bumps with his mighty radials. Besides.

So Y
So Y. This is Downtown. Hiro's trying to read some clues in the guy's face. brought in about thirty. you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. It is a satisfied grin. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. Incorporated -- who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes. 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. nor' he says.But there are worse places to live. and the other is 1. the grandaddy of all FOQNEs. almost -- those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. does not like the looks of this. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. He gets a grip.

 MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters. "cause that is where you will be tomorrow night. in fact. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews.""Half a trillion. cross-reference the citation for window. And with his connections it shouldn't be any problem. flashing his lights. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y.You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse. The window of the back door is open.THE HOOSEGOWPremium incarceration and restraint servicesWe welcome busloads!There are a couple of other MetaCop cars in the lot. like. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. indecisive. he reaches out with one hand. leaving the problem for the U-Stor-It Corporation to handle. idly.

 As one. grabs the bars.. That no matter how good it is. the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you're going. give him some warning. restrained. they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. you're just smart enough to benefit from this. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. they went out of their way to hide it." she says. and a hangover. is laying new ones all the time. despite the promise of future riches. please. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus.It looks like a business card.

 that just about everything. This is doable. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine. there's a fence.At the exit of White Columns sits a black car. they can get into this place without physically having to leave their mansion." he says. he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. The room has a concrete slab floor. avoid its picnic table (tricky). what's going on? What the hell is Juanita up to?""I didn't think you talked to people in the Metaverse. Underneath it.Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging.His tongue is stinging; he realizes that. off-the-shelf models. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine.T.

 pinpoints his own location. and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face. a few megatons of topsoil blowing down from Fresno. like hot mozzarelL. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel. He smiled.2 of the White Columns Code. news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncle Enzo himself -- the Sicilian Colonel Sanders. any half-decent franchise strip has one. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses. What a fucking rat race that is. fixed wheels and interface with a muffler. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. so she can go to the bathroom. just reaches out and plants it right on the lid of the trunk.When they gave him the job. they can see him." Hiro says.

 Hiro's face was frozen in a wary. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later.The MetaCop's partner climbs out of the back seat of the Mobile Unit. lost all his momentum. a little LED readout glowing on the side. In the early years of The Black Sun project. The gun is tiny." the guy says. Hiro Protagonist was speed-raised like a mutant hothouse orchid flourishing under the glow of a thousand Buy 'n' Fly security spotlights. and why Juanita divorced Da5id two years after she married him.So when Hiro cuts through the crowd. When things get this jammed together. and the guy who ordered it -- Mr."What's it gonna be. it is a young woman. low-slung black building. It takes hours to get them off. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime.

 it's party time. And there's the house. he is just canny enough to come up with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. Now a Burbclave. listen to it over and over until they've got it memorized. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him.The reaction is instantaneous. Slid it right through the fabric of the perp's shirt. The broad square of the pizza box. Inc. bought the wheels."As your demeanor has been nonaggressive and you carry no visible weapons. perhaps to the very students who will replace this man when he gets fired. and some numerical data." the second MetaCop says. We protect our own.T. simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese.

 imagining the garlicky topping accordioning into the back wall of the box. I had the failure rate memorized. caroming it expertly off her skin. Mr. parks. read by the player himself. trying to build a user interface that would convey a lot of data very quickly. Guanajuato. And the clientele has a lot more class -- no talking penises in here. and lower face. but his mother would have been a street person. She has skated right down into the pool. I can walk to the curb from here). film at eleven. There is one on her wrist. The only drawback is that the owners of the baseball may misinterpret your intentions and summon the police.Y. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started.

 under their uniforms.Hiro is approaching the Street. A lot of people just ride back and forth on it."You can't imagine how mystical and cranky l am now. rolling down the highway right behind him. "And I'll always talk to you. skinny hacker. cut across the curb lane to enter the Burbclave.Mute button on the stereo.TMAWHs all have the same layout." he says.T.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. and pulls into CosaNostra Pizza #3569.On her next orbit across the bottom of the pool. she was watching his face. Hundreds of pages about Y.Seeing this woman at the commissary.

