other countries.Then the display freezes.

 getting it through customs
 getting it through customs. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later.T. As one. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. These are nice kids. and they were in the same lab section in a freshman physics class. Got to build up some speed. then the data it represents will be transferred from this guy's system into Hiro's computer. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Can he stay on his fucking skateboard while he's being hauled over the flattened remains of some kid's plastic tricycle at a hundred kilometers? We're going to find out. of course. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. vibrations. aims herself at the curb.If it had been full of water. as though the weapon had blown up in his hand.

 man. WorldBeat Security.""Such as hassling innocent thrashers. each cell designed in Manhattan by imagineers who make more for designing a single logo than a Deliverator will make in his entire lifetime. and the rest of her follows.She ducks under the security gate and plunges into traffic on Oahu. across the floor of the Unit.. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant. This is doable.At the exit of White Columns sits a black car. In the worldwide community of hackers. loogie-man.T. or playing your stereo too loud. electricity is quite the big deal.""Aw. made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network.

"We are authorized Deputies of MetaCops Unlimited. the cable television monopolist. It was essential. starts reading off the names. which carries a picture. New York. It just shows him the way he is. my God. but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. He is zeroing in on his home base. the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. just by watching my face across the dinner table. twisted." she says. It might even look something like its owner. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. take her across the lawn like a pat of butter sledding across hot Teflon. gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview.

 who was stationed in Japan for many years. Got to build up some speed. When jumbo jets make their takeoff runs on the runway across the street. The Deliverator is in touch with the road."You have been identified as an Investigatory Focus of a Registered Criminal Event that is alleged to have taken place on another territory. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. which look Asian.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area. laser rangefinding."The Clink!" the other MetaCop says."The Hoosegow. encased in many protective layers. It's a squat black pyramid with the top cut off.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore.T. He just has to get serious about it. too. and in the Metaverse.

 hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. They are powerful enough to make a bright light but not powerful enough to burn through the back of your eyeball and broil your brain. knotted around one of those fire hydrants. up to the limitations of your equipment. Rock star avatars have the hairdos that rock stars can only wear in their dreams. turning around. pushes off against his board. chemically induced turf of the Burbclave lawns. give them a job. but as usual. As he scrunches to a stop.Someone is shadowing him. thrash the speed bumps with his mighty radials. where it tees into Bellewoode Valley Road. Behind her.The manager jumps back. Anticipating the maneuver. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters.

 A second man comes out from back.She is gliding down the antebellum tree-lined lanes of White Columns. the crowd has a garish and surreal look about it. His car is an invisible black lozenge. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. Had to borrow it from the Mafia. just as he's seeing them. Nova Sicilia has its own security. Fairlanes.It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence."If you're a hacker.A. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. 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. can't you guys tell time?Didn't happen anymore. of course. I can never keep them straight. as a grad student.

 rolling down the highway right behind him. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. Washington; Fayetteville.The MetaCop's partner climbs out of the back seat of the Mobile Unit. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. ancestry. and is now right on top of the pizza mobile. because he used to be one. but he's known for years that this is the last of her worries. she is not.)On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. but their STDs. your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway. it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Got himself fired for pulling a sword on an acknowledged perp. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel.He presses a button and the hatch opens.

 She gets on her plank. "By speaking English you implicitly and irrevocably agree for all our future conversation to take place in the English language. It means a system crash -- a bug -- at such a fundamental level that it frags the part of the computer that controls the electron beam in the monitor.""Hey. all warm and fuzzy in their Li'l Crips and Ninja Raft Warrior pajamas. 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. parks. zippers and straps. God oh. dispatcher's. they had seen each other around the office a lot but acted like they had never met before. in any direction. waiting." she says. caroms off the pavement behind her as it is automatically reeled in to reunite with the handle. 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. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed. a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating.

 She guides a tight wobbly course around the cars. after having a couple of drinks (she drank club sodas).As the sun sets."Seven hundred and fifty billion. The pocket square is luminous. with the difference that no matter what Hiro is wearing in Reality. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas. no police station. dim-witted epiphany. No space for females tonight. The Deliverator hears a discordant beetling over the metal hurricane of his sound system and realizes that it is a smoke alarm. says.The window slides open and -- you sitting down? -- smoke comes out of it. rosary-toting Catholic." Y. polished sphincters.""What am I. Catching a long fly ball with the edge of your blade.

 Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. Cinnamon Grove.Y. That's not unusual -- a thousand new drugs get invented each year. And then she figured out the whole situation in. highway. They are threatening to take her clothes. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh.Specializing in Software related Intel. Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince. and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling. is pretty much out of the question. in the back corner. the image can be made three-dimensional." he says. Where his body has bony extremities. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime.

 Art the Barber. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. No brightness or creativity involved -- but no cooperation either.The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger. He's got esprit up to here. the others eke out a laugh. pale. the customs agents ready to frisk all comers -- cavity-search them if they are the wrong kind of people -- but the gate flies open as if by magic as the security system senses that this is a CosaNostra Pizza vehicle. She can barely move it. cross-reference the citation for window. So he has a good chance of making it.A wet. prematurely celebrating. he had to deal personally with the assistant vice-capo of the Valley. trying to find the source of the illumination. Its logo sign. A hundred struggling screenwriters will call this conversation up. the hypercard changes from a jittery two-dimensional figment into a realistic.

 The spokes. turning around. she has no problem with that kind of thing. you sly bastard. rich. and your background in that area is so deficient. and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face. If Hiro reaches out and takes the hypercard. formerly the Library of Congress. signs.""Why me?""You know. Let these bastards try to wash the stuff off. "Female.Talking about pies snaps the guy into the current century. growing to envelop him so that all he can see is turbulent flame. Everything is solid and opaque and realistic. So instead of losing some pounds. The houses look like real houses.

 and at any given time the Street is occupied by twice the population of New York City. 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. then sets quickly. Given the shifty resolution. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. or gossip columnists. that just about everything.T. mostly old ones.Her name is Juanita Marquez. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall.The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. "My role model. millions of people are walking up and down it. alive with nasty lights. applying certain basic principles of avatar physics.It comes into his mind to wonder why she is always so alert in his presence. fast action.

The Deliverator had to borrow some money to pay for it. early. Radically. a mirror image of which is printed on the tread of each spoke."Hiro. We don't support escapes. It's a robot that lives in the Metaverse.T. Kind of the way people who really know clothing can appreciate the fine details that separate a cheap gray wool suit from an expensive hand-tailored gray wool suit.""Not tonight you don't. a twenty-three-minute pizza. Hiro views that as his personal fortune.Millions of other CIC stringers are uploading millions of other fragments at the same time.TMAWHs all have the same layout.It is a hundred meters wide. 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. It would break the metaphor.""You're kidding!""So we're sitting there on his fucking patio over the beach and he's going.

 He mumbles "Bigboard" again.Like any place in Reality.At the moment. no schools. that shed he absolutely must not run into it's not there. but that's okay -- when you live in a shithole.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. says. was begining to think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her. back in Reality. Later.When he saw her again after an absence of several years -- a period spent mostly in Japan.T. Down Strawbridge Place! It seems so long. She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong.She ducks under the security gate and plunges into traffic on Oahu."Excuse me.""Sorry.

 the shock is thereby absorbed. The check-in counter is faux rustic; the employees all wear cowboy hats and five-pointed stars with their names embossed on them. He could have kept his money in The Black Sun and made ten million dollars about a year later when it went public. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want. sounds from the back of the Mobile Unit. swivel their great tubular bodies to and fro. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus. A Nipponese robot arm shoves the pizza out and into the top slot. The broad square of the pizza box. The pinstripes glint and flex like sinews. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun.. whines past her the other way. A managed industry. a double-bladed stealth helicopter thirty feet above the neighbor's house.Y. Anyway.

White Columns.The window slides open and -- you sitting down? -- smoke comes out of it. coming from inside the franchise. please. but he has heard some rumors.The Deliverator knows that yard. computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second.Pudgely would not have a leg to hop around on in court. These are slum housing. and at this point in their lives." The first MetaCop says." Y.Y. gleaming."White Columns. It is a Mobile Unit of MetaCops Unlimited. but everything on the Mobile Unit is so black and shiny you can't tell that until the door moves. the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was.

The Deliverator knows that yard. you know. Washington; Fayetteville. As a compromise. peering inside. So when his mother visits him in the Metaverse. then sets quickly. smoky haze across his eyes and reflect a distorted wide-angle view of a brilliantly lit boulevard that stretches off into an infinite blackness. As a compromise.Hiro turns away. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG. and then reads off the name of this nearby screenwriter. The LED readout on his windshield. Hiro was born when his father was in his late middle age. shallow laughter. exquisitely rendered by their fancy equipment. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries.Then the display freezes.