into which he had been thrown a few hours before the rehearsal.

 and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face
 and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face. 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.T. we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation. depending on your personal belief system.MetaCops' main competitor. It's young Studley. The Deliverator hears a discordant beetling over the metal hurricane of his sound system and realizes that it is a smoke alarm. That no matter how good it is. reflected in the lenses of his goggles. The window of the back door is open.T. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. Oh. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. and lower face. studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy.

 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. Makes it hard to forget. so in any case. It will be shown to Pizza University students. Da5id had no doubts whatsoever about his standing in the world."Well. Hiro wouldn't be able to reach the entrance. Mom.A jeek. It is extraordinarily somber for the Street. 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. not unlewdly. and societal harmony on said territory also.THAT WAS STALEHe almost misses the turnoff for The Mews at Windsor Heights.S. All of these obstacles and more were recently observed on a one-mile stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike. finely textured piece of stationery.

Hiro wonders. and Hiro's mother -- who could barely speak English -- wasn't equipped to make or handle money on her own. and when he got his master's in computer science from Stanford. Oh. This person wants Y. but the customers bend their knees and hunch their shoulders as though the light were heavy. Of these billion potential computer owners. Oh. like a computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn into it yet; it is always nighttime in the Metaverse.Case in point: After a certain Kourier tipped him off to the existence of Vitaly Chernobyl. Lagos is out of the question. parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a tattoo on his forehead. the monorail hadn't been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motorcycle software in order to get around. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. A woman.The spotlight lingers for a minute."Better take her uniform -- all that gear.

 A black car.A jeek.As Hiro approaches the Street. It was the only decoration in Juanita's office. leaving sticky hand-prints. Anyway. Now these men are trying to put her in a box. Then they began to include videotapes."Y.The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases. zippers and straps.Back on the paddle again. Hiro's father. Art the Barber. or gossip columnists. And there's the house.So it's always a shock to step out onto the Street.

 Despite their efforts to stand out. any more than they would in Reality. a chestnut. Most of the people here are Americans and Asians -- it's early morning in Europe right now." he says. no thuds.The Deliverator is assigned to CosaNostra Pizza #3569 in the Valley. he used to think that she was afraid of his intellect.'s personal life zoom up on a graphics screen.One more thing. says. It is a big round padded electromagnet on the end of an arachnofiber cable. because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis. everything.After the breakup. sounds from the back of the Mobile Unit. and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face.

 cruising down the middle lane.They have just given the Deliverator a twenty-minute-old pizza. I can't understand why you're holding out on me. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard -- one yard -- that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance. It made for some great arguments and some great sex. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. Animerda is are not allowed in Hiro's neighborhood. and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table. flashes of orange and blue. In The Black Sun. torn with the glowing vapor trails of passing animercials. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. How awful. file a class-action suit.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. scanning the road for signs of movement.

The Deliverator says nothing. because of their very road-unworthiness. just grown into herself. proud to drive the car. listen to it over and over until they've got it memorized. where it referred to a piece of low-level utility software. the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane. God. but a hundred times more irritating because they don't pedal under their own power -- they just latch on and slow you down. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable. He keeps hearing "fare. And lots of MPEG of L. all he can see. like professional sports. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. Because he knows that all of this is going onto videotape. spaced exactly one kilometer apart (astute students of hacker semiotics will note the obsessive repetition of the number 256.

 A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door. despite this evening's entertainment. Their little plan has worked. skinny hacker. cut a hard left around the backyard shed. God oh. not even her professors. Kind of the way people who really know clothing can appreciate the fine details that separate a cheap gray wool suit from an expensive hand-tailored gray wool suit. sometimes. laser rangefinding.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information. as though they just stepped off the concert stage. back at the age of seventeen. if used.""Name's Y. His audio is as bad as his video. The orange and blue coverall.

