Stephenson:Neal:Snow Crash:Hiro Protagonist

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The Snow Crash page for Hiro Protagonist
Hiro
is approaching the Street. It is the Broadway, the Champs
Elysees of the Metaverse. It is the brilliantly lit boulevard
that can be seen, miniaturized and backward, reflected
in the lenses of his goggles. It does not really exist. But
right now, millions of people are walking up and down it.

Stephensonia

Roland Gift meets the physical description of Hiro Protagonist. Character in Snow Crash. Hacker, greatest swordsman in both worlds.

Authored entries

TBA

Metaverse Stats

Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for CosaNostra Pizza, (30 minutes or less or the delivery person disappears mysteriously). He does freelance spying for the CIC (Central Intellegence Corporation) He was one of the pioneers of the mid TL8 incarnation of cyberspace known as the metaverse, but sold his options just before they took off to help out his mother during economic hard times. He is friends of many influential computer people, and has access to the prestigious Black Sun club, but because he won't accept charity, and couldn't stand the pressures of corporate life, he is himself just getting by. Unwilling to sell his father's antique swords despite needing the money; Turned on by cameras; Hasn't "found himself' yet - minor mid life crises; Pizza delivery person (calls himself the "Deliverator"); Never actually been in serious fight besides shooting a baseball bat out of the hands of some punks in Gila Highlands, a FOQNE.

Struggling Code of Honor hacker - (never exploits freely given information, never disrespect privacy),
Loner, Compulsive Behavior - (practicing sword technique)
Proud: Sense of Duty towards close friends and companions,
Quirks - (carries valuable but primitive weapons in public. This can get you mugged, as well as making others uncomfortable.)

Troubleshooting the Metaverse

Hiro mumbles a word under his breath and vanishes - he slips into his invisible avatar. It would be very interesting to hang around and see how these security daemons deal with it, but right now he has to get moving before they get a chance to adjust. They don't, at least not very well. Hiro runs between two of the security daemons and heads for the wall of the cube. He finally gets there, slamming into it, coming to dead stop. The security daemons have all turned around and are chasing him. They can figure out where he is - the computer tells them that much - but they can't do much to him. Like the bouncer daemons in The Black Sun, which Hiro helped write, they shove people around by applying basic rules of avatar physics. When Hiro is invisible, there is very little for them to shove. But if they are well written, they may have more subtle ways of messing him up, so he's not wasting any time. He pokes his katana through the side of the cube and follows it through the wall and out the other side. This is a hack. It is really based on a very old hack, a loophole that he found years ago when he was trying to graft the sword-fighting rules onto the existing Metaverse software. His blade doesn't have the power to cut a hole in the wall - this would mean permanently changing the shape of someone else's building - but it does have the power to penetrate things. Avatars do not have that power. That is the whole purpose of a wall in the Metaverse; it is a structure that does not allow avatars to penetrate it. But like anything else in the Metaverse, this rule is nothing but a protocol, a convention that different computers agree to follow. In theory, it cannot be ignored. But in practice, it depends upon the ability of different computers to swap information very precisely, at high speed, and at just the right times. And when you are connected to the system over a satellite uplink, as Hiro is, out here on The Raft, there is a delay as the signals bounce up to the satellite and back down. That delay can be taken advantage of, if you move quickly and don't look back. Hiro passes right through the wall on the tail end of his all-penetrating katana. Rifeland is a vast, brightly lit space occupied by elementary shapes done up in primary colors. It is like being inside an educational toy designed to teach solid geometry to three-year-olds: cubes, spheres, tetrahedrons polyhedrons, connected with a web of cylinders and lines and helices. But in this case, it has gone way, way out of control, as if every Tinkertoy set and Lego block ever made had been slapped together according to some long-forgotten scheme. Hiro's been around the Metaverse long enough to know that despite the bright cheery appearance of this thing, it is, in fact, as simple and utilitarian as an Army camp. This is a model of a system. A big complicated system. The shapes probably represent computers, or central nodes in Rife's worldwide network, or Pearly Gates franchises, or any other kind of local and regional offices that Rife has going around the world. By clambering over this structure and, going into those bright shapes, Hiro could probably uncover some of the code that makes Rife's network operate. He could, perhaps, try to hack it up, as Juanita suggested. But there is no point in messing with something he doesn't understand. He might waste hours fooling around with some piece of code only to find out that it was the software to control the automatic toilet flushers at Rife Bible College. So Hiro keeps moving, keeps looking up at the tangle of shapes, trying to find a pattern. He knows, now, that he has found his way into the boiler room of the entire Metaverse. But he has no idea what he's looking for. ...

In the Real World

Hiro at sea ...When Hiro last sees him, he is running down the center of the pulsating neon street toward the center of Chinatown, wailing a terrible, random song that clashes with the bleating of the car alarm. Hiro feels even at this moment that something has been torn open in the world and that he is dangling above the gap, staring into a place where he does not want to be. Lost in the biomass. Hiro draws his katana. "Squeaky!" Hiro hollers. "He's throwing spears! He's pretty good at it! Your driver is hit!" "Got it!" Squeaky hollers. Hiro goes back into the closest row. He hears a sound off to the right and uses the katana to cut his way through into that row. This is not a nice place to be at the moment, but it is safer than standing in the street under the plutonic light of the video screen. Down the row is a man. Hiro recognizes him by the strange shape of his head, which just gets wider until it reaches his shoulders. He is holding a freshly cut bamboo pole in one hand, torn from the trellis. Raven strokes one end of it with his other hand, and a chunk falls off. Something flickers in that hand, the blade of a knife apparently. He has just cut off the end of the pole at an acute angle to make it into a spear. He throws it fluidly. The motion is calm and beautiful. The spear disappears because it is coming straight at Hiro. Hiro does not have time to adopt the proper stance, but this is fine since he has already adopted it. Whenever he has a katana in his hands he adopts it automatically, otherwise he fears that he may lose his balance and carelessly lop off one of his extremities. Feet parallel and pointed straight ahead, right foot in front of the left foot, katana held down at groin level like an extension of the phallus. Hiro raises the tip and slaps at the spear with the side of the blade, diverting it just enough; it goes into a slow sideways spin, the point missing Hiro just barely and entangling itself in a vine on Hiro's right. The butt end swings around and gets hung up on the left, tearing out a number of vines as it comes to a stop. It is heavy, and traveling very fast. Raven is gone. Mental note: Whether or not Raven intended to take on a bunch of Crips and Enforcers singlehandedly tonight, he didn't even bother to pack a gun.

Discussion

The recurrence of the samurai swords suggests connection with the Shaftoe family of the Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon. Gabriel Goto gives two samurai swords to Jack Shaftoe when the Minerva delivers him back to Japan, and these swords turn up in the Shaftoe family again in Cryptonomicon. Hiro has a pair of ancient samurai swords and has many character traits of the Shaftoes.

External link

TBA