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Stephenson:Neal:Snow Crash:YT

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YT is one of the most memorable of Stephenson's strong women. In Snow Crash she is working for a courier service, RadiKS, or Radikal Kourier Systems. She delivers messages and other small items using a plank skateboard. The skateboard is high-tech and YT gets around by using a magnetic (har-) "poon" to latch onto cars and ride behind them on her board. A dangerous kind of surfing. She is instrumental in defeating Rife's scheme. She is quite capable of handling herself in even the most dangerous situations.

What is most intriguing about her is the possibility of her character resurfacing in The Diamond Age. In that novel a Miss Matheson runs a school for girls in an area controlled by the Victorians. At one point in the novel she tells Nell "I used to be a thrasher, you know. I used to ride skateboards through the streets." Is is possible that YT grew up to become Miss Matheson. We are never given YT's real name -- even her mother is referred to at YT's mom throughout the story. (Her mother works for (what's left of) the Federal Government, aka 'Fedland', in a mind-numbing clerical job-from-hell. In a projection of American bureaucracy ad absurdum, Y.T.'s mom is periodically subject to cavity searches and bruising lie-detector tests, for a job that has the central computer monitor her, Taylorism-style, for the time it takes her (optimum: between 14-15 minutes) to read the latest acronym-stuffed e-memo on employee toilet-paper usage.)

NOTE: In an eerie fiction meets reality event, Buffalo, NY county government is so broke that its employees are forced to bring their own toilet paper to work:

Employees Bring Own Toilet Paper to Work Mar 17, 7:23 AM (ET)

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - The Buffalo area's county budget crisis is taking a toll on the bathrooms in at least one public building.

Erie County has had to slash 2,000 jobs and cut back on services in order to close a more than $100 million budget shortfall.

In the Rath Building in downtown Buffalo, workers report that the bathrooms aren't being cleaned or maintained. One longtime worker in the building tells Buffalo's WGRZ-TV that there's no soap, paper towels or toilet paper in the restrooms.

The Rath Building is home to many county offices, including those of County Executive Joel Giambra, the Department of Social Services and the Health Department.

It's so bad, some county employees are bringing in their own toilet paper and other supplies. The worker told WGRZ that's "like working in another country - a bad country." --end story--

Given that Neal Stephenson's novels all tie into each other is some fashion, i.e. the events of Cryptonomicon would naturally allow for the balkanization of the North American continent as portrayed in Snow Crash, It is possible that YT, lead character in Stephenson's most successful novel at that time, could have a cameo as an older woman who has a hand in the training of Nell who is another strong female character of Stephenson's.

YT stands for "Yours Truly" (her name is actually rendered as "Y.T." throughout the book).