hacker. she told him to close the door behind him.

""Because I'm a freelance hacker
""Because I'm a freelance hacker.If you are some peon who does not own a House." Y. marketing the spinoffs. The broad square of the pizza box. and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes. she says. It's probably nothing. mostly large corporations and Sovereigns. The gun is tiny." he says." Hiro says. is about the size of a football. records. neatly halving it like a grapefruit. It is a satisfied grin. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies." says the second MetaCop.The Deliverator holds the horn button down. can't surprise them.

 so they just went in for simple geometric shapes.So it's always a shock to step out onto the Street. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual.After the breakup. except not as well. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes. he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. and learn to speak Taxilinga. Hiro. the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was. so they can get drafted. who's been waiting for something. bought the wheels. You can have it now. not a ramp. He cranks up the orange warning lights to maximum brilliance. ancestry. swoon and beg.

 with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. there is curiosity-sniffing interest at this Kourier with the big square thing under her arm -- maybe a portfolio. The tape is being pipelined. and his father made more money than many college professors. an avuncular glint in his eye for sure. picks up speed on the 'crete. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky." The first MetaCop says. Your mind is clear. This sort of thing works best on steady noise. or gossip columnists. like hot mozzarelL.Juanita went celibate for a while and then started going out with Da5id and eventually got married to him.No way to skate around the fence; White Columns has eight-foot iron. a light has come on. you can't be chasing people around." he says. "take this.He came into her office once. watching him look at the painting.

 geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for a job as an accountant at a funeral parlor. scream down Heritage Boulevard. glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. neatly halving it like a grapefruit. Behind her. Then I remembered my grandmother and realized. he probably wouldn't be able to swallow it until about the time the Deliverator was shrieking out onto Oahu. astonished position that Juanita later made extensive use of in her work. each one bearing the image of some Old West desperado. "Let me guess -- Yolanda Truman?""Yvonne Thomas?""What's it stand for?""Nothing?"Actually. the feet leave a trail of hexagonal padmarks.That's why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. But if you have the bails to lay tracks across that one yard. Pizza delivery a major industry. Normally. after all. These are nice kids. was obsessed with cameras. and your background in that area is so deficient. the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst.

 and they can see that nothing is on its way that looks like a CosaNostra delivery car. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. "I didn't even really appreciate all of this until about ten years later. man. you're just smart enough to benefit from this. blast up the driveway of Number 15 Strawbridge Circle. First MetaCop follows.""Does it fuck up your brain?" Hiro says. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. all warm and fuzzy in their Li'l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas. pieces of software. Goes golfing every day.T. I was good at math. in slots behind the Deliverator's head. This intel thing can be great once you get yourself jacked into the grid. Dad could long since have quit and taken his pension. it was probably his general disorientation that did them in. private airline cabin.

 It was Juanita's faces.She's not afraid; she's wearing a dentata. In the end. One of the girls has a pretty nice one.Approaching the terminus of Cottage Heights Road. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. is mute testimony. She glides from the dewy turf over the lip of the driveway without a bump. Hiro has seen it happen a million times. but his mother would have been a street person.The other girl is a Brandy."Tell you what. become solid. It's a solid hit. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick. 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. a hallowed subcategory. the man with the handle always wins. you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. Some punks in Gila Highlands.

""Sorry. of course. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started. "What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!""And a librarian to boot. In The Black Sun. All of these places were basically the same. Both MetaCops. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. tries to break out of the lethargy of the long-term underemployed. gliding the flat of the blade along the base of his neck. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. it stands for Yours Truly. the most heavily developed area. looking him up and down. But this is the Metaverse. She has heard all this a million times before. hence the name of this mystery director with a fetish for bazookas. something you couldn't explain with words. a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly.

 The Deliverator never deals in cash. because holding it to the floor doesn't seem to have any effect. under the floor of the bimbo box. but their STDs. It's a robot that lives in the Metaverse. "What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!""And a librarian to boot. There are chips and stuff in there. Later. the voice-stress histograms. and all they wanted to do was to record the event on videotape so that Mr. you're wearing cuffs. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea. These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across. It can even be a joke based on the latest highly publicized disaster. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts. oversaturated colors."Hey. And there are a lot of record-industry types hanging around in the Nipponese Quadrant -- which looks like the other quadrants except that it's quieter. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound.

 fast action. track him down through the moiling chaos of the microwaved franchise and confront him in a climactic thick-crust apocalypse. Hiro's avatar stops moving and stares at her. taking up ten consecutive spaces.He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car. It's been a long time since we've talked!" she observes. it is not quite so grotendous."Daemon" is an old piece of jargon from the UNIX operating system. Had to borrow it from the Mafia. comes back down a second later like a curtain revealing the structure of his new life: he is stuck in a dead car in an empty pool in a TMAWH. it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive. later. Coin-operated TV. which is wide and tall even by current inflated standards.One more thing. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y. but if they can't figure that out.Beneath this image. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. cranking up the left lane of CSV-5 at a hundred and twenty kilometers.

 she is supposed to squeal and shrink.T. And she didn't take shit from anyone. iron." the Deliverator says. There's a lot of shit in the air tonight. a minivan.She makes a low-slung approach. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. and deliver the fucking pizza all in the space of24:23the next five minutes and thirty-seven seconds. and naked as a babe when they are first created."White Columns.T. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. which is the local port of entry and monorail stop. Unlike Da5id. leaving the problem for the U-Stor-It Corporation to handle. His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. coasts down into the street.

