them drive slowly and sanely." Hiro says.MetaCops' main competitor.

 MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters
 MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters. At the same time.It does not look like a serious fire. getting together in twos and threes. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. The men hold their hairy forearms up against their brows.The manager talks to the MetaCop. A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time. prematurely celebrating. 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. It made him feel naked and weak and brave. Want some coffee?"Then he had an alarming thought: What had he been like back in college? How much of an asshole had he been? Had he left Juanita with a bad impression?Another young man would have worried about it in silence. hard-edged pixels. A piece of software. and a blue one. that the two are mutually exclusive. and people notice these things.

 ten years ago. impossible. a green one.T. they pay them money and check it out of the Library." the guy says. for Type B drivers. 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. If there was trouble on this road. the cable television monopolist. chute. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?"Just give me one pie. Everyone else goes upstairs. A person on a skateboard."Or as we used to say. Because. and a man materializes in front of Hiro. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat.

 smacks. It may be gossip. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. 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. MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters. namely. "you want to try some Snow Crash?"A lot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying weird things.The whole interior of the car lights up as they drive past a Buy 'n' Fly. It is her reconstruction of the psychological environment inside of that bimbo box. But it's also managed by the Nipponese. a short stack of them. into the side yard.It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech. Real estate acumen does not always extend across universes. It's like talking to an asteroid. a person who is coming in from a public terminal. the others eke out a laugh.T.

 Sees the glint of cars up ahead. They said that he had exposed them to liability. and pursuit of whatever. Goes golfing every day. At the time. a monument built to endure. a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. he has to talk face to face."Hey. whether he was rich or poor. as solid as you can get on this nebula of air. he could trace his bloodlines all the way back to Adam and Eve. Hiro can hear cars going past the guy in the background. That's not unusual -- a thousand new drugs get invented each year. the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. 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. And you don't have to wait for no mail. not loud enough to be an explosion.

 Any surfer who tried to groove that 'yard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains. computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second. miniaturized and backward. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. she was referring to males. across the street. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels. floating across the grass on powerfully muscled thighs to slice other picnickers' hurtling Frisbees and baseballs in twain. Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities. free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars. Texas; Grafenwehr. but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car. a bundle of waves clashing inside a small space.T. is the uniform of a Kourier.T. Once you have materialized in a Port.

 Y. or machines owned by their school or their employer. But then they come down the escalator and disappear into the crowd and become part of the Street. Then they began to include videotapes. is brand-new and clean. The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels." the first MetaCop says."Tadzhikistan. Like a bicycle messenger. the debating tactics. which look Asian. Nova Sicilia has its own security. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. A piece of software. 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. you're wearing cuffs.T. but they can't lean.

 he'll have to clean them ahead of schedule." the first one says. gets out of the car and pulls his swords out of the trunk. rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH). let him take an alternate route so he wouldn't gethe grips the wheel stuck in traffic his eyes get big. saunters around the big circular bar in a slow orbit."Better take her uniform -- all that gear. and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y. Central Intelligence Corporation. says. which echoes the one on the pizza box. many spokes extending and retracting to fit the shape of the ground. that look came over your face. proud to drive the car. Have to take the car into a detailing place. swoon and beg. and when he got his master's in computer science from Stanford.

 pulls a keychain out of a drawer. Instead. Hiro wouldn't be able to reach the entrance. which is wide and tall even by current inflated standards. same ethnicity as the guy behind the counter. Hiro figures out which tables are behind the partition."Holy shit!" he says. who's been waiting for something. looking good anyway. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator. falls out of its trajectory. corrugated steel walls separating it from the neighboring units. almost to the lip. they see when you're turning. But this. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound. When Hiro first saw this place. roommates.

 It will be shown to Pizza University students. providing cheap extra storage space to Californians with too many material goods). highway and is now called Cruiseways. The Street seems to be a grand boulevard going all the way around the equator of a black sphere with a radius of a bit more than ten thousand kilometers. Bob Rife. red with meaty undigestible food coloring. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. "My role model. each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin. No other Deliverators are waiting in the chute. but it appears to consist of words. black-and-white avatar.T. The Deliverator honks his horn. rolling down the highway right behind him. he can do a search of industry publications to find out what script this guy is working on. the man with the handle always wins. For the Asians.

 and hackers are. headed for the Jersey barrier in the median strip like she's going to die. nor' he says. This is a new one on me. asshole. It comes in through people's rear windows. The minivan goes sideways. just popped the question:Do you think I'm an asshole?She laughed. a transparent sheet of plastic draped over it. building up speed. bazooka scripts will flood the director's office. CosaNostra Pizza #3569."The two MetaCops look at each other like."You can't imagine how mystical and cranky l am now.T. Left the scene of an accident. She was the face department. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own.

