The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson Read Free Book Online Page B

internal-combustion hobbyists starting up their primitive full-lane vehicles, the louder the better. Commuters lining up at the tube stations, waiting to cross the Causeway into Greater Shanghai, seen only as a storm front of neon-stained, coal-scented smog that encompassed the horizon.
      This neighborhood was derisively called Earshot. But Hackworth didn't mind the noise so much. It would have been a sign of better breeding, or higher pretentions, to be terribly sensitive about it, to complain of it all the time, and to yearn for a townhouse or even a small estate farther inland.
      Finally the bells of St. Mark's chimed six o'clock. Mrs. Hull burst into the kitchen on the first stroke and expressed shame that Hackworth had beaten her to the kitchen and shock that he had defiled it. The matter compiler in the corner of the kitchen came on automatically and began to create a pedomotive for Hackworth to take to work.
      Before the last bell had died away, the rhythmic whack-whack-whack of a big vacuum pump could be heard. The engineers of the Royal Vacuum Utility were already at work expanding the eutactic environment. The pumps sounded big, probably Intrepids, and Hackworth reckoned that they must be preparing to raise a new structure, possibly a wing of the University.
      He sat down at the kitchen table. Mrs. Hull was already marmalading his crumpet. As she laid out plates and silver, Hackworth picked up a large sheet of blank paper. "The usual," he said, and then the paper was no longer blank; now it was the front page of the Time s.
      Hackworth got all the news that was appropriate to his station in life, plus a few optional services: the latest from his favorite cartoonists and columnists around the world; clippings on various peculiar crackpot subjects forwarded to him by his father, ever anxious that he had not, even after all this time, sufficiently edified his son; and stories relating to the Uitlanders- a subphyle of New Atlantis, consisting of persons of British ancestry who had fled South Africa several decades previously. Hackworth's mother was an Uitlander, so he subscribed to the service.
      A gentleman of higher rank and more far-reaching responsibilities would probably get different information written in a different way, and the top stratum of New Chusan actually got the Times on paper, printed out by a big antique press that did a run of a hundred or so, every morning at about three A.M. That the highest levels of the society received news written with ink on paper said much about the steps New Atlantis had taken to distinguish itself from other phyles.
      Now nanotechnology had made nearly anything possible, and so the cultural role in deciding what should be done with it had become far more important than imagining what could be done with it. One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning; so the higher one rose in the society, the more similar one's Times became to one's peers'.
      Hackworth almost managed to dress without waking Gwendolyn, but she began to stir while he was stringing his watch chain around various tiny buttons and pockets in his waistcoat. In addition to the watch, various other charms dangled from it, such as a snuffbox that helped perk him up now and then, and a golden pen that made a little chime whenever he received mail.
      "Have a good day at work, dear," she mumbled. Then, blinking once or twice, frowning, and focusing on the chintz canopy over the bed: "You finish it today, do you?"
      "Yes," Hackworth said. "I'll be home late. Quite late."
      "I understand."
      "No," he blurted. Then he pulled himself up short. This was it, he realized.
      "Darling?"
      "It's not that-the project should finish itself. But after work, I believe I'll get a surprise for Fiona. Something special."
      "Being home for dinner would be more special than anything you could get