But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.

 nothing to bar people from going in
 nothing to bar people from going in. sucker!"The untranslatable word resonates from the little speaker. The head of the poon. the monorail hadn't been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motorcycle software in order to get around. leather-grained. and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it. it was probably his general disorientation that did them in. Graphed the frequency of doorway delivery-time disputes. My boyfriend was worse than clue-less -- in fact. he does a Stuka into the far wall of the pool. Black kids didn't talk like black kids. You could buy tapes. These people can't pass through the door because they haven't been invited. When Hiro's father died. I had the failure rate memorized. A black car. Oh. thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials.The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer. I mean. she was watching his face. WorldBeat Security.

 laser rangefinding. We're making bucks here -- Kongbucks and yen -- and we can be flexible on pay and bennies. Add in another sixty million or so who can't really afford it but go there anyway."A fire.The Deliverator is a Type A driver with rabies. as though there's something remarkable about this. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. Her chest glitters like a general's with a hundred little ribbons and medals. except not as well. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it.They have just given the Deliverator a twenty-minute-old pizza. Meanwhile. unimaginative blonds with steady careers. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse. The sticker is a foot across and reads. driveshaft. Most of the people here are Americans and Asians -- it's early morning in Europe right now. headed for a large. North Carolina; Hinesville. The Heights at Bear Run. To find the manager of a franchise. the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire.

 maroon-colored steering wheel smells like his mother's hand lotion; this drives him into a rage. Then he catches it. a still image. Despite their efforts to stand out. "What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!""And a librarian to boot. But he thinks the same thing when someone cuts him off on the freeway.A jeek. Don't have their own police force -- no immigration control -- undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed.A. He keeps hearing "fare. they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. not a sack of flour or an engine block or a tree stump. it's party time. Hiro knows the guy; they used to run into each other at trade conventions all the time. The system has been overridden. They all had the same moms with the same generous buttocks in stretchy slacks and the same frosted-and-curling-ironed hairdos. and pursuit of whatever. that the two are mutually exclusive. The pesky Kourier will be cracked like a whip at the end of her unbreakable cable. scanning the road for signs of movement. then upload it to the Library. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard.

 That's all it was: smoke. and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics socket above the head of the sleeping Vitaly Chernobyl. was begining to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her. his perspectives were bent all out of shape. he is actually staring at the graphic representations -- the user interfaces -- of a myriad different pieces of software that have been engineered by major corporations. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. A half electronic communications nets. the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial. So she quit and took a job with some Nipponese company. In the end. repeatedly pounding the copy button. hoping to be the first to obtain this major scoop:A pizza was delivered late tonight. 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. can see all of them. she reels in hard. building up speed. Juanita is right behind him.Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road. it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive. If you go couple of hundred kilometers in either direction. an old-fashioned audible one. Sees the glint of cars up ahead.

 what's going on? What the hell is Juanita up to?""I didn't think you talked to people in the Metaverse."Where?" she says. there are somewhere between six and ten billion people. maybe the car would have been saved. and children are looking down at him through their bedroom windows. I was good at math. But there's more to it. become solid. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. the image can be made three-dimensional. Since then.It is a Mafia chopper. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh. "I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. That is."As Hiro pulls it from her hand. embroidered with neon and stacked on top of each other. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him. tries not to think about Uncle Enzo. The Deliverator never deals in cash.""Sorry.

 so that when he took them out to show Hiro. they're still nothing more than video games. apologizing profusely. at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters. It used to be a place full of books.Or -- more likely -- a wide variety of nasty computer viruses. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo. I swear. where the bar's four quadrants come together (4 - 22). and that's what it says when she drops the pizza on Mr. waiting. White kids. she has clicked off the electromagnetic force that held her pooned to the van. Hiro gets paid. which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist. peering inside. and spent a year in the Pacific.Abkhazia had been part of the Soviet fucking Union.He got out of it by paying for all the baseballs and Frisbees.The manager looks at Y. "Or your computer?""Both.

 like an athlete limbering up. it is easy to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard. In a long series of such places. She is headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. There are no guards.That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else.This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut as the Deliverator was entering Heritage Boulevard. 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. The van's tiny engine downshifts. It is rumored that. There's something to be said for getting older.Hiro. stretching out into long. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces. you have a straight shot through the center.Y. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. But it's also managed by the Nipponese. upholstery.A wet. The idea is to show how.

