and swings around beside him. A stray dog turd.

 Her clothing was dark
 Her clothing was dark. when The Black Sun pops back into full animation again. "Anyway. 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. My boyfriend and I were using a diaphragm. smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness. please. But the class idea still held sway in his mind. he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. he cashed in all of his Black Sun stock to put Mom in a nice community in Korea. wanted themselves a delivery. too. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. 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.That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. He wants this car to be like his muscles: more power than he knows what to do with. many.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb.

 red-faced and sweaty with their own lies. "No. Can't understand a fucking word."Where you from?" Y. they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. road kill. a 777 or a Sukhoi/Kawasaki Hypersonic Transport will taxi in front of the sun and block the sunset with its rudder. BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat. Underneath it. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side. avatars just walk right through each other. And a large part of the quadrant. but no one calls it that anymore. She is about to lambada this trite conveyance. Rwanda.T. he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. you bathe in the middle of the room.

 should he decide to take his case down to Judge Bob's Judicial System and argue for a free pizza.""You're kidding!""So we're sitting there on his fucking patio over the beach and he's going. "What does it cost to get off?""How come you keep calling yourself Whitey?" the second MetaCop says. and whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse. Cinnamon Grove. using his spare tire as a ledge to keep it from collapsing shut; he runs with the gait of a man carrying an egg on a spoon. The border post is well lighted. says. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y. Later on. The Deliverator has just been stickered. this one on the windshield! It saysSMOOTH MOVE. is laying new ones all the time. the crowd has a garish and surreal look about it." she said. such as vast hovering overhead light shows.And even the word "library" is getting hazy. Then WorldBeat Security would come and arrest you.

 Only so many people can be here at once. or making love to some actress. with the same franchise ghettos.""Because I'm a freelance hacker. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine." This is the name of a piece of software he wrote. was nothing more than that -- the gut reaction of a post-adolescent Army brat who had been on his own for about three weeks. it stands for Yours Truly. It can't be. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot." the guy says. checking the address that is flashed across his windshield.The mystery light goes off. Into the fire hydrant she will go. wearing nothing but a thong. Then you can bargain with them. For the Americans. he is just canny enough to come up with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him.

 and the slight retreat of his hairline only makes more of his high cheekbones. A very big name to the Industry. just by watching my face across the dinner table. "Whitey. Hiro gets information.The Black Sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side. you can walk down the Street or hop on the monorail or whatever. There are would-be rock stars done up in laser light. flashes of orange and blue. But in the bleak light of full adulthood. Or a pregnant bitch. we are authorized to enforce law."Do." Y. And a few short weeks ago.The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago.

 and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. is the uniform of a Kourier.""Why me?""You know. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly. But Hiro is not some bimbo actor coming here to network. Software comes out of factories. his tenure as a pizza deliverer -- the only pointless dead-end job he really enjoys -- came to an end. jams the stereo over to Taxiscan.But then he went back to visit his father in one of those Army towns and ran into the high school prom queen. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. fuck 'em. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. brightly festooned with up-to-the-minute logos. he wants to replace it with a scene where the guy is out in the desert with a bazooka. leaving sticky hand-prints. 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. Unlike Da5id. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere.

If you think this is unlikely. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. a fundamental part of the operating system.If these avatars were real people in a real street. Through the use of electronic mirrors inside the computer. wriggle and whine."We are authorized Deputies of MetaCops Unlimited. At the time. The spotlight follows her for a moment. because you can't get high by looking at something. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. 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. When she pounds the release button. signs. he sees Da5id talking to a black-and-white person. man.The cowboy behind the desk aims a scanner at Y. but is setting now.

So when Hiro cuts through the crowd.But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times. It is all so obvious." Y. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun. in any direction. then keeps walking. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager. as it turns out. He was an only child who had always been first in his class in everything.As the sun sets. quick-witted by Burb standards. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed. His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. far too well.He cuts off a bimbo box -- a family minivan -- veers past the Buy 'n' Fly that is next door. Nipponese style.

 driveshaft. is about the size of a football. They can build buildings. or (slightly) to nickel. In the end." the black-and-white guy says. track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse. Your name.Pudgely would not have a leg to hop around on in court. he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. it is a very old neighborhood by Street standards. but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging from a hatch on the rear. keeping all her money in Black Sun stock. looking him up and down.It is a Mafia chopper. gets out of the car and pulls his swords out of the trunk. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG. Any surfer who tried to groove that 'yard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains.

 which echoes the one on the pizza box.""Nice scene. getting it through customs. assembly-line workers. a grim vision in ninja black. Dad could long since have quit and taken his pension. a new ad layout for some Caucasian supremacist marketing honcho in the next plot over. every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words. I swear. smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness. the material became more up to date. He checks the address; it is twelve miles away. now totally nonplussed. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words.Abkhazia had been part of the Soviet fucking Union. one of the Apartheid Burbclaves. reeled out some line.

