Editing Cryptonomicon (section)

==Plot==
The action takes place in two periods—[[World War II]] and the late 1990s, during the [[Dot-com bubble|Internet boom]] and the [[Asian financial crisis]].

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young [[United States Navy]] code breaker and mathematical [[savant]], is assigned to the newly formed joint British and American Detachment 2702. This ultra-secret unit's role is to hide the fact that Allied intelligence has cracked the German [[Enigma machine|Enigma]] code.  The detachment stages events, often behind enemy lines, that provide alternative explanations for the Allied intelligence successes. [[United States Marine]] sergeant Bobby Shaftoe, a veteran of [[China Marine|China]] and [[Battle of Guadalcanal|Guadalcanal]], serves in unit 2702, carrying out Waterhouse's plans. At the same time, Japanese soldiers, including mining engineer Goto Dengo, a "friendly enemy" of Shaftoe's, are assigned to build a mysterious bunker in the mountains in the [[Philippines]] as part of what turns out to be a literal suicide mission.

Circa 1997, Randy Waterhouse (Lawrence's grandson) joins his old [[role-playing game]] companion Avi Halaby in a new [[Startup company|startup]], providing [[Pinoy]]-grams (inexpensive, non-real-time video messages) to migrant [[Filipino people|Filipino]]s via new fiber-optic cables. The [[Epiphyte]] Corporation uses this income stream to fund the creation of a [[data haven]] in the nearby fictional Sultanate of Kinakuta. [[Vietnam]] veteran Doug Shaftoe, the son of Bobby Shaftoe, and his daughter Amy do the undersea surveying for the cables and engineering work on the haven, which is overseen by Goto Furudenendu, heir-apparent to Goto Engineering. Complications arise as figures from the past reappear seeking gold or revenge.