instincts and treat me not as a stranger."

"I had a fling. Months and months ago. That's been it."

"Where?"

"London." A trace of a smile came onto Maggie's face. "You'd think living here, I'd go someplace warm and sunny. But I went to London. I guess there's a little Victorian in all of us.

"It was a guy," Maggie went on. "I had gone to London with a couple of girlfriends of mine. One of them was another R.D.R. citizen and the other, Trish, left the R.D.R. about three years ago and co-founded a local CryptNet node. They've got a little point of presence down in Seattle, near the market."

"Please pardon me for interrupting," Fiona said, "but would you be so kind as to explain the nature of CryptNet? One of my old school friends seems to have joined it."

"A synthetic phyle. Elusive in the extreme," Hackworth said.

"Each node is independent and self-governing," Maggie said.

"You could found a node tomorrow if you wanted. Nodes are defined by contracts. You sign a contract in which you agree to provide certain services when called upon to do so."

"What sorts of services?"

"Typically, data is delivered into your system. You process the data and pass it on to other nodes. It seemed like a natural to Trish because she was a coder, like me and my housemates and most other people around here."

"Nodes have computers then?"

"The people themselves have computers, typically embedded systems," Maggie said, unconsciously rubbing the mastoid bone behind her ear.

"Is the node synonymous with the person, then?"

"In many cases," Maggie said, "but sometimes it's several persons with embedded systems that are contained within the same trust boundary."

"May I ask what level your friend Trish's node has attained?" Hackworth said.

Maggie looked uncertain. "Eight or nine, maybe. Anyway, we went to London. While we were there, we decided to take in some shows. I wanted to see the big productions. Those were nice-we saw a nice Doctor Faustus at the Olivier."

"Marlowe's?"