Cryptonomicon

"Well, I think that someone read it between the lines. So, anyway, Ma or Auntie Em or someone emerges from the side door, shaking flour out of her gingham apron--I'm imagining this."

"I can tell."

"And she says, 'Boys, your umpteenth cousin thrice removed America Shaftoe has sent us e-mail from Uncle Doug's boat in the South China Sea stating that she is having some kind of dispute with a young man and it's not out of the question that she might need someone around to lend her a hand. In California. Would you swing by and look in on her?' And they put away their basketball and say, 'Yes ma'am, what city and address?' and she says, 'Never you mind, just get on Interstate 40 and drive west not failing to maintain an average speed of between one hundred and a hundred and twenty percent of the legal speed limit and call me collect from a Texaco somewhere and I will supply you with specific target coordinates later,' and they say, 'Yes ma'am' and thirty seconds later they are laying a patch in the driveway as they pull five gees backing out of the garage and thirty hours subsequently they are in my front yard, shining their twenty-five-D-cell flashlights into my eyes and asking me a lot of pointed questions. Do you have any idea how far the drive is?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, according to M.A.'s Rand McNally Road Atlas, it is an even twenty-one hundred miles."

"So?"

"So that means that they maintained an average speed of seventy miles an hour for a day and a half"

"A day and a quarter," Amy says.

"Do you have any idea how difficult that is to do?"

"Randy, you push on the gas pedal and keep it between the lines. How hard is that?"

"I'm not saying it's an intellectual challenge. I'm saying that this willingness to, e.g., urinate into empty McDonald's cups rather than stop the car, suggests a kind of urgency. Passion, even. And being a guy, and having had the experience of being a guy of the age of M.A. and Robin, I can tell you that one of the few things that gets your blood boiling to that extent is this notion of some female you love being done wrong by a strange male."

"Well, what if they did?" Amy says. "Now they think you're okay."

"They do? Really?"

"Yeah. The financial disaster aspect makes you more human. More approachable. And it excuses a lot."

"Do I need an excuse for something?"

"Not in my book."

"But to the extent they thought I was a rapist, it kind of palliates my image problems."

A brief lull in the conversation ensues. Then Amy pipes up.

"So tell me about your family, Randy."

"In the next couple of days, you're going to learn a great deal more than I would like you to about my family. And so am I. So let's talk about something else."

"Okay. Let's talk about business."

"Okay. You go first."

"We got a German television producer coming out next week to have a look at the U-boat. They might do a documentary about it. We have already hosted several German print journalists."

"You have?"

"It has caused a sensation in Germany."

"Why?"

"Because no one can figure out how it got there. Now, your turn."

"We are going to launch our own currency." By saying this, Randy is divulging proprietary information to someone not authorized to hear it. But he does it anyway, because opening himself up to Amy in this way, making himself vulnerable to her, gives him a hard-on.

"How do you go about that? Don't you have to be a government?"

"No. You have to be a bank. Why do you think they're called bank notes?" Randy is fully aware of the insanity of divulging secret business information to a woman solely for purposes of sexual self-titillation but it is in the nature of things, right now, that he doesn't especially care.

"Okay but still, usually it's done by governmentbanks, right?"

"Only because people tend to respectthe government banks. But government banks in Southeast Asia have a huge image problem right now. That image problem translates directly into crashing exchange rates."

"So, how do you do it?"

"Get a big pile of gold. Issue certificates saying 'this certificate can be redeemed for such-and-such an amount of gold.' That's all there is to it."

"What's wrong with dollars and yen and stuff?"

"The certificates--the banknotes--are printed on paper. We're going to issue electronic banknotes."

"No paper at all?"

"No paper at all."

"So you can only spend it on the Net."

"Correct."

"What if you want to buy a sack of bananas?"

"Find a banana merchant on the Net."

"Seems like paper money'd be just as good."

"Paper money is traceable and perishable and has other drawbacks. Electronic banknotes are fast and anonymous."

"What's an electronic banknote look like, Randy?"

"Like any other digital thing: a bunch of bits."

"Doesn't that make it kind of easy to counterfeit?"

"Not if you have good crypto," Randy says. "Which we do."

"How did you get it?"

"By hanging out with maniacs."

"What kind of maniacs?"

"Maniacs who think that having good crypto is of near-apocalyptic importance."

"How'd they get around to thinking any such thing?"