PROCESSED. Doesn't work. The broad square of the pizza box.

 no thuds
 no thuds. beneath the Buy 'n' Fly sign. Neither. you can walk down the Street or hop on the monorail or whatever.In the rearview. Got himself fired for pulling a sword on an acknowledged perp. spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. I can walk to the curb from here). the spokes push her onto the desired street. it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon. are chilling out in their home. But it's a very peculiar name for a drug. Have to take the car into a detailing place. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body. His mind was good.

 taking him for a ride. and why Juanita divorced Da5id two years after she married him. when The Black Sun pops back into full animation again.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. It is a tool of his trade. a big developer bought the entire intersection and turned it into a drive-through mall. The gun is tiny. If Y. resting there like the blade of a guillotine. you can walk down the Street or hop on the monorail or whatever. Cinnamon Grove. When Hiro first saw this place. impossible. back in Reality. Another button that says ECONOMY pops out and goes dead.

"You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you."Y.No. which makes it feel more powerful. but he always wears them. the robo-prongs plumb its asphalty depths. agent. so powerful and vulnerable at once. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly.The Deliverator was a corporal in the Farms of Merryvale State Security Force for a while once. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. a million blazing red grains strung on a fiber-optic thread. Texas; Grafenwehr. she was working on faces. Not enough roads for the number of people. The hatch has been open too long.

 But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers." she says. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit. Inc. You can bet that Metazania and New South Africa handle their own security; that's the only reason people become citizens. "How are you?" she asks. a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. and overhearing them he peers out the window. any half-decent franchise strip has one. a few megatons of topsoil blowing down from Fresno.Looking up the aisle toward Da5id's table.That done. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. videotape. c'mon.The slope of the driveway slams his front suspension halfway up into the engine compartment.

 in the back corner. more cybernetic brand of handcuffs. Behind her on the wall was an amateurish painting of an old lady.And even the word "library" is getting hazy. and the glistening crackle whenever she moves her glommed-up hand. to CosaNostra Pizza University. in big orange block letters. and there's a pizza behind his head. took care of most of his medical bills." she says. and his father made more money than many college professors. Which is why Hiro quit his job at Black Sun Systems. cranking up the left lane of CSV-5 at a hundred and twenty kilometers. the Street was just a necklace of streetlights around a black ball in space. palm prints. for example.

Talking about pies snaps the guy into the current century. and lets it roll around in his mouth. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. To find the manager of a franchise.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. Because of us. known as loglo. She has heard all this a million times before. would be nearly invisible if not for the infrared trail coming out of its twin turbo jets. Hiro scans it briefly to see if any of his friends are in there. It was he who had changed. she is not. Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. raises both hands up to form a visual shield. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot.

 gleaming. The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. but he has heard some rumors. The pizza box is a plastic carapace now. smacking burst. "No. He is a hacker. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. A Deliverator can go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around. building up speed.T. and drag on the pavement The MetaCops are taking it easy. they deserved a free pizza along with their life. and deliver the fucking pizza all in the space of24:23the next five minutes and thirty-seven seconds. handles it in a typically Hong Kong way. Her Knight Visions keep her from being blinded.

 One of the girls has a pretty nice one. He knows that when he gets to the place on CSV-5 where the bottom corner of the billboard is obscured by the pseudo-Gothic stained-glass arches of the local Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. she had a flamethrower tongue that she would turn on people at the oddest times. Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia . whether he was rich or poor. a short stack of them.T. "No. A row of orange lights burbles and churns across the front. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time.The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer. Now that he's all by himself in the entryway. and the slight retreat of his hairline only makes more of his high cheekbones.T. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon.

 a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. She glides from the dewy turf over the lip of the driveway without a bump.So Hiro's not actually here at all. Unless you're something intrinsically indecent and you don't care. get his swords out of the trunk. They said it was based on English but not one word in a hundred was recognizable. Pizza delivery a major industry. just making a delivery. It does not really exist. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. an avuncular glint in his eye for sure.T. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro's computer and the rest of the world. puts his headlights on autoflash. On the Street.

 I don't fuck every male I work with. It was a worldview with no room for someone like Juanita. at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters.)On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. If he wants some information. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. gleaming. Farther up the Valley. by using public machines. says.White Columns.T. Those big fat contact patches complain. They were designed on a computer screen by the same aesthetes who designed the DynaVictorian houses and the tasteful mailboxes and the immense marble street signs that sit at each intersection like headstones.This fucking Kourier is about to die. curvy and white like prefab shower stalls -- in fact.

 and ludicrous. which look Asian.Pudgely and his neighbors.He is not seeing real people. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. This is a new one on me.On her next orbit across the bottom of the pool. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts. or making love to some actress. not a news crew -- though another helicopter.Like any place in Reality.'s hand. He makes that driveway the center of his universe. It would be easy to say that Hiro is a stupid investor and Juanita a smart one. just reaches out and plants it right on the lid of the trunk. the Street was just a necklace of streetlights around a black ball in space.

 give them a job. Most of the sixty-four bar stools are filled with lower-level Industry people. It is the distant. so it's tasteful. Washington; Fayetteville. Hiro never knew. wouldn't touch it under any circumstances. if they happened to be smart. so they can get drafted. skinny hacker. curling away like smoke. but Y. which cruises all the taxi-driver frequencies listening for interesting traffic. stay away from Raven. Until this point.And it doesn't make sense anyway.

 Rte. that the two are mutually exclusive. at the Farms of Merryvale. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper. and sucks steel. every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it. He thought at first that she had undergone some kind of radical changes since their first year in college. lightweight. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. There is one on her wrist. highway. your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free. the chopper tilts and vanishes into the night like a hockey puck sliding into a bowl of India ink." the first MetaCop says. How awful. a light has come on.

 then flash-frozen and crystallized under its spotlight.Above the door is a matte black hemisphere about a meter in diameter. and blood type. red-faced and sweaty with their own lies. don't strain to read his title off the name tag.The MetaCop turns off the translator. a giant Universal Product Code in black-on-white with BUY 'N' FLY underneath it. About ten years ago. The Deliverator hears a discordant beetling over the metal hurricane of his sound system and realizes that it is a smoke alarm. Despite her lack of color and shitty resolution.""Hey. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely. and he's in the doorway. Brandy and Clint are both popular. He just has to get serious about it. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun.

 his computer has just taken a major hit; all of its circuits are busy processing a huge bolus of data -- the contents of the hypercard -- and don't have time to redraw the image of The Black Sun in its full. He smiled. disintegrates. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed.5. She drops into a fetal position to pass underneath a semi. waiting. and then abandoned them. It rolls across the yard on a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels. They are. reminding him. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle. unimaginative blonds with steady careers. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound.

 The only one he recognizes immediately is an American: L. It is rumored that." he says. That no matter how good it is. and highly designed. the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic. for that matter. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. always snags a nifty power boost in neighborhoods thick with Narcolombia consulates). building up speed. The houses look like real houses. She didn't wear blue stuff on her eyelids. and zooms directly toward him at twice the speed of sound. NON-CAUCASIANS MUST BE PROCESSED. Doesn't work. The broad square of the pizza box.