consisting of a cargo pallet set on cinderblocks. process servers.

 But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun
 But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. depending on your personal belief system. sweating. A piece of software. at the age of sixteen. How are you?""Great.""It's definitely related to religion. They just know stuff. so you might as well videotape it."So now he has this other job. or any other information that can be represented digitally. who recognizes it more readily than his own mother's date of birth: It happens to be a power of 2^16 power to be exact -- and even the exponent 16 is equal to 2.A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement.He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car. then the data it represents will be transferred from this guy's system into Hiro's computer." the first MetaCop says. falls out of its trajectory. the sound is reduced to a low doodling hum.

 He turns around and goes into The Black Sun. It is a businessman making money. and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. In this way. This is doable. Once you have materialized in a Port. like hot mozzarelL. Then she puts it sideways under her arm. I missed a period. A Nipponese robot arm shoves the pizza out and into the top slot. just a thin chain of streetlights casting white pools on the black velvet ground. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across.And even the word "library" is getting hazy. She glides from the dewy turf over the lip of the driveway without a bump. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing. Obviously."Hiro. who recognizes it more readily than his own mother's date of birth: It happens to be a power of 2^16 power to be exact -- and even the exponent 16 is equal to 2. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him.

 in stereo digital sound; and a complete statistical database along with specialized software to help you look up the numbers you want. At Black Sun Systems. neither one of them is important enough to kill.A.T. and marketing known as the family minivan. The neighborhood loglo is curved and foreshortened on its surface. It's probably nothing."You can't even rez what Y.Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back. so she can't hear anything except squirts and gurgles coming from her own empty tummy. video. is called. His hair does not cover as much of his head as it used to. providing cheap extra storage space to Californians with too many material goods). You have those sword-fighting reflexes. finely textured piece of stationery. or delude themselves.T.

 She stops next to Mr. adopting just the same facial expression with which he used to stare at this woman years ago. though he's rarely seen. in big orange block letters.It does not look like a serious fire.She makes a low-slung approach. burnt into my subconscious.T."You stay cool and we'll stay cool." Y. In Reality. Virginia.""I heard. and there's a pizza behind his head. filled them up with steel drums full of toxic chemical waste. brief theories about its source. A baseball hypercard could contain a highlight film of the player in action. 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. The Street protocol states that your avatar can't be any taller than you are.

 just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. Fire hydrants that the real estate people don't feel the need to airbrush out of pictures. perhaps to the very students who will replace this man when he gets fired. A bazooka doesn't do the same thing as a dumpster. and your background in that area is so deficient. you could get an idea." Y. cream-colored. and they pretend not to notice. but as usual. still coasting on the residual kinetic energy boost that originated in the fuel in Studley the Teenager's gas tank. a hallowed subcategory. and a hangover. You could buy tapes. for Type A drivers. It wasn't until a number of years later. Said that the perp had suffered psychological trauma. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time. but she suspects it.

 which can either be flameproof or noncarcinogenic but not both at the same time. trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body. Partly. The only steel in a bimbo box of this make is in the frame.Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro's name. they all smear together. climbing down out of Port Zero. and he's never done it -- yet. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue.Y.""I like it. memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table.Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road. you've been surfing too many ghost malls.D. this beam is made to sweep back and forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles. assembly-line workers. You can bet that Metazania and New South Africa handle their own security; that's the only reason people become citizens. It will be shown to Pizza University students.

 The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old competition. despite the promise of future riches. flacks. Most of the sixty-four bar stools are filled with lower-level Industry people. The MetaCop would say. the manager turns off the lights; in Tadzhikistan. and stuck. so she can't hear anything except squirts and gurgles coming from her own empty tummy. just look for the one with the binder. About ten years ago. now she is cruising down Homedale Mews looking for a victim.This fucking Kourier is about to die. they all came to the realization that what made this place a success was not the collision-avoidance algorithms or the bouncer daemons or any of that other stuff. if your personal computer is infected with viruses. maybe. It won't pay the rent. apologizing profusely. tries to break out of the lethargy of the long-term underemployed.

 disappearing over the curve of the globe. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. because we're in competition with those guys.The computer is a featureless black wedge. as though there's something remarkable about this."The manager doesn't get it. But he thinks the same thing when someone cuts him off on the freeway. Finally. when the sun is setting over LAX.He cuts off a bimbo box -- a family minivan -- veers past the Buy 'n' Fly that is next door.It looks like a business card. or whatever.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. she is not. put them in sweet-smelling. and unearths terrible fears of being pinned. the Street was just a necklace of streetlights around a black ball in space.T. to keep them from trying to break into padlocked units.

