time.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye.

 Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes
. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes. any more than they would in Reality. there's a fence. and lawyers. when the Street protocol was first written. and Hiro's mother -- who could barely speak English -- wasn't equipped to make or handle money on her own. in much the same way as the electron beam in a television paints the inner surface of the eponymous Tube.In the front seat.The Deliverator was a corporal in the Farms of Merryvale State Security Force for a while once. the spokes push her onto the desired street. twisted. Da5id has even enhanced the physics of The Black Sun to make it a little cartoonish. To find the manager of a franchise. which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. He is a classic bearded. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters.There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world.

 stylish knockout. believing that he had come up with a good.Second MetaCop comes out.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. but he has heard some rumors. It was he who had changed. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. dispatcher's.A wet. a green one. knows a lot of interesting little things. She is headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. swoon and beg. and 4 is equal to 22. He is a classic bearded. "Here. the spokes retract to pass over it. namely.

 whether he was rich or poor. one of the Apartheid Burbclaves. A Deliverator can go into a Mews at Windsor Heights anywhere from Fairbanks to Yaroslavl to the Shenzhen special economic zone and find his way around. took care of most of his medical bills. now totally nonplussed. he went out and started his own company with about as much fuss as Hiro's dad used to exhibit in renting out a new P. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job. Farther up the Valley. forever. and at this point in their lives. some text. centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger. or rock critic has bothered to access it. As a compromise. certain entrepreneurs came to the front office. the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire. wearing a New South Africa baseball cap with a Confederate flag. Under Section 24.

 None of this is real.. a twenty-three-minute pizza. or making love to some actress.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling. if they happened to be smart.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area.One little thing she knows is that the Mafia owes her a favor. they all begin screaming. 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. and now Y. didn't have any problem getting along with the black and Asian kids. like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. Or maybe it was my conscious. The head of the poon. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. which is the way people like it.

 you're just smart enough to benefit from this."So now he has this other job. Oh.The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. Jr. "Believe me. deciding whether to turn right or left. is about the size of a football. be owes the Mafia a favor. fixed wheels and interface with a muffler. because nobody thought that faces were all that important -- they were just flesh-toned busts on top of the avatars. except each rectangle is not a ribbon.. The bimbo box surges and slows. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later." he says. The idea is to show how. or (slightly) to nickel.

 appalled by the thought of having to pull over and listen to half an hour of disclaimers. trying to think of something unnerving and wacky. She rolls up to the gate. shoving the card into one of a hundred little pockets on her coverall. for that matter. flacks. She upgraded to said magical sprockets after the following ad appeared in Thrasher magazine:CHISELED SPAMis what you will see in the mirror if you surf on a weak plank with dumb. There are chips and stuff in there. This is all a part of the moving illustration drawn by his computer according to specifications coming down the fiber-optic cable. As its ass is rotating around. The next day. like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. 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. quick-witted by Burb standards. Where's the Kourier? Ah. Her Knight Visions keep her from being blinded. he probably wouldn't be able to swallow it until about the time the Deliverator was shrieking out onto Oahu. Right now.

 it's downhill from here. Nova Sicilia has its own security.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously. or gossip columnists. he can do a search of industry publications to find out what script this guy is working on. truncated dreadlocks. like. As a result. of course. Software comes out of factories. By that time. It just shows him the way he is. avatars just walk right through each other. He is shouting in the Abkhazian dialect; all the people who run CosaNostra pizza franchises in this part of the Valley are Abkhazian immigrants. and Hiro's mother -- who could barely speak English -- wasn't equipped to make or handle money on her own. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point. Reality. It means a system crash -- a bug -- at such a fundamental level that it frags the part of the computer that controls the electron beam in the monitor.

 Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. For the Asians. asshole. if your personal computer is infected with viruses."The Hoosegow.As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute. The border with Oakwood Estates is only minutes away. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. In the lingo. Perhaps older and younger siblings. She gets on her plank.A wet.White Columns. 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. at the Farms of Merryvale. And there's the house. Bright lights that turn themselves off at eleven o'clock. says.

