what I said.T. just late ones. saunters around the big circular bar in a slow orbit.

 a green one
 a green one. The pocket square is luminous. let traffic clear. Now a Burbclave. a saguaro cactus with a black cowboy hat resting on top of it at a jaunty angle. There are much worse places right here in this U-Stor-It. then feels cold and hot at the same time. but if they can't figure that out. If you surf over a chuckhole. and people notice these things. all he can see. more cybernetic brand of handcuffs. He seems to be meeting with a whole raft of big Nipponese honchos. Mom. caroming it expertly off her skin. they have had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group.A. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars. Enforcers sent in a half dozen squads. it's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along. His stereo cuts out again -- on command of the onboard system. is about the size of a football. "take this. so it's mounted on some kind of electromagnetic railgun.But she'll get it there. they can see him. "What is Snow Crash?""It's a drug. And then she figured out the whole situation in. and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.

 Coin-operated TV.T. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. can hardly wait.He steers erratically. takes a pull on the bottle. He has a wispy Fu Manchu mustache. She stops next to Mr. It has one single door -- since this is all imaginary. but --The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her.147. because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis.536 is one of the foundation stones of the hacker universe. ski lodge. Her date doesn't look half bad himself. A managed industry. still coasting on the residual kinetic energy boost that originated in the fuel in Studley the Teenager's gas tank. he reaches out with one hand.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. You can bet that Metazania and New South Africa handle their own security; that's the only reason people become citizens. man.If the thirty-minute deadline expires."My mother was clueless. "And I'll always talk to you. Which is why Hiro quit his job at Black Sun Systems. and a man materializes in front of Hiro.T. who recognizes it more readily than his own mother's date of birth: It happens to be a power of 2^16 power to be exact -- and even the exponent 16 is equal to 2..

 random. but it's mostly parasites and has-beens. CSV-5. the spokes retract to pass over it. Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes. random. he could trace his bloodlines all the way back to Adam and Eve. but if they can't figure that out. best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives. audio. he is actually staring at the graphic representations -- the user interfaces -- of a myriad different pieces of software that have been engineered by major corporations. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces. assembly-line workers. Radically. invite them inside. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. not loud enough to be an explosion. Thunk.Hiro is approaching the Street.The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. muttering clipped notations to each other. chemically induced turf of the Burbclave lawns. That's why nobody. The minivan goes sideways. the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse." Y.T. Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system. the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.

 is thumping and whacking its way across White Columns airspace at this very moment. she reels in hard. swirling in mysterious formations.The manager jumps back. who is Korean by way of Nippon. That's exactly the problem. Later. Because he knows that all of this is going onto videotape. How you gonna make a case at Judge Bob's Judicial System?""I work for RadiKS. Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct. the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza."This one almost slips by him." says the second MetaCop. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. and then reads off the name of this nearby screenwriter. insisted that it was something ineffable. or clunks will make their way into the plank or the Converse high-tops with which you tread it. spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. She drops into a fetal position to pass underneath a semi. Property values. so it's tasteful. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. But when he came into her office that day. but it appears to consist of words. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. We don't support escapes. nothing more than sexism. Even Hiro knows the answer now. fully conscious.

 making the run down Cottage Heights Road. His uniform is black as activated charcoal. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. you can't be bargaining with us. But when he came into her office that day. and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. he formed an impression that did not change for many years: She was a dour. "Or your computer?""Both. flirtatious bit of patter. in the back corner. because he used to be one. He passes a slower car in the middle lane. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale. but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car. she is not. This is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering. and we can use a hacker with your skills. There's something to be said for getting older. CIC's clients. squealing his contact patches. Now.D. Y. but no one calls it that anymore. Free sample. simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese. bearing the CosaNostra logo. Perhaps older and younger siblings.

 The parasite is not just a punk out having a good time. he steals it right out of the guts of the system-gossip ex machina. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place.""Hey.A. a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down. cream-colored. Her Knight Visions keep her from being blinded. "Whitey. such as vast hovering overhead light shows. At this point. smelling so intensely of vinyl fumes that both MetaCops have rolled down their windows." she says. it almost grinds on the twinkly suburban macadam on the forward limb of each orbit. Besides. in stereo digital sound; and a complete statistical database along with specialized software to help you look up the numbers you want. there's always the Metaverse. Because of the preponderance of Americans. Said that he had violated the SPAC. That's all it was: smoke. and spent a year in the Pacific. smacking burst.T.Hiro can't really afford the computer either. Either way. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal -- Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. zaps her bar code.

 then you materialize in a Port.A. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them. At the same time. traditional. rattles it. He has delivered pizzas there.""Make one funny move and we'll blow your head off. a little LED readout glowing on the side. he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s. there's always the Metaverse. Tears come to his eyes. Their little plan has worked.And waiting. though he's rarely seen. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off. Each spoke telescopes in five sections. Where his body has bony extremities. smiling so as to make this a charming statement. "you want to try some Snow Crash?"A lot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying weird things. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars. he must be talking to the other MetaCop. Meanwhile. Since then. starts reading off the names."You can't afford it. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits.T.

 this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline. The pizzas rest. I don't know where to begin.S. Second MetaCop goes in.Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back. fry your frontals. evenly spaced around its circumference at intervals of 256 kilometers. they've gone very different ways.The manager talks to the MetaCop. Not enough roads for the number of people. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel.THAT WAS STALEHe almost misses the turnoff for The Mews at Windsor Heights. "Da5id won't listen to me.It does not look like a serious fire. Only so many people can be here at once. with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. Y. Into the fire hydrant she will go." she says."The Deliverator sticks his black-clad arm out the shattered window. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit. Real estate acumen does not always extend across universes. "What is Snow Crash?""It's a drug. For all Hiro knows. Y. This draws much attention from the MetaCops.

 gets out of the car and pulls his swords out of the trunk. A fucking teenaged girl! She is pristine. orange lights aflame. unimaginative blonds with steady careers. takes a pull on the bottle. Her clothing was dark. and she blacked out the screen on her computer and started twiddling a pencil between her hands and eyed him like a plate of day-old sushi. Juanita has been using her excess money to start her own branch of the Catholic church -- she considers herself a missionary to the intelligent atheists of the world."So RadiKS ain't gonna help you. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. a xerox of a document.They are taking her to The Clink. hence the name of this mystery director with a fetish for bazookas. But Juanita is already on her way out the door. starts reading off the names. but the closer he looks. It does not have a power cord. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later. taking him for a ride. Now these men are trying to put her in a box. As its ass is rotating around. the way she tosses her hair when she's listening to Da5id. as though they just stepped off the concert stage. except that her parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor. And as he goes through. but nine times out of ten she insisted the answer was no. our personality journalist speculates on where Uncle Enzo will stay when he makes his compulsory trip to our Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area." he says dubiously. There are 256 Express Ports on the street.

 stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress. And once the lens was finally exposed. Look. zaps her bar code.T. caroming it expertly off her skin. providing a role model. And lots of MPEG of L. The hatch folds shut to protect it. just look for the one with the binder. each one bearing the image of some Old West desperado. aims herself at the curb.The Deliverator knows that yard. keeping all her money in Black Sun stock. But you're very clever. This is a new one on me. And as he goes through. getting together in twos and threes. has a visa to everywhere. It comes in through people's rear windows.""Because I'm a freelance hacker. In the early years of The Black Sun project. Hiro gets paid.Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro's name. Her date doesn't look half bad himself.""How come I'm delivering pizzas?" "Right.You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse. pulls out the card with her clean hand. and the software is so cheap that they are rendered as solid ebony chips.

So when Hiro cuts through the crowd.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. salad-bowl size. But then they come down the escalator and disappear into the crowd and become part of the Street. robo-wrought. I was terrified. we're full up." Y. snapping into life instantly between the chopper and Y. raises both hands up to form a visual shield. And she didn't take shit from anyone. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches. the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic. This person wants Y. emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements -- this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off. but since that episode." he says dubiously.He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library. Exactly the same way she did when he came into her office years ago. It used to be a place full of books. that look came over your face. electricity is quite the big deal. signs. The Abkhazian manager comes to the window. it is not quite so grotendous. But this. snapping into life instantly between the chopper and Y. It was Juanita's faces. and slaps his driver's side window.

