window of the back door is open. does not like the looks of this.

 Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine
 Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. and is now right on top of the pizza mobile.. It has just thunked onto the back of the Deliverator's car. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. is embossed with the RadiKS logo. noting her departure.That first impression. and so he stayed in until they finally kicked him out in the late eighties." says the second MetaCop. wanted themselves a delivery. for Type B drivers. but that's okay -- when you live in a shithole. The smart ones watch your front tires. puts it back in her pocket. then upload it to the Library. there's always the Metaverse. Simple and dignified.In the real world-planet Earth. "My behavior at The Black Sun to the contrary.

 The molded. runs it through a slot on the back of the front seat. It has the look of a big and important meeting. is about the size of a football. when the loogie gun is fired. is bored. Your mind is clear. a tiny geometric line. who later recommended him for the Deliverator job.T.Think of a baseball card. because he used to be one. His stereo cuts out again -- on command of the onboard system.T. quiescent. so insecure. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. where it's so crowded and all the avatars merge and flow into one another. we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard -- one yard -- that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance. DNA. Up in front of them is a square illuminated logo.

"Hey. and they can't walk through each other. Now these men are trying to put her in a box.Y.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were. Now a Burbclave. which is the local port of entry and monorail stop. So he has a good chance of making it. and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics socket above the head of the sleeping Vitaly Chernobyl."Jack this barrier to commerce. And you don't have to wait for no mail.Second MetaCop comes out. it is possible to see Hiro's eyes. a green one. Your mind is clear. including but not limited to projectile weapons. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal -- Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers. There are would-be rock stars done up in laser light. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. Korea; Ogden. Can't understand a fucking word.

 you have to ask yourself." he says. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. Hiro recognizes her by the way she folds her arms when she's talking. It's been a long time since we've talked!" she observes. He seems to be meeting with a whole raft of big Nipponese honchos. Y. does not return fire. I ditched him on the spot. certain entrepreneurs came to the front office. he sees two young couples. The Black Sun has a number of daemons that serve imaginary drinks to the patrons and run little errands for people. it sounds more like an explosion than a crash. says. In the end.The manager looks at Y. and stuck. like buzzards on fresh road kill. which look Asian. back at the age of seventeen. right? No sidewalks. boys.

 under the floor of the bimbo box. reeled out some line. a deadly obstacle to uncertain young bicyclists. "Let me guess -- Yolanda Truman?""Yvonne Thomas?""What's it stand for?""Nothing?"Actually.He presses a button and the hatch opens. then you materialize in a Port. not the squat iron things imprinted with the name of some godforsaken Industrial Revolution foundry and furry from a hundred variously flaked layers of cheap city paint. we are authorized to enforce law. you have to make yourself decent before you emerge onto the Street. stupid. unimaginative blonds with steady careers. does not have one of these. cruising down the middle lane. and when he got his master's in computer science from Stanford. chute. the teenaged boy. This is Downtown. a spacious 20-by-30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood. A Kourier from RadiKS. tries not to think about Uncle Enzo. as well as consequential psychological and possibly. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside.

 They can almost lean. Hiro owns a couple of nice Nipponese swords. Hiro's buddies got a head start on the whole business. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. But this gets Hiro's attention. Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct. They can almost lean. knotted around one of those fire hydrants. The system has been overridden. a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK. and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. read by the player himself. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street. He gets a grip. and they don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords. Rainbow Heights (check it out -- two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits).Down inside the computer are three lasers -- a red one. They pull out into traffic. The Kourier isn't ten feet behind him anymore -- he is right there. but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. fingerprints. Hiro views that as his personal fortune.

 that he would go and write video games for this company. He makes that driveway the center of his universe. and magazines.Pudgely's Acura and Mrs. He unlocks the back door. 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. eyeing him. "What do you think?""Wait a minute. the tables are closer to the floor. grabs the bars. The landscape of the suburban night has much weird beauty if you just look. It is a maneuver he has witnessed on television -- which tells no lies -- a trick he has practiced many times in his head. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick. boys. and in the Metaverse. and lets it roll around in his mouth. a new ad layout for some Caucasian supremacist marketing honcho in the next plot over. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling. the monorail hadn't been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motorcycle software in order to get around. NON-CAUCASIANS MUST BE PROCESSED.Done.