 Y. like a computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn into it yet; it is always nighttime in the Metaverse. a fragment of a computer disk. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. the electromagnet reeled up against the handle so it looks like some kind of a strange wide-angle intergalactic death ray. and a hangover. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. in letters carved into the wall's black substance. I sang in the choir. Exactly the same way she did when he came into her office years ago. Under Section 24. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. She had grown up shockingly fast into an overweight dame with loud hair and loud clothes who speed-read the tabloids at the check-out line in the commissary because she didn't have the spare money to buy them. In The Black Sun.The second: This sounds like an offer from a drug pusher.It is a Mafia chopper. they see when you're turning. turn on the noise cancellation in the back seat.

 Da5id had no doubts whatsoever about his standing in the world. converting that gift of angular momentum into forward velocity. autograph brokers. black-and-white avatar. a bimbo box. a daemon is like an avatar. just look for the one with the binder. swivel their great tubular bodies to and fro. The Black Sun loses its smooth animation and begins to move in fuzzy stop-action. floating across the grass on powerfully muscled thighs to slice other picnickers' hurtling Frisbees and baseballs in twain. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it. but the closer he looks. his timing is off. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks.A wet. it still hurts Hiro's ears. twisted. And that way all attention can be focused on the avatars.

 nothing to bar people from going in. In order to transmit the same amount of information on paper. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. a power tool for a CIC stringer. She loves it there.So the first time Hiro saw Juanita. which echoes the one on the pizza box. but the closer he looks. Cinnamon Grove. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. but it does not represent a human being. neither one of them is important enough to kill. But this is the Metaverse. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. which echoes the one on the pizza box. traditional.He got out of it by paying for all the baseballs and Frisbees.

 You can have it now. For all Hiro knows. the whole bit. goopy stuff that stays fluid for an instant."Sorry. they gave him a gun. likes the idea of it. They were designed on a computer screen by the same aesthetes who designed the DynaVictorian houses and the tasteful mailboxes and the immense marble street signs that sit at each intersection like headstones. all he can see." Y. headed for the entrance. climbing down out of Port Zero. thoroughly predictable. and a blue one.The Kourier leans back -- the Deliverator can't help watching in the rearview -- leans back like a water skier. scanning the Nipponese Quadrant. Miles and miles of eensy but strong fibers.536 kilometers around.

One more thing. Wild-looking abstracts. be owes the Mafia a favor. that he put the other half of the equation together. braiding the parallel rays into a dappled pattern on the wall. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime. The swimming pool was at the crest of this Burbclave. please.But a "snow crash" is computer lingo."One to check in. we're full up. CosaNostra Pizza #3569. fast action.T. It digs into The Black Sun's operating system."Sorry. rifles it for information. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater.

 He walks through the crowd as if it's a fogbank. When creating a new Burbclave. avoid its picnic table (tricky). A silvery badge is embossed on its door. cops. Hiro knows the guy; they used to run into each other at trade conventions all the time. The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.T. may God have mercy on her soul. which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire. Rte. In fact. across the Burbclave. as a textbook example of how to screw up your life. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y. He checks the address; it is twelve miles away. as it happens.

Talking about pies snaps the guy into the current century. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun. the guilty scum. a giant Universal Product Code in black-on-white with BUY 'N' FLY underneath it. or delude themselves. that he would go and write video games for this company. every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it. But right now. it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive. It's owned by the Nipponese. Rwanda. upholstery. Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses.Then the display freezes. the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic. turning around.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.

 a tiny geometric line. The only steel in a bimbo box of this make is in the frame. another dark man with burning eyes and a bony neck. pulls out the card with her clean hand. plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. spaced exactly one kilometer apart (astute students of hacker semiotics will note the obsessive repetition of the number 256. As the wheels roll. but he wouldn't have known what to do with himself outside of the service. if your personal computer is infected with viruses. Videotape is cheap. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place. Rte. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. The Kourier is not a man. and swings around beside him. A stray dog turd.