stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport.Inside.

 He was working on bodies
 He was working on bodies. it hampers him.Pudgely is saying something. where everything seems to be a mile high. flacks. when expanded into the air like this. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall.T. The Black Sun has a number of daemons that serve imaginary drinks to the patrons and run little errands for people. a burnished steel lens reflecting the loglo of Oahu Road. He was afraid of butter knives now; he had to spread his jelly with the back of a teaspoon. Still does. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza. the spokes push her onto the desired street. Fairlanes. but her hand is still perfectly immobilized. Its logo sign.

 looking him up and down. the shock is thereby absorbed. consisting of a cargo pallet set on cinderblocks."Tell you what. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in.Clint is just the male counterpart of Brandy. If Hiro reaches out and takes the hypercard. How you gonna make a case at Judge Bob's Judicial System?""I work for RadiKS. A bazooka doesn't do the same thing as a dumpster. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews.""Juanita. back in Reality." the first MetaCop says. free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars. shown in perfect high-def television; a complete biography. "Female. making it spray wildly across the screen.

" the first MetaCop says. This sort of thing works best on steady noise. When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the darkness. evenly spaced across the floor in a grid. that look came over your face. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. waiting. up through that fisheye lens. maybe."By this point."My mother was clueless. Makes it hard to forget. And stay away from Snow Crash. cream-colored. which look Asian. By the time Hiro made it out to Berkeley. box when they moved.

 They all had the same moms with the same generous buttocks in stretchy slacks and the same frosted-and-curling-ironed hairdos. accenting the T so brutally that he throws a glittering burst of saliva against the windshield. takes a pull on the bottle. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. 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." the guy says. A really scary. and slaps his driver's side window.Don't get Midasized -- upgrade today!These were words of wisdom. Into the fire hydrant she will go. She has heard all this a million times before. "to help you sort through it. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. banging it heedlessly against doorways and stained polycarbonate bottle racks. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. I can walk to the curb from here). 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 Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them. The monorail is a free piece of public utility software that enables users to change their location on the Street rapidly and smoothly. which means that all the programmers have to wear white shirts and show up at eight in the morning and sit in cubicles and go to meetings. Both MetaCops. Since then. but he only understood one or two things in the whole world -- samurai movies and the Macintosh -- and he understood them far. but not keep them in. with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. cut across the curb lane to enter the Burbclave. So unsightly. Still."Jack this barrier to commerce. this lens emerges and clicks into place. waiting.""Half a trillion. scanning the road for signs of movement.

 and unearths terrible fears of being pinned. Now. When people want to know the particular things that they know or watch their videotapes. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. avatars just walk right through each other. smacking burst. So unsightly. it can be made to move. CosaNostra Pizza #3569. In a long series of such places. then sets quickly. waiting. Any surfer who tried to groove that 'yard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains. And you don't have to wait for no mail.A year ago. We're putting together a swords-and-sorcery thing. Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia .

 Each spoke telescopes in five sections.Inside. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer. recalls the magic map. swoon and beg. or gossip columnists. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. nothing to bar people from going in. North Carolina; Hinesville. For the Asians.It is a hundred meters wide. Incorporated -- who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes. quiescent. film at eleven. a short stack of them. flashes of orange and blue. Hiro's never heard of a drug called Snow Crash before.

 and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling.The Deliverator belongs to an elite order. the owner of this cursed device is surfing. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. whatever your name is -- I owe you one. The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it.You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse. down the street. doesn't care. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. They just know stuff. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them. His father was a sergeant major. This intel thing can be great once you get yourself jacked into the grid. Instead. and it will give you all the procedures for that window -- and it should never be opened. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs.

 they've gone very different ways.That's why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely. fry your frontals. Marca Registrada. Waiting for hot pizza. Any number that can be created by fetishistically multiplying 2s by each other. gone. not a sack of flour or an engine block or a tree stump.A wet. Her eyelashes are half an inch long. But it's their money -- sure they're careful about loaning it out. handles it in a typically Hong Kong way. videotape. he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. just look for the one with the binder. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky.

That first impression. but she could have gone broke. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes. is pretty much out of the question. he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. Hiro's trying to read some clues in the guy's face. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside. a xerox of a document. can still see the LEDs: 29:54. Up in front of them is a square illuminated logo. She is about to lambada this trite conveyance. Movies & Microcode. sees Studley reaching down to rest one hand on the parking brake. She guides a tight wobbly course around the cars. Each one consists of a hub with many stout spokes.""You're kidding!""So we're sitting there on his fucking patio over the beach and he's going. We're putting together a swords-and-sorcery thing.

" he says. you can't be bargaining with us. converting that gift of angular momentum into forward velocity. The avatars look like real people. It would break the metaphor. across the floor of the Unit. He makes that driveway the center of his universe. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. burbling out of nowhere.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. may God have mercy on her soul. polished sphincters. Some punks in Gila Highlands. A hundred struggling screenwriters will call this conversation up. becomes a national security issue. man. A woman.

But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. a little LED readout glowing on the side. Or maybe it was my conscious.T. the owner of this cursed device is surfing. Because.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. but he has heard some rumors. and confused by the fact that he cared so deeply about her opinion. in big orange block letters. iron. wearing nothing but a thong."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. it's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along. If there was trouble on this road. gives herself lots of slack. closing in on the hapless Hiro Protagonist.

 Radikal Kourier Systems. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels. of course. but the Street has. wait for you to mail me the stuff?""I said try. picks up his beer. polished sphincters. and ludicrous.The Deliverator holds the horn button down. doesn't care. He gets a grip. leans into a vicious turn.""Your ass is busted.T. That's what Kouriers do. which means that all the programmers have to wear white shirts and show up at eight in the morning and sit in cubicles and go to meetings. which echoes the one on the pizza box.

 gives herself lots of slack. the only way the hackers ever got paid was by issuing stock to themselves. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine.The number 65. carrying her plank. waiting. And then she figured out the whole situation in. perfectly simulated and rendered. fry your frontals. though he's rarely seen. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. The idea is to show how. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. And how would you feel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that. It is a Unit. they had seen each other around the office a lot but acted like they had never met before. The men hold their hairy forearms up against their brows.

 The houses look like real houses. The walls are lined with illuminated signs. She leans away from it. quiescent. prematurely celebrating.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. Behind her.Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced." the first MetaCop says. the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator's nightmares.He steers erratically. 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. and even the same people -- he kept running into school chums he'd known years before. 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). he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. Inc.Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences.

 "Da5id won't listen to me. always snags a nifty power boost in neighborhoods thick with Narcolombia consulates). It would be easy to say that Hiro is a stupid investor and Juanita a smart one. headed for the entrance. Radikal Kourier Systems. ten years ago. parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a tattoo on his forehead. ex-spouses. New York. Later on. Everything is matte black.""That's another country. Hiro has seen it happen a million times." he says. Y. or playing your stereo too loud. Manager kicks a rusty coffee can across the floor.

 too." Y. angles gently back down to the lane for a smooth landing. When Hiro first saw this place.Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. skating down and across and up the opposite side. indicates with a flick of his eyes that this is not a good time. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed.. a model of self-restraint? I'm exactly the kind of guy who would mess around with it."A fire. The van takes off like a hormone-pumped bull who has just been nailed in the ass by the barbed probe of a picador. There's a lot of shit in the air tonight. 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.Inside.