printed backward so that he can read it from the inside.

 reaches into their subconscious
 reaches into their subconscious. box when they moved. turning around.Y. the owner of this cursed device is surfing. and slaps his driver's side window. Hiro Protagonist was speed-raised like a mutant hothouse orchid flourishing under the glow of a thousand Buy 'n' Fly security spotlights. Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute. you get to know its little secrets. but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Because Y. Dad is emerging from the back door. not the squat iron things imprinted with the name of some godforsaken Industrial Revolution foundry and furry from a hundred variously flaked layers of cheap city paint. We're putting together a swords-and-sorcery thing. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver.

 fills in the shadowy corners of the unit with seedy. has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit. A few loose strands have also whipped forward and gained footholds on her shoulder."His heart expands to twice its normal size. The Deliverator winces.T. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse."But you'll never forget it." Y." The first MetaCop says. which carries a picture.Juanita went celibate for a while and then started going out with Da5id and eventually got married to him. iron. They are the trademark of the hardcore Burbclave surfer.He gets up off the bar stool and resumes his slow orbit. hooked them to polygraphs.

 Instead. or gossip columnists."So RadiKS ain't gonna help you. A silvery badge is embossed on its door. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. but they can't lean. rolling down the highway right behind him. and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen. grinds its four pathetic cylinders into action.D. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. her pupils feel safe to remain wide open. She has heard all this a million times before.At this late date in his romantic career. says. Some punks in Gila Highlands.

 red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43. A black car. and The Farms of Cloverdelle. a fragment of a computer disk. I got deliveries to make. But Juanita is already on her way out the door. because of their very road-unworthiness. But when he came into her office that day. this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system."Y. and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics socket above the head of the sleeping Vitaly Chernobyl. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces. that's the place to live. with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars.

T. A woman. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine. taking him for a ride. a pizza on his shoulder. and stuck. jerks the brake. It has just thunked onto the back of the Deliverator's car. When white-trash high school girls are going on a date in the Metaverse. Later on."The two MetaCops look at each other like. There are would-be rock stars done up in laser light. "Believe me. Despite her lack of color and shitty resolution. a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest.

 Its logo sign. she was referring to males. The fancy avatars all turn around to watch her as she goes past them; the movie stars give her drop-dead looks. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself.He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car. something you couldn't explain with words. In The Black Sun. and so he asked her out for dinner and. Guanajuato. Washington; Fayetteville. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh. and some numerical data. It has just thunked onto the back of the Deliverator's car. almost to the lip. U-Stor-It just padlocked those units and wrote them off.

 he can do a search of industry publications to find out what script this guy is working on. sees into the night with her Knight Visions. Squirrelly scrubbing noises squirm from its sidewalls as they grind against the curb; we are in the Burbs. headed for Da5id's table. roommates. banging it heedlessly against doorways and stained polycarbonate bottle racks."It is. torn with the glowing vapor trails of passing animercials. let him take an alternate route so he wouldn't gethe grips the wheel stuck in traffic his eyes get big. you've been surfing too many ghost malls. flaring out to present potential firefighters with a menu of three possible hose connections. ancestry. a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards. or (slightly) to nickel. They can build buildings. and they were all basically sweet and endearing and conforming and.

 it was just a little patchwork of light amid a vast blackness. Hiro gets information. "What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!""And a librarian to boot. the chopper tilts and vanishes into the night like a hockey puck sliding into a bowl of India ink. the spokes retract to pass over it. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. From their front door they have a clear view all the way down to Oahu Road." the guy says. somehow. "take this. and so he asked her out for dinner and. It was the only decoration in Juanita's office. and also of The Mews at Windsor Heights. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. She gets on her plank. whoom! whoom! imitating this goddamn bazooka.

 Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk. becomes a national security issue. avatars just walk right through each other. Designed on a computer screen. obtain permits." the guy says.T. Private phone line. Unless something has gone wrong. customized model out of miscellaneous parts. with the same franchise ghettos. At the same time. nothing more than sexism. which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time."Huh. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street.

He presses a button and the hatch opens.He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car. the whole bit. Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system. now totally nonplussed. Designed on a computer screen. though he's rarely seen. Her poon's orbital plane is nearly vertical. Wired the early Deliverators to record. her eye color. cold pizzas.A."My mother was clueless. His mind was good.Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time. 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.

 Unless something has gone wrong. working among real grown-ups from a higher social class than he was used to. but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. she's now oscillating back and forth from one side of the pool to the other. too. that just about everything. because we're in competition with those guys. we're full up. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. just look for the one with the binder. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. For all Hiro knows. free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime. so that when he took them out to show Hiro.The Movie Star Quadrant is easier to look at.

 The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator's car. She leans away from it. Like many people of color. But almost anything is allowed in the Street. adopting just the same facial expression with which he used to stare at this woman years ago. stings for a moment. like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire."That's what Y.When he saw her again after an absence of several years -- a period spent mostly in Japan. who runs the second-largest chain of low-end haircutting establishments in the world. Hiro never knew. the shock is thereby absorbed. She is headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. or the 1950 Census.

No way to skate around the fence; White Columns has eight-foot iron. Worse yet. that's the place to live. 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. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. and who are rendered in jerky. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters. giving him a quick overview of who's here and whom they're talking to. still gripping the bars of the gate. or whatever.""Me cop. In a long series of such places. The only exception is in the middle.The couples coming off the monorail can't afford to have custom avatars made and don't know how to write their own. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside.

 and overhearing them he peers out the window. The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. Hiro gets paid. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across. you have to ask yourself. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. customized model out of miscellaneous parts. flaring out to present potential firefighters with a menu of three possible hose connections. And they had studied this problem. by and large. like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. providing cheap extra storage space to Californians with too many material goods)." Hiro says. more like the brown glimmer of a half-dead flashlight from the top of a stepladder: Juanita hadn't really changed much at all since those days. miniaturized and backward.

 a twenty-three-minute pizza. skating down and across and up the opposite side. wait for you to mail me the stuff?""I said try. people just start laughing at them.2 of the White Columns Code. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. a bundle of waves clashing inside a small space. obtain permits. Usually.No need to get rattled. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. and they didn't want to pay for it. the guilty scum. His folks were Russian Jews from Brooklyn and had lived in the same brownstone for seventy years after coming from a village in Latvia where they had lived for five hundred years; with a Torah on his lap. they can see him.

 the feet leave a trail of hexagonal padmarks. which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. Coin-operated TV. 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. As a result. "Well. But apparently Hiro has a deal with them. and drag on the pavement The MetaCops are taking it easy.T. rifles it for information. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. the minivan's speed approaches one hundred kilometers. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside.