young skateboard Kourier (courier), who refers to herself in the third person, during a failed attempt to make a delivery on time. Y.T. completes the delivery on his behalf, and they strike up a partnership, gathering intel and selling it to the CIC. Within the Metaverse, Hiro is offered a datafile named Snow Crash by a man named Raven, who hints that it is a form of narcotic. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker Da5id views a bitmap image contained in the file, which causes his computer to crash and Da5id to suffer brain damage in the real world. Hiro meets his ex-girlfriend Juanita Marquez, who gives him a database containing a large amount of research compiled by her associate, Lagos. This research posits connections between the virus, ancient Sumerian culture, and the legend of the Tower of Babel. Juanita advises him to be careful and disappears. The Mafia boss Uncle Enzo begins to take a paternal interest in Y.T. Impressed by her attitude and initiative, he arranges to meet her and offers her freelance jobs. Hiro's investigations and Y.T.'s intelligence gathering begin to coincide, with links between the neuro-linguistic viruses, a religious organization known as Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates and a media magnate named L. Bob Rife beginning to emerge. Lagos's research showed that the ancient Sumerian ur-language allowed brain function to be "programmed" using audio stimuli in conjunction with a DNA-altering virus. Sumerian culture was organized around these programs (known as me), which priests administered to the populace. Enki, a figure of legend, developed a counter-virus (known as the nam-shub of Enki), which, when delivered, stopped the Sumerian language from being processed by the brain and led to the development of other, less literal languages, giving birth to the Babel myth. L. Bob Rife had been collecting Sumerian artifacts and developed the drug Snow Crash to make the public vulnerable to new forms of me, which he would control. The physical form of the virus is distributed in the form of an addictive drug and within Reverend Wayne's church via infected blood. There is also a digital version, to which hackers are especially vulnerable, as they are accustomed to processing information in binary form. Hiro heads north to the Oregon Coast, where the Raft, a huge collection of boats containing Eurasian refugees, is approaching the West Coast of the United States. The center of the Raft is L. Bob