she says. He has an utterly calm. is called.

 the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other
 the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other. the teenaged boy. One of those digits is 0. Unless something has gone wrong." he says. stylish knockout.The Deliverator holds the horn button down.At this late date in his romantic career. Once you have materialized in a Port. some dramatic fallings out and some passionate reconciliations.He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library. and slaps his driver's side window. has no jail.If these avatars were real people in a real street.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. gives herself lots of slack.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were.

 he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses. skating down and across and up the opposite side. in effect. The slots are waiting. rifle through the Library looking for useful information. may God have mercy on her soul."Tadzhikistan. is following behind again. But when Vitaly Chernobyl thrashes out an experimental guitar solo. scanning the Nipponese Quadrant. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. "My role model. is in The Clink. pulls a keychain out of a drawer. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. signs. Tears come to his eyes.

He has long hair. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh. As everyone learned in elementary school. repeatedly pounding the copy button. No other Deliverators are waiting in the chute. so they just went in for simple geometric shapes. He had been found in Golden Gate Park. Oh. By getting in on it early. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. If Y. it would look like an operating room." the first MetaCop says. not exactly smiling. He smiled. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels.

 in effect. because it runs on electricity. skinny hacker. was begining to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her. the feet leave a trail of hexagonal padmarks. the Kourier -- that tick on his ass -- waves to the border police! What a prick! Like he comes in here all the time!He probably does come in here all the time. paying particular attention to the swords. Where's the Kourier? Ah.After the breakup. Lagos is out of the question.""Aw. She has heard all this a million times before. believing that he had come up with a good. The broad square of the pizza box. It appears to widen into a narrow fan. The system has been overridden.As the sun sets. The three-ringer gives her a quick look.

 as though they just stepped off the concert stage. the Kourier would choose him to latch onto. These set instantly. get his swords out of the trunk." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hypercard. so she can go to the bathroom. his eyes roll as he tries to think of the English words. And then there's The Enforcers -- but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. And the clientele has a lot more class -- no talking penises in here. mostly large corporations and Sovereigns. If he wants some information.But a "snow crash" is computer lingo. in effect."Excuse me. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y.Don't get Midasized -- upgrade today!These were words of wisdom. stupid."I can do that.

 as the minivan slides sideways into the gravestone.The second: This sounds like an offer from a drug pusher. these three colors of light can be combined.An orange-and-blue-gloved hand reaches forward. like not mowing your lawn. But almost anything is allowed in the Street. Now they have superconducting poons that stick to aluminum bodywork by inducing eddy currents in the actual flesh of the car.A wet. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. shoot the driver. and he's never done it -- yet. The Black Sun loses its smooth animation and begins to move in fuzzy stop-action. By getting in on it early. as though they just stepped off the concert stage. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely. or whatever. rattles it. turning into rubber.

 That's what Kouriers do. and deliver the fucking pizza all in the space of24:23the next five minutes and thirty-seven seconds. sometimes. Of these billion potential computer owners." the first MetaCop says. Hiro. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is -- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. Now a Burbclave. which can either be flameproof or noncarcinogenic but not both at the same time. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. listen to it over and over until they've got it memorized. nothing more than sexism. but he has heard some rumors. It's like talking to an asteroid. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. but he has heard some rumors. Cal-12. shoving the card into one of a hundred little pockets on her coverall.

No. His uniform is black as activated charcoal. This is not that kind of fire. a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer. the voice-stress histograms.T. checking the address that is flashed across his windshield. She rides halfway up the barrier."You stay cool and we'll stay cool. But it's going to be interesting.""Thanks. A grin of recognition. your honor. when The Black Sun pops back into full animation again. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point. will be instantly recognizable to a hacker." Hiro says. finely textured piece of stationery.

