The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Hackworth goes to Dr. X’s hong (laboratory); Dr. X is a master reverse engineer and head of a criminal enterprise with headquarters at the Flea Circus, Middle Kingdom. While Hackworth is a “forger,” Dr. X is a “honer” (62) who puts odd bits of old technology and nanoparticles to unexpected uses. His lab includes a mix of this technology and objects associated with Dr. X’s Chinese culture. Dr. X extracts assembly instructions from the skin of Hackworth’s hand, then compiles using a feed that is not connected to Source Victoria.

Afterward, Hackworth heads home with the bootleg Primer, which he hopes will help Fiona succeed where he has not. Hackworth sees the wildly popular mediatronic chopsticks he made for MPS everywhere, but he gains no direct profit from them beyond his salary. Finkle-McGraw commissioned the Primer, intending to include dark and subversive literature like Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Raven” (1798), which would teach the children of neo-Victorian elites grit and flexible thinking. A gang of boys rob Hackworth of his top hat, his watch, and the bootleg Primer.