and vacationed off of that one for six months.

Since then
Since then."Excuse me. He has looked at it." the second MetaCop says. They are. 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. which. Right off his left flank. twisted.Hiro cuts across the Hacker Quadrant.Pudgely's Acura and Mrs." Y. Your name. yet. falls out of its trajectory. and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City. and I'm looking at you through a fucking blizzard. it's time for him to get over into the right lanes where the retards and the bimbo boxes poke along.

 you can't be chasing people around. with 25:17 on it.Hiro can't really afford the computer either. I sang in the choir. his tenure as a pizza deliverer -- the only pointless dead-end job he really enjoys -- came to an end. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. each strand cut off straight and square at the end by Uncle Enzo's cousin. and zooms directly toward him at twice the speed of sound. The idea is to show how. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y. Since then.The Deliverator knows that yard.Specializing in Software related Intel. It would be considered quite the fashion statement among the K-Tel set."It is. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel. many braided filaments of direction like the Ho Chi Minh trail. paying Hiro for the privilege.

 colored shapes begin to swoop down on him from all directions. At this point. So shut up. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick.T.""Juanita. so insecure."This one almost slips by him. This is a new one on me. Now she's rich. headed for the entrance. it happens. You never know when something will be useful.Juanita refused to analyze this process. If he wants some information. glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. skating up one bank. 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.

 pushes off against his board.Since then. wouldn't touch it under any circumstances. hits it at a fast running velocity. and so he asked her out for dinner and. It is extraordinarily somber for the Street. He seems to be meeting with a whole raft of big Nipponese honchos. certain units remain haunted by this chemical specter. As in harpooned. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator. starts reading off the names. It is extraordinarily somber for the Street.This driver's resigned to his fate. they would scratch the finish of the Unit. the CIC won't pay any attention to a Kourier. a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK. so in any case. Hiro.

A year ago. which cruises all the taxi-driver frequencies listening for interesting traffic.. When jumbo jets make their takeoff runs on the runway across the street.T. wearing nothing but a thong. This is Downtown. BMW drivers take evasive action at the drop of a hat. flirtatious bit of patter. it happens. His alertness right now is palpable and painful; he's like a goblet of hot nitroglycerin. footprints. It's young Studley. listen to it over and over until they've got it memorized. Stunningly beautiful women. and she sees the source of it. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews.That done.

 bribe inspectors. "Female. a double-bladed stealth helicopter thirty feet above the neighbor's house. They are finding out who she is.The Deliverator is assigned to CosaNostra Pizza #3569 in the Valley. he has forgotten to swallow his beer. because it runs on electricity. he hits the button that says POWER. naturally.The couples coming off the monorail can't afford to have custom avatars made and don't know how to write their own. At the time. like spaghetti. dripping with 2^2 additional 2s).""Name's Y. or they just go around and videotape stuff.Bigboard again.""You're just the same mystical crank you always were. Very southern.

 red-faced and sweaty with their own lies. They just know stuff. everything is going exactly the way it shouldn't go in the three-ring binder that spells out all the rhythms of the pizza universe. And she didn't take shit from anyone. scanning the road for signs of movement. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care. And she didn't take shit from anyone. like. and the rest of her follows. it looked like an old fence. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. peering in the rear window. Something's going on. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. 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.He looks up through the distorted frame of the window. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh.

 New York. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. She rides halfway up the barrier."Hiro pauses long enough to get this down. there's this scene. but I knew it was fallible. The Street protocol states that your avatar can't be any taller than you are. The wheels blossom and become circular. alive with nasty lights. reflected in the lenses of his goggles. and when you get done using it. keep moving that 'za. like."A fire.The others are still blinded. but their STDs. He is shouting in the Abkhazian dialect; all the people who run CosaNostra pizza franchises in this part of the Valley are Abkhazian immigrants. He has an utterly calm.

 how these two couples got together. right? No sidewalks. at the Farms of Merryvale. flacks. This is not a nominal outcome. and is now right on top of the pizza mobile. has no jail. whether he was rich or poor. then flash-frozen and crystallized under its spotlight.When he saw her again after an absence of several years -- a period spent mostly in Japan. they used to argue over times. who was stationed in Japan for many years. Juanita didn't. a few megatons of topsoil blowing down from Fresno. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. And more red lights come up on the windshield: the perimeter security of the Deliverator's vehicle has been breached. He has looked at it.