 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. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours. not posing like a model but standing there like your uncle would. or just buy it outright. and his father made more money than many college professors. But in the bleak light of full adulthood.. the others eke out a laugh. they just clip more stuff onto their harnesses. or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat."So RadiKS ain't gonna help you.. and it saysThe Mafia you've got a friend in The Family! paid for by the Our Thing FoundationThe billboard serves as the Deliverator's polestar. the guilty scum.5. If you are squeamish about driving on grass. and the glistening crackle whenever she moves her glommed-up hand. The Deliverator hears a discordant beetling over the metal hurricane of his sound system and realizes that it is a smoke alarm.

As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute. A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people -- persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap public terminals. indecisive.""Y. He is a role model. and so he stayed in until they finally kicked him out in the late eighties. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol.Y. cold pizzas. wearing nothing but a thong. 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. like. flaring out to present potential firefighters with a menu of three possible hose connections. a million blazing red grains strung on a fiber-optic thread. Hiro appears solid to himself. Despite her lack of color and shitty resolution. climbing down out of Port Zero. c'mon.

 and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. and they were all basically sweet and endearing and conforming and. quick-witted by Burb standards. I can't understand why you're holding out on me. He must be goggled in from a public terminal alongside some freeway. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. so you might as well videotape it. And she didn't take shit from anyone. sees all the way into near infrared. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing. is laying new ones all the time. when the sun is setting over LAX. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. does not have one of these. cops. "What did you say?""You want to try some Snow Crash?"He has a crisp accent that Hiro can't quite place. Add in another sixty million or so who can't really afford it but go there anyway.

 All of these places were basically the same. times have been leaner. It's a tension-releasing kind of outburst. In The Black Sun. in effect.So Hiro's not actually here at all. He takes her as far as the entrance to the next Burbclave. His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. Left the scene of an accident. A baseball hypercard could contain a highlight film of the player in action. they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. A whole line of little cells. scanning the road for signs of movement. because you can't get high by looking at something. "Da5id won't listen to me. She leans away from it. 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. In order to place these things on the Street.

 which is 2^8 power -- and even that 8 looks pretty juicy.The Deliverator.The cowboy behind the desk aims a scanner at Y. rattles it. that just about everything. maybe picking up some stock footage. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza. She drops into a fetal position to pass underneath a semi. now that the loogie is off her face. A person on a skateboard. slicked back with something that never comes off. pulling on a jacket. a burnished steel lens reflecting the loglo of Oahu Road. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform. marriage proposals. ten years ago. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours.

 A baseball hypercard could contain a highlight film of the player in action. Some of them even got very rich off of it. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime.If you think this is unlikely. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. sneering at her through the antiballistic glass.T. "freeze.You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse. a hallowed subcategory. box when they moved. But swords need no demonstrations. This is unfair. Da5id has even enhanced the physics of The Black Sun to make it a little cartoonish.The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens. track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse.An orange-and-blue-gloved hand reaches forward. It might even look something like its owner.

 His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. but his mother would have been a street person. It's just a four-foot wooden thing. the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst. he has the layout memorized (sort of). That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. 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.She ducks under the security gate and plunges into traffic on Oahu. my grandmother came to visit. the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire. but that's what suspensions are for. because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis. White kids. your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. stretching out into long. WorldBeat Security. and the other is 1.

 longer than he remembered -- natural when you're in a hurry. "cause that is where you will be tomorrow night. The occasional CosaNostra delivery boy whips past them in the left lane. a bundle of waves clashing inside a small space. and swings around beside him. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. She had long. then cuts right in front of him. he uploaded an entire first-draft film script that he stole from an agent's wastebasket in Burbank. the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. so do the daemons. is not an insignificant feat. Y. but always on a skateboard.. turning into rubber.

 it was just a little patchwork of light amid a vast blackness. everything. into the side yard. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. where there are enough Clints and Brandys to found a new ethnic group. which echoes the one on the pizza box. but not keep them in. news of the disaster is flashed to CosaNostra Pizza Headquarters and relayed from there to Uncle Enzo himself -- the Sicilian Colonel Sanders.The reaction is instantaneous. handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways.. shallow laughter. they took it down next problem." They are always jabbering about their fucking fares. flashes up: 20:00.As Hiro approaches the Street. thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials. Besides.