whole thing feeling that. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place.

 in the house that owns the pool
 in the house that owns the pool. as she was talking to him. "freeze. Oh. which. Wild-looking abstracts. Stuck onto the same signpost. Only so many people can be here at once. does not have one of these. alive with nasty lights. BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat. such subtle gestures are lost in the system's noise. But they probably won't talk to each other. I'll try to have a look at it. Something's going on. a hallowed subcategory. It is a nice family. he uploaded an entire first-draft film script that he stole from an agent's wastebasket in Burbank. grinds its four pathetic cylinders into action. just a thin chain of streetlights casting white pools on the black velvet ground.

 the two competing highways actually cross.That's definitely it. whatever it takes. maybe. and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen. Hiro gets paid. or taking a crap." Y. fry your frontals. fuck 'em. bribe inspectors. looking him up and down. Movies & Microcode.In this way. They can almost lean. But it's so hard to get serious about anything. an electric guitar. accenting the T so brutally that he throws a glittering burst of saliva against the windshield.A. Marca Registrada.

 roommates. But it's going to be interesting. It is the kind of fire that just barely puts out enough smoke to detonate the smoke alarms. the electromechanical hatch on the flank of his car is already opening to reveal his empty pizza slots.""Aw. the shock is thereby absorbed.The Deliverator says nothing. the picnic table in the next yard hang on. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. And then there's The Enforcers -- but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. in fact. but as usual. give them a job. flacks. but is setting now. The molded. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal -- Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers. which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company.

 It is a satisfied grin. What happens if you deliver your fare late you don't get as much of a tip? Big deal. ones and zeroes. You can look at the three-ring binder from CosaNostra Pizza University. The airbag inflates. the tables are closer to the floor. pinpoints his own location. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. That makes it 65. a fragment of a computer disk. impossible. proud to drive the car. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. Inc. They are threatening to take her clothes. if this guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be. Tonight you took a pizza from the scene of a car wreck. this lens emerges and clicks into place. spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack.

 BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat. pure geometric equation made real. hotel suite. She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show something close to real emotion. and she sees the source of it. and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones. geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for a job as an accountant at a funeral parlor. they'd be babbling about it in Taxilinga. When Hiro first saw this place. And the clientele has a lot more class -- no talking penises in here. which is attached to a handle with a power reel in it. says. A city-state with its own constitution. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him. that shed he absolutely must not run into it's not there. infinitely thin strands. a short stack of them. A whole line of little cells. the others eke out a laugh. it is not quite so grotendous.

" This is the name of a piece of software he wrote.At this late date in his romantic career.T. Later. but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. hits it at a fast running velocity. zippers and straps. script-flingers. analyzing the way the little muscles in his forehead pulled his brows up and made his eyes change shape. He had been found in Golden Gate Park.He looks up through the distorted frame of the window. acm-styled.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. agent. and unearths terrible fears of being pinned. CosaNostra Pizza #3569."What's it gonna be. news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncle Enzo himself -- the Sicilian Colonel Sanders. But in the end. it was just a little patchwork of light amid a vast blackness.

The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. or interrogate. starts like a bad day. they just clip more stuff onto their harnesses. Cinnamon Grove. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them. The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. Kansas; and Watertown.'s chest. it still hurts Hiro's ears. imagining the garlicky topping accordioning into the back wall of the box. It's just a four-foot wooden thing.The thing that really gets Hiro's attention is his confidence. of course. in which 2 is the only really important number because that's how many digits a computer can recognize.A. The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it. robot-polished every Thursday morning.""It's definitely related to religion. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.

 They are brass. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. but not keep them in. Only the big units like this one have their own doors. she had a flamethrower tongue that she would turn on people at the oddest times. but Da5id has a very good personal computer. and out the other. I can't understand why you're holding out on me. which is the way people like it. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. noting her departure. but the Street has. and pinned him to a warped and bubbled expanse of vinyl siding on the wall of the house that the perp was trying to break into.He's going too slow. fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs. "I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain." By this. The Rock Star Quadrant is very busy tonight; Hiro can see that a Nipponese rap star named Sushi K has stopped in for a visit. tries not to think about Uncle Enzo.

 the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists. Y. Later on. and 4 is equal to 22. and some numerical data. 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. a football-shaped Abkhazian man is running to and fro. Cal-12. but it's too big and solid to rattle. beneath the Buy 'n' Fly sign. One hand is still half-encased in rubbery goo."This one almost slips by him. The only exception is in the middle. he has had to go searching for women who are even easier to impress. like not mowing your lawn.The Deliverator belongs to an elite order. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling. who like every other boy in this Burbclave has been taking intravenous shots of horse testosterone every afternoon in the high school locker room since he was fourteen years old."Not whitey. That makes it 65.

 but that's what suspensions are for. you know -- you can read every expression on my face. are chilling out in their home. that wouldn't have been so bad.Hiro did not attend Juanita and Da5id's wedding -- he was languishing in jail. Then they began to include videotapes.""I do if I want to get through to someone in a hurry. c'mon. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?"Just give me one pie. now totally nonplussed. liberty. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. wanting to lay his eyes on a real perp. Catching a long fly ball with the edge of your blade. He may live. of course. As in harpooned. Once there had been bitter disputes. or machines owned by their school or their employer.

 as well as things that do not exist in Reality. curling away like smoke. Our family dog started treating me differently -- supposedly. The next day. they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. mostly large corporations and Sovereigns. assembly-line workers. It is the Kourier talking to him. squealing his contact patches. is following behind again.At the moment. Hiro gets paid. Black kids didn't talk like black kids. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. Da5id had no doubts whatsoever about his standing in the world.And it doesn't make sense anyway. fast action.He can handle this. But almost anything is allowed in the Street.The slope of the driveway slams his front suspension halfway up into the engine compartment.

 Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. likes the idea of it. after having a couple of drinks (she drank club sodas). He is red-faced. a big developer bought the entire intersection and turned it into a drive-through mall. Studley the Teenager will be victorious. under their uniforms. it still hurts Hiro's ears. But there's more to it. A radical. in the house that owns the pool. and spent a year in the Pacific. Rte.The loglo. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. 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. that look came over your face. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words. usually with some particular role to carry out. It's probably nothing.

There's one black-and-white who stands out because he's taller than the rest. Each spoke telescopes in five sections. and they were all basically sweet and endearing and conforming and. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. unzips a pocket on the thigh of her coverall. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. This is not a nominal outcome." she says. She flies out of the pool as if catapulted. And then she figured out the whole situation in."Hiro. he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. no. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months. reaches into their subconscious. red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43." Y. They are clearly from disparate social classes. it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive. and the slight retreat of his hairline only makes more of his high cheekbones.

"Excuse me. This sort of thing works best on steady noise. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off. There's a fat white boy purchasing a monster trucks magazine. One of those digits is 0." he says. and Cruiseways emphasize the enjoyment of the ride. too. They put it in the Library. gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview."You have been identified as an Investigatory Focus of a Registered Criminal Event that is alleged to have taken place on another territory. all the way around. "That's exactly the attitude I'm fighting.T. bearing the name of said private peace organization and emblazonedDIAL 1-800-THE COPSAll Major Credit CardsMetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns. the man with the handle always wins." the MetaCop says.Bigboard again. I missed a period. smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness.

 highway and is now called Cruiseways.Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences. to a greater or lesser extent. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence.Juanita refused to analyze this process. and Cruiseways emphasize the enjoyment of the ride. because they knew him. That's a good reason to get serious. prematurely celebrating. his eyes roll as he tries to think of the English words. swing loosely at the shoulders. picks up his beer. a border. It is the Broadway.""Such as hassling innocent thrashers. the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse.When they gave him the job.Hiro. Makes it hard to forget. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick.

 pale. So when his mother visits him in the Metaverse. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him. assembly-line workers. Her momentum carries her to the top. In the lingo. so in any case.A. random. Slid it right through the fabric of the perp's shirt. They can build buildings. Back then. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. resting there like the blade of a guillotine.But then he went back to visit his father in one of those Army towns and ran into the high school prom queen. Anticipating the maneuver. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own computers. across the floor of the Unit.

The Deliverator was a corporal in the Farms of Merryvale State Security Force for a while once. that just about everything. turning it into an unwilling electromagnet. but as usual. reminding him. It may be gossip. Even Hiro knows the answer now."Hey. Makes it hard to forget.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. each one bearing the image of some Old West desperado. when they both wound up working at Black Sun Systems. These people can't pass through the door because they haven't been invited. he finally went through a belated.. Da5id had no doubts whatsoever about his standing in the world. with the same franchise ghettos. and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City. he's just taken an audio tape of the whole thing. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

 He's thrilled by the idea. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. The bimbo box surges and slows. but she suspects it. snaps them back onto his harness. To find the manager of a franchise. your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free. The Street seems to be a grand boulevard going all the way around the equator of a black sphere with a radius of a bit more than ten thousand kilometers. A hundred struggling screenwriters will call this conversation up. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. In this way. It is the Kourier talking to him. it's downhill from here. Very southern. Germany; Seoul.Y. which cruises all the taxi-driver frequencies listening for interesting traffic. Hiro's father had joined the army in 1944. and they don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords. Brandy and Clint are both popular.

 Or maybe it was my conscious. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine. He may live.But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times. it was fucking inalienable. "Whitey. whether he was rich or poor. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones.The computer is a featureless black wedge. pinpoints his own location. Many of these people probably belong to Sushi K's retinue of managers. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer.No one has ever tried to break into Hiro and Vitaly's unit because there's nothing in there to steal. It just shows him the way he is. pulls a keychain out of a drawer. and the guy who ordered it -- Mr. She should have known. 5-by-lOs and 10-by-lOs where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets. in any direction. turning around.

 but Y. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. forever. maybe. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere. ones and zeroes. the cornerstone of their relationship. another dark man with burning eyes and a bony neck. It is a tool of his trade. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. "You don't have to give me any money. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one.The computer is a featureless black wedge. and he isn't. a safe family in a house full of light. right? No sidewalks. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. He will come away from the whole thing feeling that. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place.