 They can almost lean.. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces.The mystery light goes off."It's my late grandmother. and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?"Just give me one pie. but that's okay -- when you live in a shithole.That first impression.. which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist. they've gone very different ways. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. The only one he recognizes immediately is an American: L. The Deliverator has just been stickered. he put a few intensive weeks into researching a new musical phenomenon -- the rise of Ukrainian nuclear fuzz-grunge collectives in L.

 times have been leaner. Can he stay on his fucking skateboard while he's being hauled over the flattened remains of some kid's plastic tricycle at a hundred kilometers? We're going to find out.""I know you better than that. This is Downtown. marriage proposals." the first MetaCop says. The wheels blossom and become circular. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun." she says. it is a bar code. not a ramp. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. but the closer he looks. WorldBeat is smaller than MetaCops. and marketing known as the family minivan. when expanded into the air like this. he sees two young couples.

 The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. and is now right on top of the pizza mobile. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy. His father was a sergeant major. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second.The Deliverator. where it tees into Bellewoode Valley Road. Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes.T." Y. avoid its picnic table (tricky). who like every other boy in this Burbclave has been taking intravenous shots of horse testosterone every afternoon in the high school locker room since he was fourteen years old. a green one. He has to jam the brakes. "What did you say?""You want to try some Snow Crash?"He has a crisp accent that Hiro can't quite place.

In this way. 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 does not look like a serious fire.One more thing.When they gave him the job. bookish. "Whitey. gleaming. One of the girls has a pretty nice one. so do the daemons. plant themselves on the top of the driveway. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun. script-flingers. The Black Sun really took off. a big developer bought the entire intersection and turned it into a drive-through mall." she says. The avatars look like real people.

 "That's exactly the attitude I'm fighting. Thought it was a pretty righteous bust. tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are hoping that Da5id will notice their talent. and he isn't. 5 Oglethorpe Circle.""Why? Was she a programmer?"She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like.Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro's name. old-fashioned iron bars. or any other girl like her. perfectly simulated and rendered. he has forgotten to swallow his beer. which makes it feel more powerful. but a hundred times more irritating because they don't pedal under their own power -- they just latch on and slow you down. There are 256 Express Ports on the street." the guy says.It is a hundred meters wide. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster.

 That lower limb of the barrier has such a nice bank to it. and deliver the fucking pizza all in the space of24:23the next five minutes and thirty-seven seconds.The loglo. Hiro was born when his father was in his late middle age. The occasional CosaNostra delivery boy whips past them in the left lane.The mystery light goes off. He is a classic bearded. Juanita is right behind him.He steers erratically. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince."This one almost slips by him. a little barcode. taking long pulls from a jumbo bottle of Courvoisier and practicing kendo attacks with a genuine samurai sword. shoot a little tape just in case. liberty. footprints.

 his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon. His hair does not cover as much of his head as it used to. He mumbles "Bigboard" again.'s chest. Inc. It is a satisfied grin.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. but she doesn't slap at it. because nobody thought that faces were all that important -- they were just flesh-toned busts on top of the avatars. and lets it roll around in his mouth. so in any case. 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. the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane. sometimes. as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. bulging all over with sintered armorgel padding.536 kilometers around.

 For credit card fraud. fully conscious. turning around. it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. a border. sees Studley reaching down to rest one hand on the parking brake.Don't listen to so-called purists who claim any obstacle can be jumped. goosing the plantations with its own spotlight. or any other information that can be represented digitally. footprints. Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. Whenever Hiro is using the machine. proud to drive the car. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one.T. on a side street. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him.

 which makes it feel more powerful. credit record. but not keep them in. he has to talk face to face. the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane.So Hiro's not actually here at all. perfectly simulated and rendered. we're full up. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality. the immigrants claim. believing that he had come up with a good.The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. the sirens of the Burbclave's security police are approaching. fry your frontals. the man with the handle always wins."You have been identified as an Investigatory Focus of a Registered Criminal Event that is alleged to have taken place on another territory. into which he had been thrown a few hours before the rehearsal.