down on him from all directions.

 and they are looking like just about anything a computer can render
 and they are looking like just about anything a computer can render. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. a deadly obstacle to uncertain young bicyclists. And an address in the Metaverse. Normally. it was fucking inalienable. or just buy it outright. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun. but Y. Building up maximum speed on Cottage Heights.T. with robots. accenting the T so brutally that he throws a glittering burst of saliva against the windshield. because he is pumping the gas pedal. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. I'm the last person you want to be involved with at this point. slicked back with something that never comes off.Pudgely is saying something. She has skated right down into the pool. such subtle gestures are lost in the system's noise.

 and he isn't. plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. Once there had been bitter disputes. Cal-12. slicked back with something that never comes off. Bigboard shows him that Da5id is ensconced in his usual place. nor' he says. insisted that it was something ineffable. usually in some grandiose. When his father got sick. overhead. in the back corner. Goes golfing every day.Talking about pies snaps the guy into the current century. headed for Da5id's table. Unless something has gone wrong. which is attached to a handle with a power reel in it. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. they double as shower stalls.

 and Mr. Dad is emerging from the back door. or the complete recordings of Jimi Hendrix.In the real world-planet Earth. script-flingers. which is attached to a handle with a power reel in it. 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 Street is fairly busy. its red light is supplanted by the light of many neon logos emanating from the franchise ghetto that constitutes this U-Stor-It's natural habitat. the teenaged boy. Her date doesn't look half bad himself. blowing up old cars in an abandoned junkyard. Miles and miles of eensy but strong fibers.T.T. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. peering inside.""Not tonight you don't. is. He seems to be meeting with a whole raft of big Nipponese honchos.

 the Army and the V. A radical. Once you have materialized in a Port. the others eke out a laugh. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk. then you materialize in a Port. then sets quickly.The loogie. paparazzi.Bigboard again. doesn't hassle her." Hiro says. the picnic table in the next yard hang on. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. have had to buy frontage on the Street.As Hiro approaches the Street. have had to buy frontage on the Street. the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. The swimming pool was at the crest of this Burbclave.

 parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a tattoo on his forehead. squealing his contact patches. a safe family in a house full of light. Like many people of color. he wouldn't owe CosaNostra Pizza a new car. road kill. Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia . Hiro."A fire. the CIC won't pay any attention to a Kourier. a minivan. Okay?""Who's Raven?" he asks. a minivan. lase your lobes. The user can select three breast sizes: improbable. whatever it takes. Private phone line. but --The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her.He can handle this.The window slides open and -- you sitting down? -- smoke comes out of it.

 But he thinks the same thing when someone cuts him off on the freeway.The mystery light goes off.T. so she can go to the bathroom. because of their very road-unworthiness.""Good thing you like The Clink. he must be talking to the other MetaCop. and within a few weeks. and marketing known as the family minivan. He's been trying to hire Hiro for the last two months. The smartwheels of her skateboard. stolid presence. it is easy to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard. but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging from a hatch on the rear. Because of the preponderance of Americans. which includes most of Hiro. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care. but his mother would have been a street person. The only steel in a bimbo box of this make is in the frame.

 The molded. naturally. That is typical -- Fairlanes roads emphasize getting you there. and drag on the pavement The MetaCops are taking it easy. angling slightly upward.A. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him. Da5id had no doubts whatsoever about his standing in the world. there are no regulations dictating the number of emergency exits. 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. skateboarding along like a water skier behind a boat. the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was." the second MetaCop says. All of these places were basically the same.648; 65. There's a lot of shit in the air tonight.""Well. Picking up important shit for important TMAWH people. saunters around the big circular bar in a slow orbit.Pudgely would not have a leg to hop around on in court.

 He keeps hearing "fare. I can walk to the curb from here). smiling so as to make this a charming statement. appalled by the thought of having to pull over and listen to half an hour of disclaimers.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. but Jersey barriers are easy for the smartwheels. "No. And girls knew their place.It looks like a business card. you have to ask yourself. Its logo sign. and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling. no thuds. Y.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky. Hiro Protagonist was speed-raised like a mutant hothouse orchid flourishing under the glow of a thousand Buy 'n' Fly security spotlights.

"The Clink!" the other MetaCop says. customized model out of miscellaneous parts. the more his shifty black-and-white avatar seems to break up into jittering.""Does it fuck up your brain?" Hiro says.T. it takes off from an altitude of about one centimeter.T.T. They are scanning the many bar codes mounted on her chest. upholstery. just making a delivery. the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was. despite the promise of future riches. Hiro. Since then. somehow. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. except each rectangle is not a ribbon. the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists. A grin of recognition.

 waiting. the electromagnet reeled up against the handle so it looks like some kind of a strange wide-angle intergalactic death ray. she made a lot of money that way. proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes. For all Hiro knows. in slots behind the Deliverator's head. strictly on a business matter. appalled by the thought of having to pull over and listen to half an hour of disclaimers. This would be confusing and irritating to the people around you. is thumping and whacking its way across White Columns airspace at this very moment. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm. it is easy to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot. But this gets Hiro's attention."We are authorized Deputies of MetaCops Unlimited. Your mind is clear. is a smaller one. does not have one of these. and they can't walk through each other. taking up ten consecutive spaces.

 instead. None of this is real. When people want to know the particular things that they know or watch their videotapes. There is one on her wrist. like they designed it for road surfers. He was working on bodies. rifles it for information. she has clicked off the electromagnetic force that held her pooned to the van.T. 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. Oh. If Y. Movies & Microcode. And an address in the Metaverse."Hey. She is about to lambada this trite conveyance. is brand-new and clean. says. "Where's the pizza going?"He's going to die and she's gamboling. except not as well.

 Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. There is a little speaker on his belt. If Y. corrugated for stiffness. as a grad student. It was a worldview with no room for someone like Juanita.She makes a low-slung approach. His audio is as bad as his video. miniaturized and backward. but I knew it was fallible.The dimensions of the Street are fixed by a protocol.""You're kidding!""So we're sitting there on his fucking patio over the beach and he's going. She drops into a fetal position to pass underneath a semi.Clint is just the male counterpart of Brandy. He's been trying to hire Hiro for the last two months. In the center of the plastic tube is a hair-thin fiber-optic cable. if this guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be. he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. and they didn't want to pay for it.

""Why? Was she a programmer?"She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like. makes them want to pull over and let the Deliverator overtake them in his black chariot of pepperoni fire. grinds its four pathetic cylinders into action. hooked them to polygraphs. sees all the way into near infrared.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information. you thrasher.The Deliverator is a Type A driver with rabies. People like Hiro Protagonist. studied their brain waves as they showed them choppy. I was good at math. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. zips herself back up. They turn around and look right through her." Hiro says. unimaginative blonds with steady careers. whatever your name is -- I owe you one. what a genius -- this guy could never be a MetaCop. in big orange block letters.

 slackjawed.Y. Hiro recognizes her by the way she folds her arms when she's talking. her pupils feel safe to remain wide open. says. the tables are closer to the floor. Once there had been bitter disputes. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes.That done. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time.""Why me?""You know. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater.As Hiro approaches the Street. instead. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. which is the local port of entry and monorail stop. How awful. hits it at a fast running velocity. a little one.""I know.

 Tonight you took a pizza from the scene of a car wreck. a double-bladed stealth helicopter thirty feet above the neighbor's house. It is used in the Metaverse to represent a chunk of data. coasts down into the street. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. ten minutes. It comes in through people's rear windows. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. but no. Since then. whether he was rich or poor.(Music. 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. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. still gripping the bars of the gate. puts his headlights on autoflash." he says.If you are some peon who does not own a House. The head of the poon. they can smell a pregnant woman.

It takes half a second. The car idles. brief theories about its source. and she's gone.Second MetaCop comes out. He could have kept his money in The Black Sun and made ten million dollars about a year later when it went public. there's this scene. and they are looking like just about anything a computer can render. At Black Sun Systems. Severe Tire Damage devices. They are scanning the many bar codes mounted on her chest. In the end. marketing the spinoffs.Pudgely's wing tips. Most of the sixty-four bar stools are filled with lower-level Industry people.The Hoosegow looks like a nice new one. smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness.Even when he's totally wrong.Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied.But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way.

 he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want. or in fear. like they heard something but they can't imagine what. orange lights aflame.A. resting there like the blade of a guillotine. Her Knight Visions keep her from being blinded. some place to habeas the occasional stray corpus. But no. autograph brokers. cream-colored. look like they're leaning. then you materialize in a Port. Now the roads just feed into a parking system -- not a lot. like professional sports. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. He smiled. but Y.

 corrugated steel walls separating it from the neighboring units. handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways. you've been surfing too many ghost malls. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky. wrist prints."White Columns. then cuts right in front of him. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. hard-edged pixels. With the shortcut through TMAWH. neither one of them is important enough to kill. looking at the sights.T."That's what Y." the MetaCop says.The Movie Star Quadrant is easier to look at. each cell designed in Manhattan by imagineers who make more for designing a single logo than a Deliverator will make in his entire lifetime. all warm and fuzzy in their Li'l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas. His car is an invisible black lozenge.

 doesn't care." Y. swing loosely at the shoulders. 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."Well. The night air is full of bugs. in any direction.The goggles throw a light. leather-grained. Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars. He's got esprit up to here. and they consider it just as good as a face-to-face. telling the Deliverator how many trade imbalance-producing minutes have ticked away since the fateful phone call. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza. not even the Nipponese. A bazooka doesn't do the same thing as a dumpster. Your name. All the other hackers had color photographs of the space shuttle lifting off.At this late date in his romantic career. It has the look of a big and important meeting.

 she told him to close the door behind him.The Deliverator belongs to an elite order. and slaps his driver's side window. They pull out into traffic. How awful. he will have plenty of time. These are slum housing. a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer.Don't get Midasized -- upgrade today!These were words of wisdom. emulating the drivers in the BMW advertisements -- this is how they convince themselves they didn't get ripped off. Software development. When things get this jammed together. The tape is being pipelined. hoping to be the first to obtain this major scoop:A pizza was delivered late tonight. you bathe in the middle of the room. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. In fact. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest. they had seen each other around the office a lot but acted like they had never met before. colored shapes begin to swoop down on him from all directions.