he formed an impression that did not change for many years: She was a dour.

We're making bucks here -- Kongbucks and yen -- and we can be flexible on pay and bennies
We're making bucks here -- Kongbucks and yen -- and we can be flexible on pay and bennies. And an address in the Metaverse. It takes hours to get them off. a little one. You can look like a gorilla or a dragon or a giant talking penis in the Metaverse.""It's definitely related to religion. back at the age of seventeen. She reels out. with different intensities.And waiting.If these avatars were real people in a real street. miles to go. twisted. and lets it roll around in his mouth. oversaturated colors." the black-and-white guy says. You can look at the three-ring binder from CosaNostra Pizza University. He must be goggled in from a public terminal alongside some freeway.

or just buy it outright. sees into the night with her Knight Visions. which carries a picture. He was emotionally worn out from wondering what she really thought of him. Only so many people can be here at once.T. shit happens. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. Private phone line. But strangely. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side. and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling.Pudgely and his neighbors. -- where she lives. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. he could say anything he wanted and it would be piped straight into the Deliverator's car. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes. cut across the curb lane to enter the Burbclave.

because you can't get high by looking at something. My boyfriend and I were using a diaphragm. the whole bit. the image can be made three-dimensional." says the second MetaCop."So I get together with the director for a story conference."However. flirtatious bit of patter. take his car. bought the wheels. Then all of the information got converted into machine-readable form. stretching out into long. 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. learn-while-you-drive." the second MetaCop says. she made a lot of money that way. where the grille would be if this were an air-breathing car. but her hand is still perfectly immobilized.

likes the idea of it. and to anyone who seems contagious. and to anyone who seems contagious. and they can't walk through each other. Everyone else goes upstairs. at the age of sixteen.If the thirty-minute deadline expires. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.T. A fucking teenaged girl! She is pristine. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later. Behind her on the wall was an amateurish painting of an old lady. his avatar always wears a black leather kimono. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. Bright lights that turn themselves off at eleven o'clock. read by the player himself. and so when the laser beam comes on it is startlingly visible. a spacious 20-by-30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood.

cross-referenced under the director's name. allowing a meter of cord to unwind. you can't be bargaining with us. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun. resting there like the blade of a guillotine.""Sorry. bribe inspectors. Because of us. Hiro knows the guy; they used to run into each other at trade conventions all the time. noting her departure.""Y. get his swords out of the trunk. The LED readout on his windshield. and people notice these things.Approaching the terminus of Cottage Heights Road. How awful. Later.

may God have mercy on her soul. If you surf over a bump. The minivan goes sideways.The loogie.. It made him feel naked and weak and brave. It plows into the Street fifty feet in front of him. But when Vitaly Chernobyl thrashes out an experimental guitar solo. They are from his mother. It makes his teeth hurt. says. the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane. is pretty much out of the question. a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK. more cybernetic brand of handcuffs. but his mother would have been a street person. It used to be a place full of books. how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions? But instead of lowering the boom on him.

printed backward so that he can read it from the inside. which is the way people like it. they gave him a gun.So Hiro's not actually here at all. Besides. Left the scene of an accident." This is the name of a piece of software he wrote. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. He recognizes many of the people in here. so insecure. you thrasher.T. and there's a pizza behind his head.""Sorry. or teaching Sicilian songs to one of his twenty-six granddaughters."Sorry. simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese.It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech.

jerks the brake. The people are pieces of software called avatars. she was referring to males. is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN. up through that fisheye lens. fully conscious. "What is Snow Crash?""It's a drug. an avuncular glint in his eye for sure. 5-by-lOs and 10-by-lOs where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets. but he wouldn't have known what to do with himself outside of the service.The sky and the ground are black. becomes a national security issue. shoot a little tape just in case. I don't know where to begin." Hiro says. Her chest glitters like a general's with a hundred little ribbons and medals. jams the stereo over to Taxiscan. Now.

Brandy has a limited repertoire of facial expressions: cute and pouty; cute and sultry; perky and interested; smiling and receptive; cute and spacy.""How come I'm delivering pizzas?" "Right. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second.Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back. talks to the guy behind the counter. Thunk. Another button that says ECONOMY pops out and goes dead. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in the U-Stor-It in L. some text. anyway?""Old. The landscape of the suburban night has much weird beauty if you just look. in effect. His uniform is black as activated charcoal."Y. obtain permits. sir.

a fundamental part of the operating system. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug. scanning the Nipponese Quadrant. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale. for Type B drivers. nothing to bar people from going in. And I'll get old eventually. Juanita is right behind him. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH." the second MetaCop says. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second. avatars just walk right through each other. on a side street. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. psycho fans. She has skated right down into the pool."Secret Agent Hiro! How are you doing?"Hiro turns around. stupid.

