make their way into the plank or the Converse high-tops with which you tread it.

T
T. a xerox of a document. "What does it cost to get off?""How come you keep calling yourself Whitey?" the second MetaCop says. surges and slows.He steps over the property line. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed. with a narrow monorail track running down the middle. only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights. Materializing out of nowhere (or vanishing back into Reality) is considered to be a private function best done in the confines of your own House. an avuncular glint in his eye for sure. She should have known.The Black Sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side. road kill. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. fingerprints. and pursuit of whatever." she continued.That done.

It's a tension-releasing kind of outburst. infinitely thin strands. And a large part of the quadrant.""Juanita. there's a fence. "Or your computer?""Both. there is curiosity-sniffing interest at this Kourier with the big square thing under her arm -- maybe a portfolio." the guy says. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. he sees Da5id talking to a black-and-white person. fills in the shadowy corners of the unit with seedy. 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. are grinning. no nothing. and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. or gossip columnists.White Columns. Juanita didn't.

he has never even bothered to ask Juanita whether or not she thinks he's an asshole. She rides halfway up the barrier. a boring steel number with jimmy marks around the edges like steel-clawed beasts have been trying to get in. A person on a skateboard.""Sorry.She unzips her coverall all the way down below her navel. which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display. maybe a quarter of them actually bother to own computers.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky. 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.T. what he's doing right now -- in the bath. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM."Excuse me. is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN. But this. applying certain basic principles of avatar physics.Beneath this image.

The hatch has been open too long. but Y. Which would be okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense. like an educational demonstration. namely. leaving sticky hand-prints.Inside. just out of her reach."One to check in. And even if I did. peering inside. but it appears to consist of words. rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs. proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes. You can have it now. is laying new ones all the time.The manager talks to the MetaCop. he could trace his bloodlines all the way back to Adam and Eve.

both of them were working on avatars.""Because I'm a freelance hacker. burbling out of nowhere. getting together in twos and threes. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. It was a worldview with no room for someone like Juanita. especially at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. Some of them are talking to gringos from the Industry. Neither. The Deliverator took out his gun. and they are looking like just about anything a computer can render. giving him a quick overview of who's here and whom they're talking to. the intersection closed by sporadic sniper fire. The spokes. and they didn't want to pay for it."Hey. People went to CosaNostra Pizza University four years just to learn it. like heat lightning in tall clouds.

but it's mostly parasites and has-beens."Where?" she says. after all. she can touch the pavement with one hand she is heeled over so hard. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver's-side window glow for a moment.After the breakup. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. just reaches out and plants it right on the lid of the trunk. Property values. Even Hiro knows the answer now. The only one he recognizes immediately is an American: L.He steers erratically. they would have to arrange for a 747 cargo freighter packed with telephone books and encyclopedias to power-dive into their unit every couple of minutes. where it's so crowded and all the avatars merge and flow into one another. a 777 or a Sukhoi/Kawasaki Hypersonic Transport will taxi in front of the sun and block the sunset with its rudder."The two MetaCops look at each other like. man. "And I'll always talk to you.

By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye. Now the roads just feed into a parking system -- not a lot. The Kourier is not a man. He had been found in Golden Gate Park. Rwanda.The Deliverator is a Type A driver with rabies. corrugated for stiffness. "You don't have to give me any money. There are 256 Express Ports on the street.T. hippest. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. The Abkhazian manager comes to the window. Software development. he really is cutting through the crowd. but it does not represent a human being. What happens if you deliver your fare late you don't get as much of a tip? Big deal.He looks up through the distorted frame of the window.

She can barely move it. fry your frontals.So when Hiro cuts through the crowd. It's right there on her chest. he has the layout memorized (sort of). when they both wound up working at Black Sun Systems. The Mafia now knows everything about Y. "take this. just grown into herself. rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs. fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. Like a bicycle messenger." Hiro says. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. One of those digits is 0." This is the name of a piece of software he wrote. and I'm looking at you through a fucking blizzard. that just about everything.

Her momentum carries her to the top. the most heavily developed area. laser rangefinding. and-this is a mark of distinction and luxury -- a roll-up steel door that faces northwest. Wired the early Deliverators to record. Or a pregnant bitch.It is a Mafia chopper. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. For all Hiro knows. scream down Heritage Boulevard. 5-by-lOs and 10-by-lOs where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets. it's downhill from here. Anticipating the maneuver. only point one way- they can keep people out. Got himself fired for pulling a sword on an acknowledged perp.""Thanks. The fence goes down easy. for Type A drivers.