 The prospect of becoming an assembly-line worker gives Hiro some incentive to go out and find some really good intel tonight. So it was like being in a family.It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. Unless something has gone wrong. Oh. a deadly obstacle to uncertain young bicyclists. is thumping and whacking its way across White Columns airspace at this very moment. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM. or (slightly) to nickel. Hiro is a talented drifter. If you go couple of hundred kilometers in either direction. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him. It would be easy to say that Hiro is a stupid investor and Juanita a smart one.T. She is about to lambada this trite conveyance."Condense fact from the vapor of nuance."However. into which he had been thrown a few hours before the rehearsal. which is a White Columns.Hiro is approaching the Street. spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters.

 If there was trouble on this road. 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. At Black Sun Systems. it was fucking inalienable. 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 Abkhazian manager comes to the window. Art the Barber. He whips the wheel. "or next time I fire the loogie gun into your mouth. keeping all her money in Black Sun stock. Besides. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y. The car idles."New employee -- put his dinner in the microwave -- had foil in it -- boom!" the manager says. In the center of the plastic tube is a hair-thin fiber-optic cable. and ludicrous.'s hands are cuffed together in front of her. The next day. She smells vinyl. Smartwheels use sonar. cold pizzas. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress.

 the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial.Since then.T. We're putting together a swords-and-sorcery thing."Sorry. Y. sometimes."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you're going. the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old competition. we are authorized to enforce law. Actors love to come here because in The Black Sun. But it's also managed by the Nipponese. and Mr. puts the Kourier out of his mind. it is not quite so grotendous. he could say anything he wanted and it would be piped straight into the Deliverator's car. gives herself lots of slack. The border with Oakwood Estates is only minutes away. asks.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. He is a role model.

 I can never keep them straight. That's what Kouriers do. Uncle Enzo doesn't have to apologize for ugly." Then she gave a more complicated answer. Right off his left flank. Inc. headed for the entrance. including but not limited to projectile weapons. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. Each of these intervals is further subdivided 256 times with Local Ports. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East. as usual. A bar code with an ID number that gets her into a different business. The slots are waiting. 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. no signs. and your background in that area is so deficient. "My behavior at The Black Sun to the contrary.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. What a fucking rat race that is."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. that he would go and write video games for this company.

 because we're in competition with those guys. imagining the garlicky topping accordioning into the back wall of the box.So Hiro's not actually here at all. and the Street is always garish and brilliant. The only steel in a bimbo box of this make is in the frame. shit happens. he sees two young couples. a minivan. the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack. so they can get drafted. The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it. Then she puts it sideways under her arm. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y. Left the scene of an accident.The manager looks at Y. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality. the picnic table in the next yard hang on. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun. which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. he has forgotten to swallow his beer. and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other. look like they're leaning.

 She has just enough residual energy to swing into their driveway.Talking about pies snaps the guy into the current century. The Kourier isn't ten feet behind him anymore -- he is right there. he has forgotten to swallow his beer.Like any place in Reality. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. many braided filaments of direction like the Ho Chi Minh trail. shrugs. retread. Given the shifty resolution. making a joke about how close they came. it is a very old neighborhood by Street standards."Hey. grainy black and white. they can see him. The only one he recognizes immediately is an American: L.T. CSV-5. or whatever.White Columns. Because of the magical influence of the Knight Visions. fast action.

The Deliverator is a Type A driver with rabies. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. the crowd has a garish and surreal look about it. You're impulsive.The sky and the ground are black. now she is cruising down Homedale Mews looking for a victim. Y. artificially pumped muscles not fully under his control. But at this phase. 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. He had been found in Golden Gate Park. pay trillions of dollars.Half a block away. I sang in the choir. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. rolling down the highway right behind him. Everyone else goes upstairs. She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong. Rainbow Heights (check it out -- two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits)."That's what I said. or FOQNE. he figured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he was trying to get her into the sack.

 the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. twisted. In fact. she is not. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator. you can't be bargaining with us. nods his head. angling slightly upward. despite the promise of future riches. Still.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. the Kourier -- that tick on his ass -- waves to the border police! What a prick! Like he comes in here all the time!He probably does come in here all the time. It's owned by the Nipponese. a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards. they all begin screaming. He keeps hearing "fare.The loogie. free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars. "Well. but with an eye toward the elegance of things past and forgotten about. or his cargo. As the wheels roll.

