Cryptonomicon

Randy: "So, are you about to tell me that he became a Eutropian?"

Cantrell: "Well, no. It's more like he discovered a schism in the Eutropian movement we didn't know was there, and created his own splinter group.

Randy: "I think of the Eutropians as being totally hard-core individuals, pure libertarians."

"Well, yeah!" Cantrell says. "But the basic premise of Eutropianism is that technology has made us post-human. That Homo sapiens plus technology is effectively a whole new species: immortal, omnipresent because of the Net, and headed towards omnipotence. Now, the first people to talk that way were libertarians."

Tom says, "But the idea has attracted all kinds of people--including Andy Loeb. He showed up one day and started yammering about hive minds."

"And of course he was flamed to a crisp by most of the Eutropians, because that concept was anathema to them," Cantrell says.

Tom: "But he kept at it, and after a while, some people started agreeing with him. Turned out there was really a pretty substantial faction within the Eutropians who didn'tespecially care for libertarianism and who found the idea of a hive mind attractive."

"So, now Andy's the leader of that faction?" Randy asks.

"I would suppose so," Cantrell says. "They split away and formed their own newsgroup. We haven't heard much from them in the last six months or so."

"So how did you become aware of a connection between Andy and me?"

"He stills pops into the Secret Admirers newsgroup from time to time," Tom says. "And there's been a lot of discussion there about the Crypt lately."

Cantrell says, "When he found out that you and Avi were involved, he posted this vast rant--twenty or thirty K of run-on sentences. Not very complimentary."

"Well, Jesus. What's his beef? He won the case. Completely bankrupted me. You'd think he'd have something better to do than beat this dead horse," Randy says, thumping himself on the chest. "Doesn't he have a day job?"

"He's some kind of a lawyer now," Cantrell says.

"Ha! Figures."

"He's been denouncing us," Tom says. "Capitalist roader. Atomizing society. Making the world safe for drug traffickers and Third-World kleptocrats."

"Well, at least he got something right," Randy says. He's delighted to have an answer, finally, to the question of why they're building the Crypt.

Chapter 27 RETROGRADE MANEUVER

Sio is a mud cemetery. Those who have already given their lives for the emperor compete for mire space with those who intend to. Bizarre forktailed American planes dive out of the sun every day to murder them with terrible glowing rains of cannon fire and the mind-crushing detonations of bombs, so they sleep in open-topped graves and only come out at night. But their pits are full of reeking water that chums with hostile life, and when the sun goes down, rain beats them, carrying into their bones the deadly chill of high altitudes. Every man in the 20th Division knows that he will not leave New Guinea alive, so it remains only to choose the method of death: surrender to be tortured, then massacred by the Australians? Put grenades to their heads? Remain where they are to be killed by the airplanes all day, and all night by malaria, dysentery, scrub typhus, starvation, and hypothermia? Or walk two hundred miles over mountains and flooding rivers to Madang, which is tantamount to suicide even when it is peacetime and you have food and medicine...?

But that is what they are ordered to do. General Adachi flies to Sio--it is the first friendly plane they have seen in weeks--and lands on the rutted septic field that they call an airstrip, and orders the evacuation. They are to move inland in four detachments. Regiment by regiment, they bury their dead, pack up what is left of their equipment, hoard what little food is left, wait for dark, and trudge towards the mountains. The later echelons can find their path by smell, following the reek of dysentery and of the corpses dropped behind the pathfinder groups like breadcrumbs.

The top commanders stay to the end, and the radio platoon stays with them; without a powerful radio transmitter, and the cryptographic paraphernalia that goes with it, a general is not a general, a division is not a division. Finally they go off the air, and begin breaking the transmitter down into the smallest pieces they can, which unfortunately are not all that small; a divisional radio transmitter is a powerful beast, made for lighting up the ionosphere. It has an electrical generator, transformers, and other components that cannot be made light. The men of the radio platoon, who would find it difficult to move even the weight of their own skeletons over the mountains and across the surging rivers, will carry the additional burdens of engine blocks, fuel tanks, and transformers.