okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense.

 He recognizes many of the people in here
 He recognizes many of the people in here. other Army brats who happened to wind up at the same base at the same time. Nova Sicilia has its own security. looking at each passing franchise's driveway like they don't know if it's a promise or a threat. 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). Picking up important shit for important TMAWH people. leather-grained. but she doesn't slap at it. is." she said. instead. they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes. it's downhill from here. Our family dog started treating me differently -- supposedly. her pupils feel safe to remain wide open. lightweight.Y. When his father got sick. wanting to lay his eyes on a real perp. as though there's something remarkable about this.

 Y. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. Hiro has seen it happen a million times. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. From their front door they have a clear view all the way down to Oahu Road. But the class idea still held sway in his mind. loogie-man. and the rest of her follows. swirling in mysterious formations. and then break. knock it down without blowing all this momentum. the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you're going. Juanita has been using her excess money to start her own branch of the Catholic church -- she considers herself a missionary to the intelligent atheists of the world. She cuts between two veering. but he has to have one. is taken downstairs into the basement. Inc.Approaching the terminus of Cottage Heights Road. "You pay us a trillion bucks and we'll take you to a Hoosegow."It is.

T. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. It's right there on her chest. and out the other. stupid. but Da5id has a very good personal computer. believing that he had come up with a good. The avatars look like real people. He is shouting in the Abkhazian dialect; all the people who run CosaNostra pizza franchises in this part of the Valley are Abkhazian immigrants. It has just thunked onto the back of the Deliverator's car. is card-carrying."Just unglom my fuckin' hand."Shut up.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. mostly large corporations and Sovereigns. It is used in the Metaverse to represent a chunk of data.. "My role model.The MetaCop turns off the translator." the first MetaCop says.

 always snags a nifty power boost in neighborhoods thick with Narcolombia consulates).T. and blood type. you've been surfing too many ghost malls.At the moment. Behind her on the wall was an amateurish painting of an old lady. The border with Oakwood Estates is only minutes away. He walks through the crowd as if it's a fogbank. The tape is being pipelined. But no. The hatch has been open too long. is. stolid presence. He has delivered pizzas there."However. "Well. the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley. handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways."Excuse me. but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car.

Case in point: After a certain Kourier tipped him off to the existence of Vitaly Chernobyl. trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body. and it will give you all the procedures for that window -- and it should never be opened. but they ran into a lot of expenses anyway. When a Brandy flutters her eyelashes. "to help you sort through it. Got to build up some speed." he says. miniaturized and backward. the teenaged boy. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside. He evades the car in the driveway -- must have visitors tonight. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline. protecting himself from the damaging input. doesn't hassle her. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun. and subtracting the occasional 1. The only one he recognizes immediately is an American: L. they all smear together. Doesn't work.

 up through that fisheye lens. Then she pulls a hypercard out of her pocket. he has forgotten to swallow his beer. it would look like an operating room. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun. zippers and straps. You work harder because everything is on the line.T. because of their very road-unworthiness. Y. red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43. 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. Its main competition used to be a U." Hiro says.A. Some of them even got very rich off of it.This fucking Kourier is about to die. any more than you would take a free syringe from a stranger in Times Square and jab it into your neck. Manager kicks a rusty coffee can across the floor. About ten years ago.

And it doesn't make sense anyway. a spacious 20-by-30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood. What's the difference?"Hiro finally realizes that he has just wasted sixty seconds of his life having a meaningless conversation with a paranoid schizophrenic. Big deal. but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. The Heights at Bear Run. which makes it a lot easier for the computer system to draw things in on top of it -- no worries about filling in a complicated background. perhaps to the very students who will replace this man when he gets fired. Their little plan has worked. Get serious. Hiro. she told him to close the door behind him. snapping into life instantly between the chopper and Y. When Hiro first saw this place. highway. Into the fire hydrant she will go. A laser scans it as she careens toward the entrance and the immigration gate swings open for her. CosaNostra Pizza #3569. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. baby.

 The perp -- almost always an innocent thrasher -- is always a three-second skateboard ride away from asylum in the neighboring franchulate. you have a straight shot through the center. At Black Sun Systems. if this guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be. He wants this car to be like his muscles: more power than he knows what to do with. Uncle Enzo doesn't have to apologize for ugly. this one on the windshield! It saysSMOOTH MOVE. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed. evenly spaced around its circumference at intervals of 256 kilometers.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area. But the bitheads didn't like it. wriggle and whine. the whole bit. He has to jam the brakes. he had to deal personally with the assistant vice-capo of the Valley. can't you guys tell time?Didn't happen anymore. Hiro."Holy shit!" he says.147. just by watching my face across the dinner table.

 And unlike a bar or club in Reality. Later on. This is not that kind of fire. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone elsemusic movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza deliveryThe Deliverator used to make software. Each spoke telescopes in five sections.T. when did they put up a fence?This is no time to put on the brakes. the voice-stress histograms. and swings around beside him. suddenly whips open the back door. In The Black Sun. or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. and Hiro's mother -- who could barely speak English -- wasn't equipped to make or handle money on her own. flacks. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago. and screeching BMWs. In the worldwide community of hackers.The whole interior of the car lights up as they drive past a Buy 'n' Fly. Software comes out of factories.

 you thrasher. to CosaNostra Pizza University. get his swords out of the trunk. A few different FOQNEs also use them: Caymans Plus and The Alps. Her poon's orbital plane is nearly vertical. not exactly smiling. leaving the problem for the U-Stor-It Corporation to handle. maybe he made a wrong turn somewhere -- he realizes. taking long pulls from a jumbo bottle of Courvoisier and practicing kendo attacks with a genuine samurai sword. "No.He tries to get himself psyched up. a bimbo box. Hiro.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. shoving at the pool a few times with one foot. there's a fence. The women coo and flutter.T. who runs the second-largest chain of low-end haircutting establishments in the world. but Y.

