Y.T. pumps herself up out of the canyon so fast that when she flies out into traffic, she's going about as fast as it is. As soon as she gets a solid poon on a nocturnal lettuce tanker, she gets on the phone to Mom.
"Mom, listen. No, Mom, never mind the roaring noise. Yes, I am riding my skateboard in traffic. But listen to me for a second, Mom -- "
She has to hang up on the old bitch. It's impossible to talk to her. Then she tries to make a voice linkup with Hiro. That takes a couple of minutes to go through.
"Hello! Hello! Hello!" she's shouting. Then she hears the honk of a car horn. Coming out of the telephone.
"Hello?"
"It's Y.T."
"How are you doing?" This guy always seems a little too laid back in his personal dealings. She doesn't really want to talk about how she's doing. She hears another honking horn in the background, behind Hiro's voice.
"Where the hell are you, Hiro?"
"Walking down a street in L.A."
"How can you be goggled in if you're walking down a street?" Then the terrible reality sinks in: "Oh, my God, you didn't turn into a gargoyle, did you?"
"Well," Hiro says. He is hesitant, embarrassed, like it hadn't occurred to him yet that this was what he was doing. "It's not exactly like being a gargoyle. Remember when you gave me shit about spending all my money on computer stuff?"
"Yeah."
"I decided I wasn't spending enough. So I got a beltpack machine. Smallest ever made, I'm walking down the street with this thing strapped to my belly. It's really cool."
"You're a gargoyle."
"Yeah, but it's not like having all this clunky shit strapped all over your body ... '
"You're a gargoyle. Listen, I talked to one of these wholesalers."
"Yeah?"
"She says she used to be a hacker. She saw something strange on her computer. Then she got sick for a while and joined this cult and ended up on the Raft."
"The Raft. Do tell," he says.
"On the Enterprise. They take their blood, Hiro. Suck it out of their bodies. They infect people by injecting them with the blood of sick hackers. And when their veins get all tracked out like a junkie's, they cut them loose and put them to work on the mainland running the wholesale operation."
"That's good," he says. "That's good stuff."
"She says she saw some static on her computer screen and it made her sick. You know anything about that?"
"Yeah. It's true."
"It's true?"
"Yeah. But you don't have to worry about it. It only affects hackers."
For a minute she can't even speak, she's so pissed. "My mother is a programmer for the Feds. You asshole. Why didn't you warn me?"
Half an hour later, she's there. Doesn't bother to change back into her WASP disguise this time, just bursts into the house in basic, bad black. Drops her plank on the floor on the way in. Grabs one of Mom's curios off the shelf -- it's a heavy crystal award -- clear plastic, actually -- that she got a couple years ago for sucking up to her Fed boss and passing all her polygraph tests -- and goes into the den.
Mom's there. As usual. Working on her computer. But she's not looking at the screen right now, she's got some notes on her lap that she's going through. Just as Mom is looking up at her, Y.T. winds up and throws the crystal award. It goes right over Mom's shoulder, glances off the computer table, flies right through the picture tube. Awesome results. Y.T. always wanted to do that. She pauses to admire her work for a few seconds while Mom just flames off all kinds of weird emotion. What are you doing in that uniform? Didn't I tell you not to ride your skateboard on a real street? You're not supposed to throw things in the house. That's my prized possession. Why did you break the computer? Government property. Just what is going on here, anyway?
Y.T. can tell that this is going to continue for a couple of minutes, so she goes to the kitchen, splashes some water on her face, gets a glass of juice, just letting Mom follow her around and ventilate over her shoulder pads. Finally Mom winds down, defeated by Y.T.'s strategy of silence.
"I just saved your fucking life, Mom," Y.T. says. "You could at least offer me an Oreo."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"It's like, if you -- people of a certain age -- would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures."