One virus, accepted by one of the three main hackers who created the Metaverse, could violently shove Snow Crash from postcyberpunk into cyberpunk.
According to the Wikipedia article, postcyberpunk is a variety of cyberpunk that exists “without the assumption of dystopia.” As defined by Merriam Webster Online, dystopia is an “imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and fearful lives.” The drug/virus called snow crash has the ability to wipe out people and information in the Metaverse, even though Da5id had “so much antiviral medicine in my system nothing could get through.” Consisting mainly of “static, white noise, snow” this virus is the anti-information. When Da5id has heard Snow Crash’s secret, his avatar suddenly stops reading any reaction he may be having: making this virus capable of robbing a hyper-realistic avatar of what humanity was coded into it.
The characters in Snow Crash trade in information via the Central Intelligence Corporation (CIC), formerly the Library of Congress. If this virus is loosed into this digital storage unit of valuable data, barters will fear for a potential fiscal loss. And what is a culture without information to share, pass on, and learn about?
If this virus can rob the Metaverse users of their information and their humanity, it will be a story taking place in a dystopian future where all the other criteria for a cyberpunk story exist: overabundance of technology, breakdown of social order (“bimbo boxes,” segregated suburbs, decentralized government run by mega-corporations, etc), and anti-hero hacker protagonist.
Just for the record, I got a bit of a chuckle out of The Deliverator’s name: apt. :)
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