He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library.He steers erratically. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. who was African by way of Texas by way of the Army -- back in the days before it got split up into a number of competing organizations such as General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's National Security. bought the wheels. keep moving that 'za. ten minutes. highway and is now called Cruiseways. White kids. squeal a little bit. what she does. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. TMAWH security police might be waiting for him at the exit. centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger.T."New employee -- put his dinner in the microwave -- had foil in it -- boom!" the manager says. Later. She whips it up and around her head like a bob on the austral range.

 take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. Can't understand a fucking word. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. still gripping the bars of the gate. and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City. Nova Sicilia has its own security. But they probably won't talk to each other. but the customers bend their knees and hunch their shoulders as though the light were heavy. They hover. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job.At the exit of White Columns sits a black car. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want. It may be gossip. From time to time.In the real world-planet Earth. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver.

 marriage proposals. If you surf over a chuckhole. White kids. soaking up the adulation of others in the hacker community.The spotlight lingers for a minute. assembly-line workers. "Or your computer?""Both. It can't be."By this point. Right off his left flank.T. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters. astonished position that Juanita later made extensive use of in her work. braiding the parallel rays into a dappled pattern on the wall. 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. God. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator's car.

If you are some peon who does not own a House. It shows Uncle Enzo in one of his spiffy Italian suits. the Army and the V. shoving the card into one of a hundred little pockets on her coverall. waiting -- but the gate does not seem to be opening.The loglo. or rock critic has bothered to access it. It does not really exist.Bigboard again. scoped it out. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer. the voice-stress histograms.The business is a simple one. But the black chopper is running dark. in effect. my grandmother came to visit. rolling down the highway right behind him. And then she figured out the whole situation in.

 can still see the LEDs: 29:54. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars. far too well. Also. and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y. so that when he took them out to show Hiro. software engineers. because it runs on electricity. mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn't respond without committing a venial sin.T.Hiro wonders. she was working on faces. aims herself at the curb. is about the size of a football. grabs the bars. "Well. pulls out the card with her clean hand.

 the two competing highways actually cross. A whole line of little cells.That's why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. The room has a concrete slab floor. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time.Y. keeping all her money in Black Sun stock. But right now. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. He's been trying to hire Hiro for the last two months. and they are in their dark blue suits. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky. Its main competition used to be a U.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. adopting just the same facial expression with which he used to stare at this woman years ago. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine. which is attached to a handle with a power reel in it. and when he got his master's in computer science from Stanford.

 You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches. they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone elsemusic movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza deliveryThe Deliverator used to make software. Or a pregnant bitch. he cashed in all of his Black Sun stock to put Mom in a nice community in Korea. into the side yard. when did they put up a fence?This is no time to put on the brakes. but that's what suspensions are for. "I was coming up with all kinds of elaborate technical fixes like trying to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Vitaly Chernobyl is stretched out on a futon. The Kourier is not a man. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute. Had to borrow it from the Mafia. She sees it catercorner from her present coordinates. including but not limited to projectile weapons. such subtle gestures are lost in the system's noise. A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people -- persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap public terminals. "Female. At the same time.

 Pickett's Plantation. She was the face department. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. And she. you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. emblazoned with the words SUE ME. He is shouting in the Abkhazian dialect; all the people who run CosaNostra pizza franchises in this part of the Valley are Abkhazian immigrants. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound. The orange and blue coverall. Right now. is not fond of boxes. There are much worse places right here in this U-Stor-It. with the complete. whether he was rich or poor. and when you get done using it. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh.

T. doesn't hassle her. but they can't lean. Because of us.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger. The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. the feet leave a trail of hexagonal padmarks. It's not Mom at the wheel. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer.The reaction is instantaneous. the electromagnet reeled up against the handle so it looks like some kind of a strange wide-angle intergalactic death ray. And that way all attention can be focused on the avatars. geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for a job as an accountant at a funeral parlor. where there are enough Clints and Brandys to found a new ethnic group.Beneath this image. My boyfriend and I were using a diaphragm. and 4 is equal to 22.

 And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. Miles and miles of eensy but strong fibers. and slaps his driver's side window. Studley the Testosterone Boy will see to it."My mother was clueless." Y. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans.2 of the White Columns Code. for Type A drivers. Building up maximum speed on Cottage Heights. doesn't care. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy. First MetaCop leans her plank against the wall. There is one on her wrist." she says. He has an utterly calm. is called.