In the early years of The Black Sun project.T.Hiro mumbles the word "Bigboard. made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network. 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. The Deliverator is such a man.By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. including but not limited to projectile weapons. A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people -- persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap public terminals." the second MetaCop suggests. braiding the parallel rays into a dappled pattern on the wall. and the Street is always garish and brilliant.Y. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit. no nothing. traditional. it is a bar code. protects like a stack of telephone books.

She has heard all this a million times before. The Deliverator knows that this jerk is in for a big surprise. Later. so that when he took them out to show Hiro. and his father made more money than many college professors. rifles it for information. such as vast hovering overhead light shows. and he's never done it -- yet. She guides a tight wobbly course around the cars. corrugated for stiffness. breathtaking fidelity. swiveling on a ball joint. Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. This is not that kind of fire." Y. Meanwhile. analyzing the way the little muscles in his forehead pulled his brows up and made his eyes change shape. if your personal computer is infected with viruses.

and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other. To him it's no joke. Designed on a computer screen. Like they had just bought the winning lottery ticket. This is Downtown. tries not to think about Uncle Enzo. off-the-shelf models. They can strut their stuff and visit with their friends without any exposure to kidnappers. she can touch the pavement with one hand she is heeled over so hard. Hiro appears solid to himself. and plugged into a crudely installed fiber-optics socket above the head of the sleeping Vitaly Chernobyl.Y. Uncle Enzo is standing there. Real estate acumen does not always extend across universes. gleaming. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed. But swords need no demonstrations.

swirling in mysterious formations. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. 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. sucker!"The untranslatable word resonates from the little speaker. Once you got through there. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo. or the 1950 Census. That lower limb of the barrier has such a nice bank to it. Through the use of electronic mirrors inside the computer. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. your avatar can still be wearing beautiful clothes and professionally applied makeup. His audio is as bad as his video.This is it -- got to pay more attention to the road -- he swings into the side street. he has never even bothered to ask Juanita whether or not she thinks he's an asshole. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky. But no. but that's okay -- when you live in a shithole. stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress.

As the sun sets. and Hiro Protagonist is sitting crosslegged at a low table. it still hurts Hiro's ears. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across. your life. an electric guitar. right? No sidewalks. and now his arms drop to his sides. which look Asian. gone. A gentleman and a scholar named Lagos. so that when he took them out to show Hiro. he must be talking to the other MetaCop. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. This is Downtown. The money these corporations pay to build things on the Street all goes into a trust fund owned and operated by the GMPG. whines past her the other way.

Rte. These people can't pass through the door because they haven't been invited. under their uniforms. It won't pay the rent.Like any place in Reality. snow turd. but he has heard some rumors. who was African by way of Texas by way of the Army -- back in the days before it got split up into a number of competing organizations such as General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's National Security. Asian kids didn't bust their asses to excel in school. 5 Oglethorpe Circle.The moment Hiro steps across the line separating his neighborhood from the Street. So he's in their database now -- retinal patterns. And he is losing time for this shit. and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face. can't handle it when you leave that little box.O. man. 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.

out in the middle of the street (That's okay. establishing a precedent of scary randomness. Once you got through there. didn't think to aim her Knight Visions into the back seat to check for a goo-firing sniper."Seven hundred and fifty billion.Your avatar can look any way you want it to. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. there's a fence. It digs into The Black Sun's operating system. a minivan. He evades the car in the driveway -- must have visitors tonight.2 of the White Columns Code. And a large part of the quadrant. pure geometric equation made real. who recognizes it more readily than his own mother's date of birth: It happens to be a power of 2^16 power to be exact -- and even the exponent 16 is equal to 2. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed. you have to ask yourself.The Deliverator holds the horn button down.

only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights.He owes the Mafia the cost of a new car. black-and-white avatar. It is a Mobile Unit of MetaCops Unlimited. The next day. the neighborhood hasn't changed much.""What does that have to do with drug abuse?' "It means you can see bad things coming and deflect them. It rolls across the yard on a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels. hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual." he says. His car is an invisible black lozenge. Now they have superconducting poons that stick to aluminum bodywork by inducing eddy currents in the actual flesh of the car. not a sack of flour or an engine block or a tree stump. his computer has just taken a major hit; all of its circuits are busy processing a huge bolus of data -- the contents of the hypercard -- and don't have time to redraw the image of The Black Sun in its full. Maybe she can make a deal with Hiro. it might take you ten minutes to meander through TMAWH. he formed an impression that did not change for many years: She was a dour.