"Why would you even wonder at that?" Tony said passionately. "That was the whole point of living in the 1990s! Did I ever ask to be born under some particular flag? I could live in Bombay. I wanted to live in Bombay, the action there is amazing. I could live in Shanghai! Shanghai has got skyscrapers that make New York look like a bombed-out rathole! So what if I sold out the USA—what about the USA selling me out? I don’t even recognize this country since 9/11. It’s mean! It’s vindictive! It’s aggressive! It’s broke, that’s the worst part. And it invades places! Your country is like a giant Serbia. The people who run it are moron oil company people. I’m a dot-com guy. I am thirty-two years old. I was right on top of the world. Then I went from genius, to bum, to bankrupt in eighteen months! I was right in the middle of the fastest, most potent, the best technological revolution in human history. I was making that happen, I was a true-blue revolutionary. It’s been no time, Van, and I’m already history. I’m obsolete, I’m invisible. The sons of bitches vanished me. It’s just like I was never there at all."