Stephenson:Neal:Snow Crash:Dr. Emanuel Lagos

Stephensonia

*So, usually, these habitual Gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.

This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment--which is very expensive--he's been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.

If so, what's he doing hanging around this place?

"Hiro Protagonist," the gargoyle says as Hiro finally tracks him down in the darkness beside a shanty. "CIC stringer for eleven months. Specializing in the Industry. Former hacker, security guard, pizza deliverer, concert promoter." He sort of mumbles it, not wanting Hiro tow waste his time reciting a bunch of known facts.

The laser that kept jabbing Hiro in the eye was shot out of this guy's computer, froma peripheral device that sits above his gogles inthe middle of his forehead. A long-range retinal scanner. If you turn toward him with your eyes open, the laser shoots out, penetrates yoru iris, tenderest of sphincters, and scans your retina. The results are shot back to CIC, which has a database of several tens of millions of scanned retinas. Within a few seconds, if you're in the database already, the owner finds out who you are. If you're not already in the database, well, you are now.....

"Name's Lagos," the gargoyle says.

So this is the guy. Hiro considers asking him what the hell he's doing here...

"You're the guy who's working with Juanita, right?" Hiro says.

"Or she's working with me. Or something like that."

"She said she wanted me to meet you."

For several seconds Lagos is frozen. He's ransacking more data. Hiro wants to throw a bucket of water on him.

"Makes sense," he says. "You're as familiar with the Metaverse as anyone. Freelance hacker--that's exactly right."

"Exactly right for what? No one wants freelance hackers anymore."

"The corporate assembly-line hackers are suckers for infection. They're going to go down by the thousands, just like Sennacherib's army before the walls of Jerusalem," Lagos says.

"Infection? Sennacherib?"

"And you can defend yourself in Reality, too--that'll be good if you ever go up against Raven. Remember, his knives are as sharp as a molecule. They'll go through a bulletproof jacket like lingerie."

"Raven?"

"You'll probably see him tonight. Don't mess with him."

"Why not?"

"It's a dangerous world," Lagos says. "Getting more dangerous all the time. So we don't want to upset the balance of terror. Just think about the Cold War."*

Description

Lagos is an odd duck. So dedicated as a Librarian to borgify himself so as to become a more efficient documenter of reality. He programmed The Librarian used by the CIC as a high level intelligent agent.

He did not heed his own advice about messing with Raven, and took one of Raven's glass knives at the rave.