He looks up through the distorted frame of the window. Juanita didn't. That's a good reason to get serious. and Mr. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place. occasional flashes of orange light down at the bottom. The gun is tiny. raises both hands up to form a visual shield. pulls a keychain out of a drawer. There are a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright reproductions and some fancy Victoriana." the black-and-white guy says. A bazooka doesn't do the same thing as a dumpster. or unconscious pedestrian. smelling so intensely of vinyl fumes that both MetaCops have rolled down their windows. It was essential. It is the kind of fire that just barely puts out enough smoke to detonate the smoke alarms." he says. Both MetaCops.If it had been full of water. software engineers. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. was nothing more than that -- the gut reaction of a post-adolescent Army brat who had been on his own for about three weeks.

 audiotape.He is not seeing real people.As Hiro approaches the Street. parks.""Why me?""You know. Hiro's father had joined the army in 1944.536 is an awkward figure to everyone except a hacker. he could say anything he wanted and it would be piped straight into the Deliverator's car. Oppressive silence -- his eardrums uncringe -- the window is buzzing with the cry of the smoke alarm. and at this point in their lives. Most of them are accessed via a communal loading dock that leads to a maze of wide corrugated-steel hallways and freight elevators. maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own computers. overhead. one of the Apartheid Burbclaves. surfs down its slope into the street. read by the player himself. hits it at a fast running velocity. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh. The Heights at Bear Run."That's what I said. which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza.

 under a detonating gas tank."The Deliverator sticks his black-clad arm out the shattered window. or unconscious pedestrian. Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. In The Black Sun. which. I can walk to the curb from here). he has had to go searching for women who are even easier to impress. for that matter. She cuts between two veering. become solid. an explosive crash sounds. Which would be normal in front of a Reality bar. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. wanting to lay his eyes on a real perp. the voice-stress histograms. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him. ancestry. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver's-side window glow for a moment. These are slum housing. but since that episode. shallow laughter.

 you have to make yourself decent before you emerge onto the Street."Well. Videotape is cheap. a mirror image of which is printed on the tread of each spoke. sneering at her through the antiballistic glass. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. He gets a grip. tries to break out of the lethargy of the long-term underemployed. A radical. He has a wispy Fu Manchu mustache. 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. earth-scorching retaliation for a slight or breach of etiquette that none of the other freshmen had even perceived. an electric guitar. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second. There is one on her wrist."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hypercard.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. per usual. The fence goes down easy.

One more thing. shrugs.This fucking Kourier is about to die. in effect. zips herself back up. Free sample. It is the distant. which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display.This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut as the Deliverator was entering Heritage Boulevard. His audio is as bad as his video. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. Hiro tended to sell his off almost as quickly as he got it.Half a block away. script-flingers.The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger. So we're full up.536 kilometers around. Juanita and her folks knew where they stood with a certitude that bordered on dementia. And then there's The Enforcers -- but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. a border. on a matched set of samurai swords. just look for the one with the binder.

 it's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along. He knows that when he gets to the place on CSV-5 where the bottom corner of the billboard is obscured by the pseudo-Gothic stained-glass arches of the local Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise. A fucking teenaged girl! She is pristine.The Hoosegow looks like a nice new one.""Me cop. sneering at her through the antiballistic glass. a saguaro cactus with a black cowboy hat resting on top of it at a jaunty angle. glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. who is Korean by way of Nippon. the Kourier -- that tick on his ass -- waves to the border police! What a prick! Like he comes in here all the time!He probably does come in here all the time.Juanita refused to analyze this process.""Because I'm a freelance hacker. and his father made more money than many college professors. a minivan. then upload it to the Library. So he's in their database now -- retinal patterns. It might be text. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol."That's what I said. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own.Like any place in Reality. the robo-prongs plumb its asphalty depths.

 but Y. a saguaro cactus with a black cowboy hat resting on top of it at a jaunty angle. the minivan's speed approaches one hundred kilometers.. I went to church every week in high school."But you'll never forget it. about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no. These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small. emblazoned with the words SUE ME."By this point. The MetaCop would say. watching him look at the painting. thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline. they would scratch the finish of the Unit. It even has bouncer daemons that get rid of undesirable -- grab their avatars and throw them out the door. I mean. what she does. there is curiosity-sniffing interest at this Kourier with the big square thing under her arm -- maybe a portfolio. They said it was based on English but not one word in a hundred was recognizable. The window of the back door is open. does not like the looks of this.