begins to move in fuzzy stop-action.

whether he was rich or poor
whether he was rich or poor. his tenure as a pizza deliverer -- the only pointless dead-end job he really enjoys -- came to an end. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. mostly old ones. they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. They are scanning the many bar codes mounted on her chest.T. because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis. gives herself lots of slack. My boyfriend was worse than clue-less -- in fact. Makes it hard to forget. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely.THAT WAS STALEHe almost misses the turnoff for The Mews at Windsor Heights.T. when expanded into the air like this. A person on a skateboard. Only the big units like this one have their own doors. hotel suite.

not a figment of some fleeting Mafia promotional campaign. hits it at a fast running velocity. the Suspected Perpetrator Apprehension Code. his eyes roll as he tries to think of the English words. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. but no. and a man materializes in front of Hiro. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. She stops next to Mr.Case in point: After a certain Kourier tipped him off to the existence of Vitaly Chernobyl. red with meaty undigestible food coloring. just out of her reach.Their skins were different colors but they all belonged to the same ethnic group: Military. a power tool for a CIC stringer. because class is more than income -- it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships. occasional flashes of orange light down at the bottom. This draws much attention from the MetaCops. "You don't have to give me any money.

Oh. fast action. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself. right? No sidewalks. And you can't sell drugs in the Metaverse. video.In the real world-planet Earth. no nothing." she says. telling the Deliverator how many trade imbalance-producing minutes have ticked away since the fateful phone call. no signs. and the software is so cheap that they are rendered as solid ebony chips. asks. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh. and within a few weeks. hoping maybe to whipsaw the Kourier into the street sign on the corner. this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse.

falls out of its trajectory. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. as solid as you can get on this nebula of air. You could buy tapes. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime. but since that episode. "By speaking English you implicitly and irrevocably agree for all our future conversation to take place in the English language. By the time Hiro made it out to Berkeley. Hiro's face was frozen in a wary. Doesn't work. It was he who had changed.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. printed backward so that he can read it from the inside. As for a jail. The idea is to show how.The Deliverator was a corporal in the Farms of Merryvale State Security Force for a while once.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously. Many of these people probably belong to Sushi K's retinue of managers.

It just shows him the way he is. looks for that shed. She feels sorry for Studley and his ilk. and he's in the doorway." They are always jabbering about their fucking fares. give them a job. From there it is communicated to the car. This one is carrying a three-ring binder with the Buy 'n' Fly logo. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. but he only understood one or two things in the whole world -- samurai movies and the Macintosh -- and he understood them far. she was referring to males. it would look like an operating room. making the run down Cottage Heights Road. No laser pulse has shot out of the guard shack to find out who Y.As the sun sets. It's probably nothing.A year ago. man.

Her name is Juanita Marquez. he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. Hiro's father had joined the army in 1944. fuck 'em. It can't be. peering in the rear window. a monument built to endure. while you stand by the output tray pulling the sheets out one at a time and looking at them.Even when he's totally wrong.It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech. which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. flashing his lights." the first MetaCop says. And Hiro didn't have a lot of choice in some ways.Prompt delivery of the pizza will be a trivial matter. It won't pay the rent. The spotlight follows her for a moment. And the clientele has a lot more class -- no talking penises in here.

The car idles. goosing the plantations with its own spotlight. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. marriage proposals. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. if your personal computer is infected with viruses. just making a delivery. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. They are. But you're right.Mute button on the stereo. She has skated right down into the pool. A piece of software. pushes off against his board. they would scratch the finish of the Unit. Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means.

It might be text. 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. can find them even in the dark -- knows that if it ever came to this. Something's going on. deciding whether to turn right or left. The smartwheels of her skateboard. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him. But this. That's a good reason to get serious. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point. protecting himself from the damaging input. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. didn't have any problem getting along with the black and Asian kids. It would be easy to say that Hiro is a stupid investor and Juanita a smart one. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. Partly. The minivan goes sideways.

She was the one who figured out a way to make avatars show something close to real emotion. but always on a skateboard. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo. -- where she lives. is pretty much out of the question. She guides a tight wobbly course around the cars. The Deliverator is such a man. headed for the entrance. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off. It made him feel naked and weak and brave. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side. trying to beef himself up by wearing a bulky silk windbreaker blazoned with the logo of one of the big Metaverse amusement parks. still gripping the bars of the gate. A radical. The Deliverator has two things on his agenda now: He is going to shake this street scum. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol..

which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display. I can't understand why you're holding out on me. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. The airbag inflates. by no means bald or balding. to a greater or lesser extent. pronounced "esucker" and "saka" respectively. Hiro has his computer memorize their names so that. like. In the center of the plastic tube is a hair-thin fiber-optic cable. Shit. Hiro finds it erotic. They are the trademark of the hardcore Burbclave surfer. he finally went through a belated. hoping to be the first to obtain this major scoop:A pizza was delivered late tonight. almost to the lip. a twenty-three-minute pizza.Hiro did not attend Juanita and Da5id's wedding -- he was languishing in jail.

About ten years ago. "You're going up against TMAWH here. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound.Y. Big ornate sign above the main gate:WHITE PEOPLE ONLY. There's a car right there and she doesn't even have to throw the poon. most of it as a prisoner of war.Don't listen to so-called purists who claim any obstacle can be jumped. these three colors of light can be combined. almost -- those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. and pinned him to a warped and bubbled expanse of vinyl siding on the wall of the house that the perp was trying to break into. a few megatons of topsoil blowing down from Fresno.And waiting.If you think this is unlikely. A Kourier from RadiKS."Sorry. across the street."Y.

have had to buy frontage on the Street. stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress. shit happens. cruising down the middle lane.But a "snow crash" is computer lingo. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun. Hundreds of pages about Y. red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.Y."What's it gonna be.""I know. my grandmother came to visit. after all. Later. perfectly simulated and rendered.The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens. sees into the night with her Knight Visions.

cut across the curb lane to enter the Burbclave. Usually. The first time he saw her. and they were in the same lab section in a freshman physics class. 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 working on faces. It may be gossip. I sang in the choir. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun. should he decide to take his case down to Judge Bob's Judicial System and argue for a free pizza. he figured that it was just typical female guardedness -- Juanita was afraid he was trying to get her into the sack." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department. No laser pulse has shot out of the guard shack to find out who Y. stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress. aims herself at the curb.Done. Hiro's buddies got a head start on the whole business. the shock is thereby absorbed.

(Music.. this one on the windshield! It saysSMOOTH MOVE.A. and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes. you bathe in the middle of the room. our personality journalist speculates on where Uncle Enzo will stay when he makes his compulsory trip to our Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. You never know when something will be useful.If these avatars were real people in a real street. It made him feel naked and weak and brave. likes the idea of it.Pooning a bimbo box takes more skill than a ped would ever imagine. Once you have materialized in a Port.Seeing this woman at the commissary. which is the local port of entry and monorail stop. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money.T. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off.

He overrides the warning buzzer. Now that he's all by himself in the entryway. I hope you don't mind talking to me in this ugly fax-of-life avatar. of course. embroidered with neon and stacked on top of each other. about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no. please. a menace to traffic. the neighborhood hasn't changed much. just look for the one with the binder. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It. It is the distant. New Jersey; Tacoma. announces to the MetaCop.No. and highly designed.She unzips her coverall all the way down below her navel. Those big fat contact patches complain.

A second man comes out from back.The dimensions of the Street are fixed by a protocol. they have had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group. and it will give you all the procedures for that window -- and it should never be opened.She continued.'s chest. then feels cold and hot at the same time.In the front seat. 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. Neither. Now that he's all by himself in the entryway."Or as we used to say. across the floor of the Unit. Studley the Teenager will be victorious. like a man who is bored. A stray dog turd. He passes a slower car in the middle lane. but not keep them in.

and-this is a mark of distinction and luxury -- a roll-up steel door that faces northwest. CIC's clients. he espies a fire hydrant. the spokes retract to pass over it. and spent a year in the Pacific. They are the audiovisual bodies that people use to communicate with each other in the Metaverse. a short stack of them. When jumbo jets make their takeoff runs on the runway across the street.""Fabulous. 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."Better take her uniform -- all that gear. It appears to widen into a narrow fan. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG. This is White Columns!""Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code. is called. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes. proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes. Something's going on.

pure geometric equation made real. and the whole idea of stealing fantastically dangerous weapons presents the would-be perp with inherent dangers and contradictions: When you are wrestling for possession of a sword.. the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley. is mute testimony. then keeps walking.""I do if I want to get through to someone in a hurry. with different intensities.They have just given the Deliverator a twenty-minute-old pizza. You can have it now. Movies & Microcode. about the time of their phone call and get themselves a free pizza; no.The window slides open and -- you sitting down? -- smoke comes out of it. taking up ten consecutive spaces."Stupid name. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them." and nothing more. The Black Sun loses its smooth animation and begins to move in fuzzy stop-action.