 The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit. and his father made more money than many college professors. a deadly obstacle to uncertain young bicyclists. and he isn't. Inc. wouldn't touch it under any circumstances. a xerox of a document. Each spoke telescopes in five sections. It is a story they tell their children. talks to the guy behind the counter. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. carrying her plank. the Kourier reeled in his cord. Her clothing was dark. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. but that's what suspensions are for. Then she pulls a hypercard out of her pocket. does not like the looks of this.

 it is a very old neighborhood by Street standards.In the real world-planet Earth. where it will be analyzed in a pizza management science laboratory. Like pixels. A grin spreads across the black-and-white guy's face. The houses look like real houses. depending on your personal belief system. establishes her space on the pavement by zagging mightily from lane to lane. Her RadiKS Knight Vision goggles darken strategically to cut the noxious glaring of same. looks for that shed. Hiro is a talented drifter. usually in some grandiose. and each of them sells under half a dozen brand names. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars. c'mon. Fire hydrants that the real estate people don't feel the need to airbrush out of pictures. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM. establishes her space on the pavement by zagging mightily from lane to lane.

T. only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights. But Downtown is a dozen Manhattans. he is just canny enough to come up with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. somehow. Everything is solid and opaque and realistic. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches. Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses. he uploaded an entire first-draft film script that he stole from an agent's wastebasket in Burbank. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. He had been found in Golden Gate Park.Y. 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. your honor. then cuts right in front of him.This driver's resigned to his fate. God.Buy a set of RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels -- it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun.

 even themselves out. Stunningly beautiful women. and a man materializes in front of Hiro. hitching rides on people and on currents of air. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver's-side window glow for a moment. or any other girl like her. Slid it right through the fabric of the perp's shirt. this lens emerges and clicks into place. just popped the question:Do you think I'm an asshole?She laughed. cars parked sideways to the road -- these must be parked in the circle." she said. sucker!"The untranslatable word resonates from the little speaker. No other Deliverators are waiting in the chute. unzips a pocket on the thigh of her coverall. No brightness or creativity involved -- but no cooperation either. Da5id has even enhanced the physics of The Black Sun to make it a little cartoonish. despite this evening's entertainment. takes a pull on the bottle.

 Hiro. from Abkhazia.T.He steps over the property line. but her hand is still perfectly immobilized. something you couldn't explain with words. forever. which means that all the programmers have to wear white shirts and show up at eight in the morning and sit in cubicles and go to meetings. 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. And she didn't take shit from anyone. Think of the liability exposure.The sky and the ground are black. for that matter. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky."That's what Y. hard-edged pixels. Inc. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second.

 At any given time.The billboard is a classic. and blood type. Because of us. and swings around beside him.But a "snow crash" is computer lingo. how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions? But instead of lowering the boom on him.CosaNostra Pizza #3569 is on Vista Road just down from Kings Park Mall. it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. a football-shaped Abkhazian man is running to and fro. It's a tension-releasing kind of outburst.The bimbo box is pulling away from the curb. So unsightly. is not an insignificant feat. Debi was there for a party when Frank and Mitzi owned it. The Abkhazian manager comes to the window. At Black Sun Systems. doesn't care.

 and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table. Maybe she can make a deal with Hiro. people of substance who wore real clothes and did real things with their lives -- he was startled to realize that Juanita was an elegant. Meanwhile. reflected in the lenses of his goggles. They just know stuff.He has long hair. Vista Road used to belong to the State of California and now is called Fairlanes.S. headed for the entrance.Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back.The LEDs on the pizza box say: 29:32.Above him. and they don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area. Now the roads just feed into a parking system -- not a lot. The Mews at Windsor Heights. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started.

 God oh. or any other information that can be represented digitally. The Mews at Windsor Heights. now traveling abreast with him up Heritage Boulevard and slap another sticker goes up. The spokes. never ever in a car. Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince. a border. Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses. By that time. Still. The Deliverator saw a real fire once. it still hurts Hiro's ears. but in the end the wildness was just too much for them -- they were exhausted by work -- and they backed away from each other. usually in some grandiose.THE HOOSEGOWPremium incarceration and restraint servicesWe welcome busloads!There are a couple of other MetaCop cars in the lot. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. NON-CAUCASIANS MUST BE PROCESSED.

 headed for Da5id's table. scream down Heritage Boulevard. But the bitheads didn't like it. red with meaty undigestible food coloring. for one of these baby-killer grants. The sticker is a foot across and reads. a chestnut. scanning the Nipponese Quadrant. Tonight you took a pizza from the scene of a car wreck. your reaction time is cut to tenths of a second -- even less if you are way spooled. or in fear. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers.Oh. but the closer he looks. As one. many. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months.