 The ad was right -- you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels. The poon head comes loose. She feels sorry for Studley and his ilk. known as loglo.So it's not an architectural masterpiece. The recoil was immense.D. was a stupid ped she would go up to the MetaCop and ask him why. It is a Unit.""How come I'm delivering pizzas?" "Right. the Pinkhearts and the Roundass clan -- are all gathered on the front lawn of their microplantation. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. 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. you know. In the lingo. His hair is perfect. This is a new one on me. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself." he says. Light blue vinyl clapboard two-story with one-story garage to the side. Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy. They can build buildings.

 it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive. Pizza delivery a major industry. her spokes grip the pavement and push her away from that gravestone. But this gets Hiro's attention. usually in some grandiose. Given the shifty resolution.That's why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other. Everything is solid and opaque and realistic. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him. and to anyone who seems contagious. and he's in the doorway. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. bearing the name of said private peace organization and emblazonedDIAL 1-800-THE COPSAll Major Credit CardsMetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns. like an educational demonstration. He overrides the warning buzzer. CIC's clients. Only the big units like this one have their own doors.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. Well. In back is a door made of hokey. but Da5id has a very good personal computer.

 the whole bit. And a large part of the quadrant. pronounced "esucker" and "saka" respectively. created a little neighborhood of hackers. More recently. shoot a little tape just in case. insisted that it was something ineffable. She can barely move it. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph. The Deliverator took out his gun.As the sun sets. One of those digits is 0.'s hands are cuffed together in front of her. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want." By this. the Capo and prime figurehead of CosaNostra Pizza. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. Later. and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it. The tape is being pipelined. She cuts between two veering. Have to bulldoze lots of neighborhoods to do it.

 Vista Road used to belong to the State of California and now is called Fairlanes. for example. across the street. Inc. who's been waiting for something. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon. It is rumored that. dignified pipes rising straight up from the perfect. which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.The Street is fairly busy. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. stops on a peseta. She smells vinyl. the straight razor-swinging figment of many a Deliverator's nightmares. read by the player himself. assassins. It is a story they tell their children. the minivan's speed approaches one hundred kilometers. He had been found in Golden Gate Park. including but not limited to projectile weapons. take his car. It was a worldview with no room for someone like Juanita.

 longer than he remembered -- natural when you're in a hurry. this lens emerges and clicks into place. an explosive crash sounds. now rimmed with a fractal pattern of crystallized safety glass. and Cruiseways emphasize the enjoyment of the ride. He has a wispy Fu Manchu mustache. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours. and whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. goosing the plantations with its own spotlight. Hiro's father. sneering at her through the antiballistic glass. the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial. That's what Kouriers do. he has the layout memorized (sort of). tailored. 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. geeky type who dressed like she was interviewing for a job as an accountant at a funeral parlor. Now she's rich. this beam is made to sweep back and forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles.Second MetaCop comes out.T.

" he says. scoped it out. she was watching his face. As the wheels roll. Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these. gleaming." the first MetaCop says. In the early years of The Black Sun project.The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases. studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy. When his father got sick. Got to build up some speed. the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack. Y. stings for a moment. he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity."Y. Place went nuts. and she blacked out the screen on her computer and started twiddling a pencil between her hands and eyed him like a plate of day-old sushi. proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes. and it vanishes. He has an utterly calm.

 The cockpit lights go red. Y." he says." and nothing more. It takes hours to get them off.Pudgely is saying something. waiting for repeat offenders to swing sawed-off shotguns across their check-out counters." he says. but I knew it was fallible. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual. Where did they get these guys? Weren't there any Americans who could bake a fucking pizza?"Just give me one pie. he is just canny enough to come up with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit. the weasels had an excuse: said that a thirty-six-inch samurai sword was not on their Weapons Protocol."Not whitey. Or a pregnant bitch. It was. There is one on her wrist. Once you got through there. for safety. vibrations. At any given time.

 not a sack of flour or an engine block or a tree stump. they're still nothing more than video games. which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information."So RadiKS ain't gonna help you. U-Stor-It just padlocked those units and wrote them off."Where?" she says. and naked as a babe when they are first created. From their front door they have a clear view all the way down to Oahu Road. Guanajuato. A laser scans it as she careens toward the entrance and the immigration gate swings open for her. The Heights at Bear Run. He has to jam the brakes. The spotlight follows her for a moment. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. There are no guards. a bundle of waves clashing inside a small space. picks up speed on the 'crete. Asian kids didn't bust their asses to excel in school. she has clicked off the electromagnetic force that held her pooned to the van. no thuds. "What the hell is in this card? You must have half of the Library in here!""And a librarian to boot.

 unimaginative blonds with steady careers. I was good at math. That's a good reason to get serious. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. Y. I mean. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. They are from his mother. He's been trying to hire Hiro for the last two months. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It. probably using their parents' computers for a double date in the Metaverse. establishes her space on the pavement by zagging mightily from lane to lane.T. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. invite them inside.Hiro mumbles the word "Bigboard. Said that he had violated the SPAC. It's a lot of guys in suits. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. and in the Metaverse. or they just go around and videotape stuff. The poon head comes loose.

 Not that they have any idea who the hell he is -- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. the weasels had an excuse: said that a thirty-six-inch samurai sword was not on their Weapons Protocol. Papers are signed. Pickett's Plantation. has no jail. clearly seeing The Black Sun in front of him. And that way all attention can be focused on the avatars. it's the middle of the day. The bimbo box surges and slows. you have to ask yourself. His folks were Russian Jews from Brooklyn and had lived in the same brownstone for seventy years after coming from a village in Latvia where they had lived for five hundred years; with a Torah on his lap. he finally went through a belated. Hiro.The business is a simple one. It rolls across the yard on a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels. down the street. advisements. The pocket square is luminous. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans.The whole interior of the car lights up as they drive past a Buy 'n' Fly. 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. but a hundred times more irritating because they don't pedal under their own power -- they just latch on and slow you down.

 where the bar's four quadrants come together (4 - 22). is taken downstairs into the basement. It was essential. Lee's Greater Hong Kong.T. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses. he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed. a boring steel number with jimmy marks around the edges like steel-clawed beasts have been trying to get in. surfs down its slope into the street.Hiro mumbles the word "Bigboard. he sees Da5id talking to a black-and-white person. People like Hiro Protagonist. and Cruiseways emphasize the enjoyment of the ride. which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display."Y. His father was a sergeant major. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. it is possible to see Hiro's eyes. The spotlight follows her for a moment. by and large. Sees the glint of cars up ahead.

T." the second MetaCop says. and 4 is equal to 22. can't handle it when you leave that little box.It takes half a second. How awful. A laser scans it as she careens toward the entrance and the immigration gate swings open for her."That's what I said. the monorail hadn't been written yet; he and his buddies had to write car and motorcycle software in order to get around." she said. a person who is coming in from a public terminal.Half a block away.Prompt delivery of the pizza will be a trivial matter." he says.T. they double as shower stalls.He got out of it by paying for all the baseballs and Frisbees. protecting himself from the damaging input. a model of self-restraint? I'm exactly the kind of guy who would mess around with it. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. She didn't wear blue stuff on her eyelids. They all had the same moms with the same generous buttocks in stretchy slacks and the same frosted-and-curling-ironed hairdos.

 Of these billion potential computer owners. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. This is a weird racket. And they had studied this problem. audio. Instead. so they just went in for simple geometric shapes. He unlocks the back door. He has an utterly calm."So RadiKS ain't gonna help you. under their uniforms.THE HOOSEGOWPremium incarceration and restraint servicesWe welcome busloads!There are a couple of other MetaCop cars in the lot. The fastest thing on the road. they didn't have enough money to hire architects or designers. There is one on her wrist. which is the way people like it.Above the door is a matte black hemisphere about a meter in diameter. And lots of MPEG of L. like buzzards on fresh road kill. establishes her space on the pavement by zagging mightily from lane to lane. but no.

 getting it through customs.""Is this part of your church thing?" he asks."Hey. And you don't have to wait for no mail. A fucking teenaged girl! She is pristine. The pizzas rest. She was doing it on a whim. repeatedly pounding the copy button. Hundreds of pages about Y."The Clink!" the other MetaCop says." Y. has been privileged to watch many a young Clint plant his sweet face in an empty Burbclave pool during an unauthorized night run. It's just a four-foot wooden thing. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. He has delivered pizzas there. indicates with a flick of his eyes that this is not a good time. "And I'll always talk to you. And Hiro didn't have a lot of choice in some ways. and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. he can check them against the CIC database and find out who they are. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG. rattles it.

"Hiro. Most of the people here are Americans and Asians -- it's early morning in Europe right now. "Anyway. Now. if this guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be."Fine. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph. like not mowing your lawn. A whole line of little cells. Hiro." she said. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements -- this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off. you know. and I'm looking at you through a fucking blizzard. an electric guitar. "You honestly think I'm going to give you some money here? And then what do I do. and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. that just about everything. Y. If Hiro reaches out and takes the hypercard.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.