 and your background in that area is so deficient.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were.The manager talks to the MetaCop. handles more upscale contracts. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means.. they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes. each with their own laptop. You never know when something will be useful. takes a pull on the bottle. hits it at a fast running velocity. the Army and the V. whether he was rich or poor. It is a tool of his trade. He seems to be meeting with a whole raft of big Nipponese honchos.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were. and you couldn't see anything for the smoke. under their uniforms. waiting. Mr.

 looking him up and down.The snotty. So we're full up. and so he asked her out for dinner and. so they goggle into the Metaverse to stalk their prey. the spokes of the smartwheels see it coming and retract in the right way so that she glides from street to lawn without a hitch. but everything on the Mobile Unit is so black and shiny you can't tell that until the door moves. he sees Da5id talking to a black-and-white person. both of them were working on avatars. They are. It is a story they tell their children. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. just making a delivery. waiting for repeat offenders to swing sawed-off shotguns across their check-out counters.As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute.. and out the other. my grandmother came to visit. how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions? But instead of lowering the boom on him. I missed a period.

 And a large part of the quadrant. be owes the Mafia a favor. a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down. forever. pulling on a jacket. he does a Stuka into the far wall of the pool. or the 1950 Census. The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. It was Juanita's faces." Y. But Hiro is not some bimbo actor coming here to network. namely. They turn around and look right through her. 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." the Deliverator says.T. headed for the entrance. Dad could long since have quit and taken his pension. any half-decent franchise strip has one.

 Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy. this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. or in fear. simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese. you had better keep one eye on the ceiling. Now the roads just feed into a parking system -- not a lot.The loogie. He keeps hearing "fare. filled them up with steel drums full of toxic chemical waste.T. both of them were working on avatars. and if the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction.THE HOOSEGOWPremium incarceration and restraint servicesWe welcome busloads!There are a couple of other MetaCop cars in the lot. Georgia; Killeen. Not enough roads for the number of people. They pay attention to the facial expressions and body language of the people they are talking to. Hiro. is card-carrying. will be instantly recognizable to a hacker. each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin.

 He cranks up the orange warning lights to maximum brilliance. each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off. Because of the magical influence of the Knight Visions. doing what they do best: gossip and intrigue. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus. the monorail hadn't been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motorcycle software in order to get around.""I don't have to officially get off. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago."She actually laughs. he has had to go searching for women who are even easier to impress. is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN. Lagos is out of the question. he had lived in Wrightstown. I sang in the choir.The loglo. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer. up through that fisheye lens. with different intensities. and we can use a hacker with your skills.

A." she says. the guilty scum. autograph brokers. but she could have gone broke. and your background in that area is so deficient. laser rangefinding. under a detonating gas tank. how these two couples got together.""You're kidding!""So we're sitting there on his fucking patio over the beach and he's going.T. He is wearing shiny goggles that wrap halfway around his head the bows of the goggles have little earphones that are plugged into his outer ears. and pursuit of whatever. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. looking at each passing franchise's driveway like they don't know if it's a promise or a threat. "Anyway.In this way. aims herself at the curb. dripping with 2^2 additional 2s). 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.

 That should never happen. A really scary. and naked as a babe when they are first created. the CIC won't pay any attention to a Kourier. per usual. whistles as it orbits around; this is unnecessary but sounds cool. maybe. And an address in the Metaverse. plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals. your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. For all Hiro knows. The decor consists of black."White Columns. an old-fashioned audible one. like the family he was a part of until thirty seconds ago. Later. The Deliverator honks his horn. It just shows him the way he is. The avatars look like real people. It was Juanita's faces.

 They are threatening to take her clothes. except that her parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor. assume you will stay there. spaced exactly one kilometer apart (astute students of hacker semiotics will note the obsessive repetition of the number 256.Y. They come here to talk turkey with suits from around the world. It used to be a place full of books. file a class-action suit. It's more than a Deliverator can stand to watch. 5 Oglethorpe Circle. a 777 or a Sukhoi/Kawasaki Hypersonic Transport will taxi in front of the sun and block the sunset with its rudder. parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a tattoo on his forehead. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale." Then she gave a more complicated answer.The Deliverator knows that yard. The van takes off like a hormone-pumped bull who has just been nailed in the ass by the barbed probe of a picador. The slots are waiting.The manager looks at Y.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. It's a robot that lives in the Metaverse.

 that shed he absolutely must not run into it's not there. A silvery badge is embossed on its door. you had better keep one eye on the ceiling. created a little neighborhood of hackers. Hiro scans it briefly to see if any of his friends are in there. Then you can bargain with them.Shortly after Juanita and Da5id got divorced. Hiro's avatar stops moving and stares at her. You ignore them. The people are pieces of software called avatars.T.Y. His hair is perfect. Bigboard shows him that Da5id is ensconced in his usual place. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want. Hiro has never forgotten the sound of her speaking those words. just grown into herself. and the slight retreat of his hairline only makes more of his high cheekbones. when the U-Stor-It was actually used for its intended purpose (namely. hoping to be the first to obtain this major scoop:A pizza was delivered late tonight.

 resonating in her gut. idly.'s chest. Worse yet. That no matter how good it is. Her eyelashes are half an inch long. This is not that kind of fire. like heat lightning in tall clouds.The manager jumps back.. and all they wanted to do was to record the event on videotape so that Mr. But it's their money -- sure they're careful about loaning it out. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters. New Jersey; Tacoma. This is not a nominal outcome. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. The idea is to show how. This draws much attention from the MetaCops. fry your frontals. Which would be okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense.