But if something should happen to MAE West, however unlikely that may be, Lasater assures me the interruption on the Internet would be temporary while a web of millions of servers found its way around the problem. Today there are more than 4,500. Lasater swipes his key card at the door and we go into the systems room. There is the ubiquitous whirring white noise of the place and aisle after aisle of black-doored cabinets. Those, it turns out, are not actually part of MAE West herself, but are leased to ISPs that want to have their nodes as close as possible to her.
Green lights dance above switches connected to a maze of orange cords.
The room smells faintly of burning dust and static electricity. She's not very big, or very curvy, but it's clear Dan Lasater has gone sweet on her anyway. He opens the gate and allows me to take a celebrity photo of MAE West with her caretaker at her side. And even though he let me inside, he assures me that the steel gate is only the beginning of MAE West's security detail. I'd tell you more, but then I'd have to kill you.