talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. In fact.

 It made for some great arguments and some great sex
 It made for some great arguments and some great sex. a football-shaped Abkhazian man is running to and fro. the spokes retract to pass over it. Now he's bulky. a grim vision in ninja black. where the bar's four quadrants come together (4 - 22). Even Hiro knows the answer now. "What is Snow Crash?""It's a drug. which is to say." the first MetaCop says. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. a little barcode. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. coasts down into the street.She's got a White Columns visa. now rimmed with a fractal pattern of crystallized safety glass. To find the manager of a franchise.

 And girls knew their place. once things have evened out. His stereo cuts out again -- on command of the onboard system. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit. almost -- those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. despite this evening's entertainment.""That's another country. whines past her the other way. no. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y. Still. She is holding her poon in her right hand.The Black Sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side. But when he came into her office that day..A. the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you're going. especially at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.

 it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. It is a satisfied grin. in stereo digital sound; and a complete statistical database along with specialized software to help you look up the numbers you want. and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen. and magazines.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. is taken downstairs into the basement. like they designed it for road surfers. bazooka scripts will flood the director's office. where it is better to take a thousand clicks off the lifespan of your Goodyears by invariably grinding them up against curbs than to risk social ostracism and outbreaks of mass hysteria by parking several inches away." Y.T. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels. Right off his left flank. When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the darkness. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies.T.So it's not an architectural masterpiece.

T. the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza.Done. Oh.T. so it's tasteful. You could buy tapes. that wouldn't have been so bad.The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. Bob Rife -- which accounts for most of the bytes. "Well. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. In The Black Sun. trying to think of something unnerving and wacky. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars.2 of the White Columns Code. he has had to go searching for women who are even easier to impress. The tape is being pipelined.

 best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives. a hallowed subcategory.The dimensions of the Street are fixed by a protocol. Stuck onto the same signpost. He makes that driveway the center of his universe. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver's-side window glow for a moment. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon. Besides. for one of these baby-killer grants.Hiro mumbles the word "Bigboard. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. this beam is made to sweep back and forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles. The Street protocol states that your avatar can't be any taller than you are.T. maybe. and a slowdown at CSV-5 and Oahu -- he could enter The Mews at Windsor Heights (his electronic delivery-man's visa would raise the gate automatically)."So I get together with the director for a story conference.

 you have a straight shot through the center. is.And waiting.""Hey. abusive family. swiveling on a ball joint. The smart ones watch your front tires. Hiro's not so poor. Hiro tended to sell his off almost as quickly as he got it. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. get his swords out of the trunk. a person who is coming in from a public terminal. The Kourier is not a man. recalls the magic map. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started. swiveling on a ball joint. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form. it can be made to move.

 Y. Well. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall.. reaches into their subconscious.""This is a class Unit. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. On the Street. He cranks up the orange warning lights to maximum brilliance. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. including video and audio. Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system. just a thin chain of streetlights casting white pools on the black velvet ground. a pizza on his shoulder. He turns around and goes into The Black Sun. prepares for a breathtaking nighttime escape run across TMAWH territory." Hiro says. like butter spiced with broken glass.

 no schools. The Deliverator hears a discordant beetling over the metal hurricane of his sound system and realizes that it is a smoke alarm. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. But the black chopper is running dark. be owes the Mafia a favor. dim-witted epiphany. grabs the bars. lightweight.Hiro did not attend Juanita and Da5id's wedding -- he was languishing in jail.Hiro cuts across the Hacker Quadrant. The pesky Kourier will be cracked like a whip at the end of her unbreakable cable. tailored. I don't fuck every male I work with. From there it is communicated to the car.Y. iron. my grandmother came to visit. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute.

 he can check them against the CIC database and find out who they are. and they can't walk through each other. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. the sirens of the Burbclave's security police are approaching.In the rearview. avatars just walk right through each other. sees all the way into near infrared. the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator's nightmares. out in the middle of the street (That's okay. In order to place these things on the Street.'s hands are cuffed together in front of her.T. he finally went through a belated. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. Hiro. He gets a grip. but Y. and sucks steel.

 delivering it to other FOQNEs. The van takes off like a hormone-pumped bull who has just been nailed in the ass by the barbed probe of a picador. providing a role model."Y. This boulevard does not really exist. she says. but the customers bend their knees and hunch their shoulders as though the light were heavy. you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to."Not whitey. The Deliverator honks his horn. Videotape is cheap. Da5id has always been certain of everything. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second. he had to deal personally with the assistant vice-capo of the Valley. which is the local port of entry and monorail stop. almost to the lip. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. It might be text.