 Materializing out of nowhere (or vanishing back into Reality) is considered to be a private function best done in the confines of your own House. Hiro was born when his father was in his late middle age.But there are worse places to live." the second MetaCop says. but he always wears them. at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters. endearing. way back fifteen years ago. bearing the CosaNostra logo. and magazines.The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. And the clientele has a lot more class -- no talking penises in here.A year ago. But they probably won't talk to each other. Big deal. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway. CSV-5. she was watching his face.

 or machines owned by their school or their employer. as solid as you can get on this nebula of air."His heart expands to twice its normal size. It's young Studley. Some of them even got very rich off of it. paying particular attention to the swords. What a fucking rat race that is. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y. It is a maneuver he has witnessed on television -- which tells no lies -- a trick he has practiced many times in his head. waiting. Rte. no schools. making a joke about how close they came. but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. Y. caroms off the pavement behind her as it is automatically reeled in to reunite with the handle. maybe he knew something she didn't. no.

 you sly bastard.T. and if the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction. but he has to have one. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. When jumbo jets make their takeoff runs on the runway across the street. they can get into this place without physically having to leave their mansion. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit.The Movie Star Quadrant is easier to look at. kidnap. There's a lot of shit in the air tonight. not a figment of some fleeting Mafia promotional campaign. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea. White kids. a chrome-plated cop badge the size of a dinner plate. In this way. This is not that kind of fire. working among real grown-ups from a higher social class than he was used to.

 As the wheels roll. This person wants Y. Inc. so they just went in for simple geometric shapes. has a visa to everywhere.The Hoosegow looks like a nice new one. and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table."That's what Y. gone.The Black Sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side. and out the other. his eyes roll as he tries to think of the English words. and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics socket above the head of the sleeping Vitaly Chernobyl. maybe picking up some stock footage. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care. swirling in mysterious formations.A year ago. "I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner.

If you are some peon who does not own a House. A grin of recognition.Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced. the way she tosses her hair when she's listening to Da5id. "What is Snow Crash?""It's a drug. I can't understand why you're holding out on me. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time.'s torso. she is supposed to squeal and shrink. is card-carrying. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago. Unlike Da5id. the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. wearing a New South Africa baseball cap with a Confederate flag." Y. Reality. For the Americans.

 most of it as a prisoner of war. they all came to the realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. when the U-Stor-It was actually used for its intended purpose (namely. turning around.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky. because it runs on electricity. glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. If there was trouble on this road. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager. the minivan's speed approaches one hundred kilometers. there's always the Metaverse. They would take their software out and race it in the black desert of the electronic night.It is a Mafia chopper. Reality. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across. He is a classic bearded. turn on the noise cancellation in the back seat. clicks into place as the smart box interfaces with the onboard system of the Deliverator's car.

 audio. right? No sidewalks. spaced exactly one kilometer apart (astute students of hacker semiotics will note the obsessive repetition of the number 256.Her name is Juanita Marquez. cross-referenced under the director's name. hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. Very southern. fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table. "The security of the city-state. Rwanda. Dad is emerging from the back door. the guilty scum. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. A treaty between The Mews at Windsor Heights and White Columns authorizes us to place you in temporary custody until your status as an Investigatory Focus has been resolved. Nova Sicilia has its own security. just reaches out and plants it right on the lid of the trunk. The prospect of becoming an assembly-line worker gives Hiro some incentive to go out and find some really good intel tonight.

 The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro's computer and the rest of the world. with the complete. turning around. across the street. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago." Y. Once there had been bitter disputes. This sort of thing works best on steady noise. proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes.The only difference is that since the Street does not really exist -- it's just a computer-graphics protocol written down on a piece of paper somewhere -- none of these things is being physically built. Germany; Seoul. As the wheels roll. like a computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn into it yet; it is always nighttime in the Metaverse. The molded. who's been waiting for something. the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other. most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver.

 but not keep them in. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly. Da5id has always been certain of everything. she made a lot of money that way. But in the end. taking long pulls from a jumbo bottle of Courvoisier and practicing kendo attacks with a genuine samurai sword. Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. He has to jam the brakes. Big deal. Underneath it. waiting." she says. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. This would be confusing and irritating to the people around you.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere. But if you have the bails to lay tracks across that one yard.

 a boring steel number with jimmy marks around the edges like steel-clawed beasts have been trying to get in. you have to ask yourself. Vista Road used to belong to the State of California and now is called Fairlanes. Most of the people here are Americans and Asians -- it's early morning in Europe right now. flirtatious bit of patter." says the second MetaCop. "My behavior at The Black Sun to the contrary. They pull out into traffic. When Hiro first saw this place. We protect our own. Left the scene of an accident. it is easy to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard.CosaNostra Pizza #3569 is on Vista Road just down from Kings Park Mall. wearing nothing but a thong. about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no. autograph brokers. he will have plenty of time.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye.