Cryptonomicon

'You think I am a rich yachtsman, who sails around the world for fun!?'

'No, but Rudolf von Hacklheber is. He's got money, he's got connections. He's got a line on a good yacht that makes your ketch look like a dinghy,' Shaftoe says. 'C'mon, Otto. Stop whining, pull some more diamonds out of your asshole, and get it done. It beats being tortured to death by Germans.' Shaftoe stands up and chucks Otto encouragingly on the shoulder, which Otto does not like at all. 'See you in Manila.'

The doctor's coming in the door. Bobby Shaftoe slaps some money down on the table. He looks Julieta in the eye. 'Got some miles to cover now,' he says, 'Glory's waiting for me.'

Julieta nods. So in the eyes of one Finnish girl, anyway, Shaftoe's not such a bad guy. He bends over and gives her a big succulent kiss, then straightens up, nods to the startled doctor, and walks out.

Chapter 61 COURTING

Waterhouse has been chewing his way through exotic Nip code systems at the rate of about one a week, but after he sees Mary Smith in the parlor of Mrs. McTeague's boarding house, his production rate drops to near zero. Arguably, it goes negative, for sometimes when he reads the morning newspaper, its plaintext scrambles into gibberish before his eyes, and he is unable to extract any useful information.

Despite his and Turing's disagreements about whether the human brain is a Turing machine, he has to admit that Turing wouldn't have too much trouble writing a set of instructions to simulate the brain functions of Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse.

Waterhouse seeks happiness. He achieves it by breaking Nip code systems and playing the pipe organ. But since pipe organs are in short supply, his happiness level ends up being totally dependent on breaking codes.

He cannot break codes (hence, cannot be happy) unless his mind is clear. Now suppose that mental clarity is designated by C [sub m],which is normalized, or calibrated, in such a way that it is always the case that

0 <= C [sub m] < 1

where C [sub m] = 0 indicates a totally clouded mind and C [sub m] = 1 is Godlike clarity-an unattainable divine state of infinite intelligence. If the number of messages Waterhouse decrypts, in a given day, is designated by then it will be governed by C [sub m] in roughly the following way:

Clarity of mind (C [sub m]) is affected by any number of factors, but by far the most important is horniness, which might be designated by [sigma], for obvious anatomical reasons that Waterhouse finds amusing at this stage of his emotional development.

Horniness begins at zero at time t = t [sub 0] (immediately following ejaculation) and increases from there as a linear function of time:

The only way to drop it back to zero is to arrange another ejaculation. There is a critical threshold [sigma sub c] such that when [sigma] > [sigma sub c] it becomes impossible for Waterhouse to concentrate on anything, or, approximately,

which amounts to saying that the moment [sigma] rises above the threshold [sigma sub c] it becomes totally impossible for Waterhouse to break Nipponese cryptographic systems. This makes it impossible for him to achieve happiness (unless there is a pipe organ handy, which there isn't).

Typically, it takes two to three days for [sigma] to climb above [sigma sub c] after an ejaculation:

Critical, then, to the maintenance of Waterhouse's sanity is the ability to ejaculate every two to three days. As long as he can arrange this, [sigma] exhibits a classic sawtooth-wave pattern, optimally with the peaks at or near [sigma sub c] [see p. 546 top] wherein the grey zones represent periods during which he is completely useless to the war effort.

So much for the basic theory. Now, when he was at Pearl Harbor, he discovered something that, in retrospect, should have been profoundly disquieting. Namely, that ejaculations obtained in a whorehouse (i.e., provided by the ministrations of an actual human female) seemed to drop [sigma] below the level that Waterhouse could achieve through executing a Manual Override. In other words, the post-ejaculatory horniness level was not always equal to zero, as the naive theory propounded above assumes, but to some other quantity dependent upon whether the ejaculation was induced by Self or Other: [sigma] =[sigma sub self] after masturbation but [sigma]= [sigma sub other] upon leaving a whorehouse, where [sigma sub self] > [sigma sub other] an inequality to which Waterhouse's notable successes in breaking certain Nip naval codes at Station Hypo were directly attributable, in that the many convenient whorehouses nearby made it possible for him to go somewhat longer between ejaculations.

Note the twelve-day period [above], 19-30 May 1942, with only one brief interruption in productivity-during which Waterhouse (some might argue) personally won the Battle of Midway.

If he had thought about this, it would have bothered him, because [sigma sub self] > [sigma sub other] has troubling implications-particularly if the values of these quantities w.r.t. the all-important [sigma sub c] are not fixed. If it weren't for this inequality, then Waterhouse could function as a totally self-contained and independent unit. But [sigma sub self] > [sigma sub other] implies that he is, in the long run, dependent on other human beings for his mental clarity and, therefore, his happiness. What a pain in the ass!

Perhaps he has avoided thinking about this precisely because it is so troubling. The week after he meets Mary Smith, he realizes that he is going to have to think about it a lot more.

Something about the arrival of Mary Smith on the scene has completely fouled up the whole system of equations. Now, when he has an ejaculation, his clarity of mind does not take the upwards jump that it should. He goes right back to thinking about Mary. So much for winning the war!

He goes out in search of whorehouses, hoping that good old reliable [sigma sub other] will save his bacon. This is troublesome. When he was at Pearl, it was easy, and uncontroversial. But Mrs. McTeague's boardinghouse is in a residential neighborhood, which, if it contains whorehouses, at least bothers to hide them. So Waterhouse has to travel downtown, which is not that easy in a place where internal-combustion vehicles are fueled by barbecues in the trunk. Furthermore Mrs. McTeague is keeping her eye on him. She knows his habits. If he starts coming back from work four hours late, or going out after dinner, he'll have some explaining to do. And it had better be convincing, because she appears to have taken Mary Smith under one quivering gelatinous wing and is in a position to poison the sweet girl's mind against Waterhouse. Not only that, he has to do much of his excuse-making in public, at the dinner table, which he shares with Mary's cousin (whose first name turns out to be Rod).

But hey, Doolittle bombed Tokyo, didn't he? Waterhouse should at least be able to sneak out to a whorehouse. It takes a week of preparations (during which he is completely unable to accomplish meaningful work because of the soaring [sigma] level), but he manages it.

It helps a little, but only on the [sigma] management level. Until recently, that was the only level and so it would have been fine. But now (as Waterhouse realizes through long contemplation during the hours when he should be breaking codes) a new factor has entered the system of equations that governs his behavior; he will have to write to Alan and tell him that some new instructions will have to be added to the Waterhouse simulation Turing machine. This new factor is F [sub MSp], the Factor of Mary Smith Proximity.

In a simpler universe, F [sub MSp], would be orthogonal to [sigma], which is to say that the two factors would be entirely independent of each other. If it were thus, Waterhouse could continue the usual sawtooth-wave ejaculation management program with no changes. In addition, he would have to arrange to have frequent