Snow Crash Chapter 4 Summary

How It All Goes Down

  • Y.T. knows she can deliver the pizza in time. She manages to poon (short for harpoon) a bimbo box, a.k.a. minivan, on her way out of the neighborhood.
  • Unfortunately, its driver is a steroid-pumped idiotic teenage guy who thinks it'll be fun to wrap his hitchhiker around a fire hydrant.
  • Since Y.T. is an experienced skateboarder, she sees this coming a mile away. The meat-head crashes his (probably his mom's) van while Y.T. uses the momentum to coast out of the neighborhood and to her destination.
  • The Burbclave she enters is one of the Apartheid ones, which only lets in white people. Y.T. is white, and as a Kourier, she has a pass to practically everywhere embedded in the barcodes of her uniform. So she gets into White Columns, finds the house, and makes her delivery.
  • The box reads 29:54 when Y.T. drops it in its recipient's white and chubby arms, and suddenly everything is illuminated.
  • The Mafia, always one to plan ahead, had sent a chopper to observe and film what happens. Their laser scanners flit down Y.T.'s chest, recording every bit of personal information about her; then it disappears.
  • Her heroic pizza delivery accomplished, Y.T. is bored and decides to leave. She does think briefly about getting in touch with Hiro, though, because he's in the industry of selling information. And she knows a lot of interesting little bits of information, including the fact that the Mafia now owes her a favor.