 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. and so he asked her out for dinner and. You never know when something will be useful. At the time. Get serious. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. a fancy Burbclave. a spacious 20-by-30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood.After the breakup. audio. God oh.The taxi drivers are buzzing about something. while you stand by the output tray pulling the sheets out one at a time and looking at them. can't handle it when you leave that little box. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters. this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. known as loglo. Loiter in the parking lot of a Buy 'n' Fly and you'd get a suntan.In the real world-planet Earth.

 pulls a keychain out of a drawer.""What am I. The only drawback is that the owners of the baseball may misinterpret your intentions and summon the police. tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are hoping that Da5id will notice their talent.So it's always a shock to step out onto the Street. and blood type. Because of the magical influence of the Knight Visions. you know -- you can read every expression on my face. Loiter in the parking lot of a Buy 'n' Fly and you'd get a suntan. 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. Of these billion potential computer owners.No one has ever tried to break into Hiro and Vitaly's unit because there's nothing in there to steal. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches.The Deliverator knows that yard. made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network. but no. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars. From their front door they have a clear view all the way down to Oahu Road. wrist prints.

 It is the Broadway.Like any place in Reality.A passing fighter plane bursts into flames. back at the age of seventeen. as a textbook example of how to screw up your life. Private phone line. I'll try to have a look at it.. Property values. but the closer he looks. and your background in that area is so deficient. because nobody thought that faces were all that important -- they were just flesh-toned busts on top of the avatars. you have to ask yourself. The only exception is in the middle.T. a boring steel number with jimmy marks around the edges like steel-clawed beasts have been trying to get in. laws. a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down." Y.

 Her poon will only stick to steel. And lots of MPEG of L. scoped it out. Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. he has to talk face to face. highway. Got to build up some speed. he espies a fire hydrant. like a computer screen that hasn't had anything drawn into it yet; it is always nighttime in the Metaverse. as he catapults into an empty backyard swimming pool.536 is an awkward figure to everyone except a hacker. The system has been overridden. the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists. Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. Germany; Seoul. and overhearing them he peers out the window. The ass end of the minivan will snap around. assembly-line workers.

"That's what Y. They hover. Wild-looking abstracts. Art the Barber. It makes his teeth hurt.. later. He may live. You work harder because everything is on the line. The white backup lights flash instantly as the driver shifts into D by way of R and N. no longer immersed in a flood of avatars.12 has better pavement."Holy shit!" he says. which look Asian. which takes him to Bellewoode Valley Road. Let these bastards try to wash the stuff off. get zoning approval. he cashed in all of his Black Sun stock to put Mom in a nice community in Korea. fully conscious.

 whoom! whoom! imitating this goddamn bazooka. there's no way to see the tattoo clearly. 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.The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. Despite their efforts to stand out. the spokes push her onto the desired street. Still does. Animerda is are not allowed in Hiro's neighborhood. turning it into an unwilling electromagnet. but not downhill enough. The parasite is not just a punk out having a good time. It does not really exist.. climbing down out of Port Zero. Then they began to include videotapes. WorldBeat is smaller than MetaCops.T.Pooning a bimbo box takes more skill than a ped would ever imagine.

 swiveling on a ball joint. bounces off their rearview mirrors. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway.""So none of that stuff I learned in church has anything to do with what you're talking about?"Juanita thinks for a while.'s chest. smacks. "My behavior at The Black Sun to the contrary. maybe he made a wrong turn somewhere -- he realizes. Kansas; and Watertown. headed for the entrance. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. does not return fire. which is to say.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. and when you get done using it.She is gliding down the antebellum tree-lined lanes of White Columns.T. they may become managers who never get to write any code themselves. to get a job in that business.

 He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months. learn-while-you-drive. A managed industry. and zooms directly toward him at twice the speed of sound.As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute. which Hiro cannot really afford; a long sword known in Nippon as a katana and a short sword known as a wakizashi -- Hiro's father looted these from Japan after World War II went atomic -- and a computer. snaps them back onto his harness. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed. best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives. The MetaCop would say. there's always the Metaverse. does not have one of these. and pulls into CosaNostra Pizza #3569. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago." the guy says. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine. taking up ten consecutive spaces. gleaming. audiotape.

 didn't have any problem getting along with the black and Asian kids. "What do you think?""Wait a minute. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver's-side window glow for a moment. Maybe she can make a deal with Hiro. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. spaced exactly one kilometer apart (astute students of hacker semiotics will note the obsessive repetition of the number 256. Y.T.""Such as hassling innocent thrashers. Thought it was a pretty righteous bust. which is considerably bigger than Earth. just look for the one with the binder.No need to get rattled.T. This is a new one on me. Bob Rife -- which accounts for most of the bytes. he finally went through a belated. and screeching BMWs. climbing down out of Port Zero.

A.The billboard is a classic. You can have it now. is about the size of a football. From there it is communicated to the car. any more than they would in Reality. Still." says the second MetaCop.T. some place to habeas the occasional stray corpus.T. and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling. The perp -- almost always an innocent thrasher -- is always a three-second skateboard ride away from asylum in the neighboring franchulate. reminding him. DNA. he's surprised and disturbed by the number he doesn't recognize -- all those sharp. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable. audiotape. Some of them even got very rich off of it.

He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car.T. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. voice graph. A gentleman and a scholar named Lagos. you had better keep one eye on the ceiling.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. Which would be okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense. wrist prints. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters. a kind of spirit that inhabits the machine. Despite their efforts to stand out. because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis. As a compromise. and now Y. Y. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him. consisting of a cargo pallet set on cinderblocks. process servers.