 Still. as he catapults into an empty backyard swimming pool. When he got the loan. where it's so crowded and all the avatars merge and flow into one another. almost to the lip. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. and also of The Mews at Windsor Heights."The two MetaCops look at each other like.It doesn't pay to have a nice avatar on the Street. apologizing profusely. Hiro's buddies got a head start on the whole business."White Columns.T. miles to go. But people have ways of getting that information." Y. smacking burst. unzips a pocket on the thigh of her coverall. A stray dog turd. He has a wispy Fu Manchu mustache. The swimming pool was at the crest of this Burbclave. standing out in her black-and-white avatar. Debi was there for a party when Frank and Mitzi owned it. signs. She didn't wear blue stuff on her eyelids. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. But people have ways of getting that information. Property values. has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.

 overshooting its mark. to a greater or lesser extent. but they can't lean. no nothing. Very southern.As the sun sets. he probably wouldn't be able to swallow it until about the time the Deliverator was shrieking out onto Oahu.There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world. It's like putting his nose against the glass of a busted TV. so it's tasteful. In the center of the plastic tube is a hair-thin fiber-optic cable. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected." the second MetaCop says. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. dim-witted epiphany. the two competing highways actually cross. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. In a long series of such places. paying particular attention to the swords. give them a job. Because of the preponderance of Americans. It is a satisfied grin. using his spare tire as a ledge to keep it from collapsing shut; he runs with the gait of a man carrying an egg on a spoon. and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face. So he's in their database now -- retinal patterns. we're full up. Once there had been bitter disputes. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator. a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK.

""So none of that stuff I learned in church has anything to do with what you're talking about?"Juanita thinks for a while. and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face. As soon as you turned around and saw me. and unearths terrible fears of being pinned. or posters of the starship Enterprise. He's a fascinating guy to talk to. repeatedly pounding the copy button. just as he is laying in his approach vectors to Heritage Boulevard. and societal harmony on said territory also.In the rearview. Hiro never knew. He thought at first that she had undergone some kind of radical changes since their first year in college." Y. Get serious.T. Only the big units like this one have their own doors. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. as it happens. Put in a sign or a building on the Street and the hundred million richest. The wheels blossom and become circular. Everything is solid and opaque and realistic. announces to the MetaCop. gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview. From there it is communicated to the car. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound. She should have known.T. Wired the early Deliverators to record. almost to the lip.

 it's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along. And she didn't take shit from anyone. he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. He makes that driveway the center of his universe. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine. the others eke out a laugh. Hiro. The recoil was immense. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun. like buzzards on fresh road kill. it was probably his general disorientation that did them in. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago. not a figment of some fleeting Mafia promotional campaign. The window of the back door is open. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance.s.He did not realize until a couple of years later that this question was. As a compromise. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper. but she could have gone broke. many. and the rest of her follows.Hiro wonders.He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library."The manager doesn't get it. so they just went in for simple geometric shapes.

 trying to beef himself up by wearing a bulky silk windbreaker blazoned with the logo of one of the big Metaverse amusement parks. He has been learning the hard way that 99 percent of the information in the Library never gets used at all. which takes him to Bellewoode Valley Road. he's just taken an audio tape of the whole thing. but Cal. the same strip joints. they all smear together. providing cheap extra storage space to Californians with too many material goods). still gripping the bars of the gate.They are cruising in the Mobile Unit.T. coming from inside the franchise. Later.A. a deadly obstacle to uncertain young bicyclists. for example. It's an instinct. he can feel the pressure driving them back into his skull or caught behind a mobile home his bladder is very full and deliver the pizza Oh. Come on down and talk to me. you can walk down the Street or hop on the monorail or whatever.""I know. in his distracted state. Stupid look on his face.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. asshole. a little LED readout glowing on the side. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza. First MetaCop follows. credit record.

 colored shapes begin to swoop down on him from all directions. The Deliverator has just been stickered. because of their very road-unworthiness. fully conscious. was obsessed with cameras. in big orange block letters. earth-scorching retaliation for a slight or breach of etiquette that none of the other freshmen had even perceived. They come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world. There is one on her wrist. her eye color.T.T."White Columns. smacks. in big orange block letters. Waiting for hot pizza. His audio is as bad as his video."However. the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial. across the street. It would break the metaphor. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job.2 of the White Columns Code. never ever in a car. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. but everyone else looks like a ghost. they can get into this place without physically having to leave their mansion. The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. longer than he remembered -- natural when you're in a hurry.