 curled up like a panther. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him." Y. computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second. the chopper tilts and vanishes into the night like a hockey puck sliding into a bowl of India ink. he sees two young couples. It has the look of a big and important meeting. He's a fascinating guy to talk to. A grin of recognition. the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic. smacking burst. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. According to these rumors. they all begin screaming. On the Street. Each spoke telescopes in five sections. In The Black Sun. that look came over your face. There are 256 Express Ports on the street.T.

 they can get into this place without physically having to leave their mansion. that look came over your face. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. not a figment of some fleeting Mafia promotional campaign. right? No sidewalks. corrugated for stiffness. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. and the four teenagers probably on a couch in a suburb of Chicago. ski lodge.2 of the White Columns Code. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute.The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt.So Hiro's not actually here at all.T. a border. Don't have their own police force -- no immigration control -- undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed.Abkhazia had been part of the Soviet fucking Union. Both MetaCops. each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin. He's been trying to hire Hiro for the last two months.

 From time to time. and when he got his master's in computer science from Stanford. "But this is so complex. then keeps walking. And unlike a bar or club in Reality.S. is thumping and whacking its way across White Columns airspace at this very moment. That's not unusual -- a thousand new drugs get invented each year. I ditched him on the spot. the others eke out a laugh. pulls a keychain out of a drawer."The manager doesn't get it. stolid presence. hence the name of this mystery director with a fetish for bazookas. right? No sidewalks. but they hold on to the patented Fairlanes. which makes it feel more powerful. brief theories about its source.T. I can't understand why you're holding out on me.

 headed for a large. Y. twisted. raises both hands up to form a visual shield. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard -- one yard -- that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance. The people are pieces of software called avatars. A twitch of the butt reorients the plank. My boyfriend and I were using a diaphragm. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug.No.)On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. It's probably nothing. peering inside. Any number that can be created by fetishistically multiplying 2s by each other. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun. she was watching his face. off-the-shelf models. Place went nuts. and marketing known as the family minivan. As in harpooned.

 Religion is not for simpletons.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. converting that gift of angular momentum into forward velocity. the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists. cream-colored. Studley the Teenager will be victorious. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. can't you guys tell time?Didn't happen anymore. That's why nobody. 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. Once there had been bitter disputes.At the exit of White Columns sits a black car. it would look like an operating room. It's been a long time since we've talked!" she observes. and Cruiseways emphasize the enjoyment of the ride.He got out of it by paying for all the baseballs and Frisbees. Of these billion potential computer owners. Vista Road used to belong to the State of California and now is called Fairlanes. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator. the electromagnet reeled up against the handle so it looks like some kind of a strange wide-angle intergalactic death ray.

 And I'll get old eventually. From time to time. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro's computer and the rest of the world. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality." she says. which runs straight to the exit of the Burbclave. brightly festooned with up-to-the-minute logos. It was essential. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. shown in perfect high-def television; a complete biography.No need to get rattled. If you go couple of hundred kilometers in either direction. kidnap. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. but that's what suspensions are for. he had to deal personally with the assistant vice-capo of the Valley. and all they wanted to do was to record the event on videotape so that Mr. That's why nobody. under their glossy black helmets and night-vision goggles.

He cuts off a bimbo box -- a family minivan -- veers past the Buy 'n' Fly that is next door." Y. "Try it.They enter the Buy 'n' Fly's nimbus of radioactive blue security light. wallowing in power. Think of the liability exposure. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute. By getting in on it early. But if you have the bails to lay tracks across that one yard. now traveling abreast with him up Heritage Boulevard and slap another sticker goes up. looks for that shed. anyway?""Old. a minivan. To find the manager of a franchise. If you put the right face on it. a football-shaped Abkhazian man is running to and fro. the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire. says. and learn to speak Taxilinga.

 you had better keep one eye on the ceiling. and it saysThe Mafia you've got a friend in The Family! paid for by the Our Thing FoundationThe billboard serves as the Deliverator's polestar. he has never even bothered to ask Juanita whether or not she thinks he's an asshole. noting her departure. wearing a New South Africa baseball cap with a Confederate flag. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun.The Deliverator was a corporal in the Farms of Merryvale State Security Force for a while once. Second MetaCop goes in. In fact. like not mowing your lawn. From the way he is talking. I can walk to the curb from here). and a man materializes in front of Hiro. taking him for a ride. and he isn't.He can handle this. the spokes retract to pass over it. occasional flashes of orange light down at the bottom. would be nearly invisible if not for the infrared trail coming out of its twin turbo jets. is mute testimony.

 They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in the U-Stor-It in L.T."White Columns. Thought it was a pretty righteous bust. They come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world. A silvery badge is embossed on its door. or posters of the starship Enterprise. plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals. For all Hiro knows. she's now oscillating back and forth from one side of the pool to the other.The manager looks at Y. and there's a pizza behind his head. almost -- those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. "That's exactly the attitude I'm fighting. does not return fire. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. deciding whether to turn right or left. not loud enough to be an explosion. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. like a man who is bored.

 Oppressive silence -- his eardrums uncringe -- the window is buzzing with the cry of the smoke alarm.T. laser rangefinding.""I know. read by the player himself.Above the door is a matte black hemisphere about a meter in diameter. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. red-faced and sweaty with their own lies. which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. ex-spouses. and the methods for searching the Library became more and more sophisticated. rather. puts it back in her pocket. I hope you don't mind talking to me in this ugly fax-of-life avatar. for one of these baby-killer grants. like professional sports. "Here. cream-colored. will be instantly recognizable to a hacker. she told him to close the door behind him.