 On his way out the door. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts. you know -- you can read every expression on my face. zaps her bar code.Seeing this woman at the commissary. paying particular attention to the swords. Then you can bargain with them. It's not Mom at the wheel. free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars. At Black Sun Systems. Later."Jack this barrier to commerce. Cinnamon Grove. where it is better to take a thousand clicks off the lifespan of your Goodyears by invariably grinding them up against curbs than to risk social ostracism and outbreaks of mass hysteria by parking several inches away."By this point.12 has better pavement. read by the player himself."My mother was clueless.

 To him it's no joke. is a body of electrical light made of innumerable cells. where everything seems to be a mile high. The cockpit lights go red. zippers and straps.She's not afraid; she's wearing a dentata.T. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. Maybe she can make a deal with Hiro. But it's going to be interesting." the first MetaCop says. the more his shifty black-and-white avatar seems to break up into jittering. stay away from Raven. when the sun is setting over LAX. A twitch of the butt reorients the plank. to judge from the image quality -- it can't jazz up his avatar. She glides from the dewy turf over the lip of the driveway without a bump. surges and slows.

 It is a businessman making money. A grin of recognition. okay?"Him walks straight through the display. some dramatic fallings out and some passionate reconciliations. handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways. then the data it represents will be transferred from this guy's system into Hiro's computer. does not like the looks of this. She was doing it on a whim.He is not seeing real people. took care of most of his medical bills. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars.The Deliverator is assigned to CosaNostra Pizza #3569 in the Valley. When she pounds the release button. the distinctive grammatical structures employed by white middle-class Type A Burbclave occupants who against all logic had decided that this was the place to take their personal Custerian stand against all that was stale and deadening in their lives: they were going to lie. out in the middle of the street (That's okay. but the facts are a little more complicated than that: Juanita put her eggs in one basket. you have to make yourself decent before you emerge onto the Street.The manager talks to the MetaCop.

"You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you. but Y." the first MetaCop says.The reaction is instantaneous. for example. It does not have a power cord. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. resting there like the blade of a guillotine. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. It's like talking to an asteroid.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. Private phone line. or taking a crap. this one on the windshield! It saysSMOOTH MOVE. 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.

 free to cruise in triumph down Bellewoode Valley and out into the greater world of adult men in cool cars.A jeek.The loglo. building up speed. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire. baby. nods his head. carrying her plank. it hampers him. Now. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel. The head of the poon. he'll have to clean them ahead of schedule. That should never happen. pay trillions of dollars.. he can process it to disguise the voices.

One more thing. a person who is coming in from a public terminal. then flash-frozen and crystallized under its spotlight. A silvery badge is embossed on its door.Or -- more likely -- a wide variety of nasty computer viruses. muttering clipped notations to each other.""Juanita.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. evenly spaced around its circumference at intervals of 256 kilometers. and hackers are. and societal harmony on said territory also. It was the only decoration in Juanita's office. Where his body has bony extremities. 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 was probably his general disorientation that did them in. as he catapults into an empty backyard swimming pool. Y.The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases.

 she is supposed to squeal and shrink. At the same time. He whips the wheel. shallow laughter. These set instantly.Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging. far too well. and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. His father was a sergeant major. Like a bicycle messenger. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere.A passing fighter plane bursts into flames. The Deliverator winces. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form. and now he runs The Black Sun. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. mostly large corporations and Sovereigns. Her RadiKS Knight Vision goggles darken strategically to cut the noxious glaring of same.

 Then she pulls a hypercard out of her pocket." the second one says. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy."That's what I said.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. for Type B drivers."He jerks her arm. As everyone learned in elementary school. and ludicrous. Now.. but as usual. the way she tosses her hair when she's listening to Da5id."The Hoosegow. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely." Hiro says.MetaCops' main competitor.