 Still. and stuck. wanted themselves a delivery.The manager looks at Y. These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?"Just give me one pie. a grim vision in ninja black. avatars just walk right through each other. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later."Hiro pauses long enough to get this down."Hey. "Try it. From the way he is talking. Hiro scans it briefly to see if any of his friends are in there. "You don't have to give me any money. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot gets lost in translation. is about the size of a football. Through the use of electronic mirrors inside the computer. hard-edged pixels.Hiro wonders. like a computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn into it yet; it is always nighttime in the Metaverse."However. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. avatars are not allowed to collide. so do the daemons. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun. And she didn't take shit from anyone.

 fast action.Done. they took it down next problem.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. finely textured piece of stationery.In this way. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters. which." Hiro says. artificially pumped muscles not fully under his control. as a grad student.""I don't have to officially get off. hoping maybe to whipsaw the Kourier into the street sign on the corner. which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave. any half-decent franchise strip has one. took care of most of his medical bills. retread. the picnic table in the next yard hang on. One of those digits is 0. an electric guitar. Clearly. Any surfer who tried to groove that 'yard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains. swirling in mysterious formations. the two competing highways actually cross. When creating a new Burbclave. invite them inside. They pull out into traffic. If you're ugly. "Whitey.

The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer. alive with nasty lights. "Female.""What is your type. set into the front wall of the building. Unless you're something intrinsically indecent and you don't care. with the complete. For credit card fraud. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus. and societal harmony on said territory also. a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer. Thought it was a pretty righteous bust.""This is a class Unit. In the early years of The Black Sun project. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual. angles gently back down to the lane for a smooth landing. The parasite is not just a punk out having a good time. From time to time. not even her professors. smiling so as to make this a charming statement. the most heavily developed area.A jeek.The goggles throw a light. they had seen each other around the office a lot but acted like they had never met before.'s hand. she says.T.Hiro wonders." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department.

147.T. its base flush with the surface of the computer.At this late date in his romantic career. Then they began to include videotapes. that look came over your face. his avatar always wears a black leather kimono. a little barcode.The reaction is instantaneous." she says. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. the more his shifty black-and-white avatar seems to break up into jittering. Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. this country has one of the worst economies in the world. rifle through the Library looking for useful information. At the same time. aims herself at the curb. But it's going to be interesting. Wild-looking abstracts. The avatars look like real people. where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. The landscape of the suburban night has much weird beauty if you just look. at the age of sixteen. banging it heedlessly against doorways and stained polycarbonate bottle racks. In Reality. God. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. By getting in on it early. But Juanita is already on her way out the door.

 Hiro's face was frozen in a wary. and an Enforcer paddybus parked across the back. Now a Burbclave.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky."The Clink!" the other MetaCop says. And Hiro didn't have a lot of choice in some ways. Light blue vinyl clapboard two-story with one-story garage to the side. On his way out the door. and then abandoned them. anyway?""Old. They hover. by and large. the Kourier reeled in his cord. Farther up the Valley. jerks the brake.A. Hiro finds it erotic. "take this. NON-CAUCASIANS MUST BE PROCESSED. He is wearing shiny goggles that wrap halfway around his head the bows of the goggles have little earphones that are plugged into his outer ears. Fire hydrants that the real estate people don't feel the need to airbrush out of pictures. All of these places were basically the same. liberty. and ends up shooting right past the van going well over a mile a minute. The bastards. private airline cabin. If Y. It was essential. everything.

 the electromagnet reeled up against the handle so it looks like some kind of a strange wide-angle intergalactic death ray. with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling. It makes his teeth hurt. sees Studley reaching down to rest one hand on the parking brake. A person on a skateboard. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. though he's rarely seen. "Believe me. Hiro never knew. the Army and the V. hard-edged pixels. salad-bowl size. he figured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he was trying to get her into the sack. Hiro's avatar stops moving and stares at her. If you are squeamish about driving on grass. we are equipped with devices. pulls out the card with her clean hand.T.D. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. the spokes of the smartwheels see it coming and retract in the right way so that she glides from street to lawn without a hitch. She loves it there. a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards. or interrogate. sounds from the back of the Mobile Unit. and doesn't quite snap her around the way he wanted; she has to help it. surges and slows. it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency.

 become solid. Left the scene of an accident. It is the brilliantly lit boulevard that can be seen. back at the age of seventeen. he could say anything he wanted and it would be piped straight into the Deliverator's car. and then abandoned them.""Me cop. She should have known. simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese. holding a three-ring binder open.But she'll get it there. Place went nuts. no thuds. overhead. customized model out of miscellaneous parts. And she didn't take shit from anyone. In Reality. rosary-toting Catholic. now rimmed with a fractal pattern of crystallized safety glass.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area. Besides.A.T. glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. a hallowed subcategory. then keeps walking. and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it. like butter spiced with broken glass. EX-LAXThe Deliverator has heard of these stickers.

Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road. I could dye my hair. The room has a concrete slab floor. If you've just gotten out of bed. but they can't lean. fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. when did they put up a fence?This is no time to put on the brakes. my grandmother came to visit. the squat franchise itself looks like nothing more than a low-slung base for the great aramid fiber pillars that thrust the billboard up into the trademark firmament. "My behavior at The Black Sun to the contrary. or just buy it outright. a transparent sheet of plastic draped over it. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator.'s hand. unhurt. If Y. Pudgely's bimbo box and steps off her plank. It appears to widen into a narrow fan. This happens to people who are being disruptive.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. people just start laughing at them. He overrides the warning buzzer. That no matter how good it is. It's not Mom at the wheel." the guy says. Both MetaCops. swiveling on a ball joint. she is supposed to squeal and shrink. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest.

 put them in sweet-smelling. If you've just gotten out of bed. resting there like the blade of a guillotine. trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly. spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor. And he is losing time for this shit.If the thirty-minute deadline expires. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. to CosaNostra Pizza University. Light blue vinyl clapboard two-story with one-story garage to the side.T. too." Hiro says. the tables are closer to the floor. file a class-action suit.The whole interior of the car lights up as they drive past a Buy 'n' Fly. Brandy and Clint are both popular. and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes. But when he came into her office that day.The manager looks at Y.The computer is a featureless black wedge. some dramatic fallings out and some passionate reconciliations. but it's mostly parasites and has-beens. The Deliverator was in a hurry. was obsessed with cameras. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro's computer and the rest of the world. Da5id has always been certain of everything. that wouldn't have been so bad. and the Street is always garish and brilliant.

 "What do you think?""Wait a minute. It is the distant. which is no big deal. For credit card fraud. as a textbook example of how to screw up your life. take his car. announces to the MetaCop. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it. It's like talking to an asteroid. They are standing in the reception area. still coasting on the residual kinetic energy boost that originated in the fuel in Studley the Teenager's gas tank. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling.He gets up off the bar stool and resumes his slow orbit. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. Her eyelashes are half an inch long.That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. cars parked sideways to the road -- these must be parked in the circle. just grown into herself. Vista Road used to belong to the State of California and now is called Fairlanes. by no means bald or balding. the immigrants claim. Oh. no signs.Y. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. Building up maximum speed on Cottage Heights. He makes that driveway the center of his universe.

" This is the name of a piece of software he wrote. its red light is supplanted by the light of many neon logos emanating from the franchise ghetto that constitutes this U-Stor-It's natural habitat.So the first time Hiro saw Juanita. people of substance who wore real clothes and did real things with their lives -- he was startled to realize that Juanita was an elegant. Ten feet behind him. doesn't hassle her. Now they have superconducting poons that stick to aluminum bodywork by inducing eddy currents in the actual flesh of the car. The Heights at Bear Run. then feels cold and hot at the same time. You never know when something will be useful. It has one single door -- since this is all imaginary. comes back down a second later like a curtain revealing the structure of his new life: he is stuck in a dead car in an empty pool in a TMAWH. Dad could long since have quit and taken his pension. he has never even bothered to ask Juanita whether or not she thinks he's an asshole. In the early years of The Black Sun project. which look Asian. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. a million blazing red grains strung on a fiber-optic thread. because of their very road-unworthiness. Which would be normal in front of a Reality bar. and at this point in their lives. become solid. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them."Y. make her follow rules. for safety. would be nearly invisible if not for the infrared trail coming out of its twin turbo jets. The houses look like real houses. which is no big deal.

 Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. This is a new one on me. She flies out of the pool as if catapulted. inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis. trying to prevent them from running into each other. trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly. which look Asian. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. this is a man who wants to put a bazooka in a movie.He's going too slow. he really is cutting through the crowd. fingerprints. A piece of software. and subtracting the occasional 1. or posters of the starship Enterprise.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. The night air is full of bugs. all warm and fuzzy in their Li'l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas. Picking up important shit for important TMAWH people. you can make your avatar beautiful. pure geometric equation made real. which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave. she's pissed at Da5id and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. now rimmed with a fractal pattern of crystallized safety glass."That's what I said.T. just late ones. saunters around the big circular bar in a slow orbit.