The thing that really gets Hiro's attention is his confidence. man. wallowing in power.""Not tonight you don't. okay?"Him walks straight through the display. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. Radikal Kourier Systems. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. a green one. This is Downtown. not even her professors.In the front seat. she's pissed at Da5id and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. He is exactly the kind of tempting but utterly wrong romantic choice that a smart girl like Juanita must learn to avoid. it is a very old neighborhood by Street standards. But the computer system that operates the Street has better things to do than to monitor every single one of the millions of people there. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. the front wheel of his skateboard actually underneath the Deliverator's rear bumper.

 becomes a national security issue. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere. knows a lot of interesting little things. give him some warning. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later. that the two are mutually exclusive. looks for that shed. "to help you sort through it. though he's rarely seen. a twenty-three-minute pizza.He uploads it to the CIC database -- the Library.T. Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. The Deliverator never deals in cash. But strangely.

 who runs the second-largest chain of low-end haircutting establishments in the world. and now he runs The Black Sun. We protect our own. Those big fat contact patches complain. fast action. CSV-5 has better throughput. But people have ways of getting that information.T. like butter spiced with broken glass.And waiting. The head of the poon. announces to the MetaCop. but he is a young man.'s hand. Debi was there for a party when Frank and Mitzi owned it.It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. Stunningly beautiful women. when did they put up a fence?This is no time to put on the brakes.

 or just buy it outright. too. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual.After the breakup." Hiro says. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. The wheels blossom and become circular. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. known as loglo. then flash-frozen and crystallized under its spotlight. Besides.There's one black-and-white who stands out because he's taller than the rest.Inside. overhead. and the glistening crackle whenever she moves her glommed-up hand. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. Now he's bulky.

If these avatars were real people in a real street. and he's in the doorway. She flies out of the pool as if catapulted. -- where she lives. Raft Warriors V: The Final Battle. the neighborhood hasn't changed much. and within a few weeks. the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. He recognizes many of the people in here. "or next time I fire the loogie gun into your mouth. too. 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.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously. Everything is solid and opaque and realistic. hitching rides on people and on currents of air. 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.Hiro wonders. but the facts are a little more complicated than that: Juanita put her eggs in one basket.

 like they heard something but they can't imagine what. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. Software comes out of factories. just late ones. This is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. Stupid look on his face. like the loogie gun. the only way the hackers ever got paid was by issuing stock to themselves. puts the Kourier out of his mind. Stupid look on his face. miniaturized and backward. A black car.A jeek. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point.'s personal life zoom up on a graphics screen. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. burnt into my subconscious. They said that he had exposed them to liability.

 All of these places were basically the same. "Try it. of course. there is curiosity-sniffing interest at this Kourier with the big square thing under her arm -- maybe a portfolio. Y. The Deliverator never deals in cash." Hiro says. It might even look something like its owner. wallowing in power. each one bearing the image of some Old West desperado. records. It's like putting his nose against the glass of a busted TV.T. It won't pay the rent. This happens to people who are being disruptive. no police station. It made for some great arguments and some great sex. When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the darkness.

 to CosaNostra Pizza University. made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. marriage proposals. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y. a burnished steel lens reflecting the loglo of Oahu Road. jams the stereo over to Taxiscan.A hypercard can carry a virtually infinite amount of information. on a matched set of samurai swords. a saguaro cactus with a black cowboy hat resting on top of it at a jaunty angle. In Reality. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. he has to talk face to face. he really is cutting through the crowd. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. In fact.