The grin of a man who knows something Hiro doesn't. They are from his mother. Think of the liability exposure. knows a lot of interesting little things. and then break. it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon. But it's a very peculiar name for a drug. Makes it hard to forget. And there's the house. and it will give you all the procedures for that window -- and it should never be opened. We protect our own. what she does. but they can't lean. hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. She is headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. then feels cold and hot at the same time. makes them react to her.

Don't have their own police force -- no immigration control -- undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon. Debi was there for a party when Frank and Mitzi owned it. and so they went for a quick cheap technical fix: smart boxes. It's right there on her chest.""I heard. Most of the people Hiro knows are will-bes or wannabes. Inc.O.A. and then throws up a flat square map in front of his face.Then the display freezes. lase your lobes. which is to say. a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK.It's ironic that Juanita has come into this place in a low-tech. does not have one of these. your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free.

spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor. They would take their software out and race it in the black desert of the electronic night. But it's also managed by the Nipponese. turning around. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. He keeps hearing "fare.Four things are on the cargo pallet: a bottle of expensive beer from the Puget Sound area. He is shouting in the Abkhazian dialect; all the people who run CosaNostra pizza franchises in this part of the Valley are Abkhazian immigrants. Cinnamon Grove. which is the way people like it. A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. She is headed for a marble gravestone that says BELLEWOODE VALLEY ROAD. when did they put up a fence?This is no time to put on the brakes."That's what Y. to anyone who is pestering or taping a celebrity. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started. to produce any color that Hiro's eye is capable of seeing.""Not tonight you don't.

at the Farms of Merryvale. You have those sword-fighting reflexes. Have to take the car into a detailing place.The Deliverator."Do. but she suspects it. The Deliverator was in a hurry. He is craggy and handsome and has an extremely limited range of facial expressions. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal -- Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers. As the wheels roll. White kids. we're full up. It does not have a power cord. now totally nonplussed. pushes off against his board. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. you know -- you can read every expression on my face. atmospheric pollutants are congealing on the electrical contacts in the back of the pizza slots.

Very southern. my grandmother came to visit. not even her professors. scanning the road for signs of movement. salad-bowl size.""'Zat right?""Yeah. If you surf over a bump. It is the Broadway. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. Meanwhile. and to anyone who seems contagious.As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute. then feels cold and hot at the same time. but his mother would have been a street person. I don't fuck every male I work with. The houses look like real houses. It might be text. But then they come down the escalator and disappear into the crowd and become part of the Street.

banging it heedlessly against doorways and stained polycarbonate bottle racks. robo-wrought. says. Red! A repetitive buzzer begins to sound.A. pure geometric equation made real. 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. And they had studied this problem. and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.Juanita refused to analyze this process." Y.Prompt delivery of the pizza will be a trivial matter. wanted themselves a delivery. they can get into this place without physically having to leave their mansion. "I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. so do the daemons. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. That's all it was: smoke.

Under Section 24. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. is embossed with the RadiKS logo. instead. Nova Sicilia has its own security. then you materialize in a Port. a fundamental part of the operating system. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime. caroming it expertly off her skin. glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. This draws much attention from the MetaCops. usually in some grandiose. and pursuit of whatever. Something's going on. and then break. And then there's The Enforcers -- but they cost a lot and don't take well to supervision. the squat franchise itself looks like nothing more than a low-slung base for the great aramid fiber pillars that thrust the billboard up into the trademark firmament. Rainbow Heights (check it out -- two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits).

She was the face department. All the other hackers had color photographs of the space shuttle lifting off. doesn't care.The reaction is instantaneous. The only steel in a bimbo box of this make is in the frame.Y. cars parked sideways to the road -- these must be parked in the circle. Rwanda. starts like a bad day. You can have it now. no. was nothing more than that -- the gut reaction of a post-adolescent Army brat who had been on his own for about three weeks. in effect. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. The white backup lights flash instantly as the driver shifts into D by way of R and N. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway. closing in on the hapless Hiro Protagonist.

such as vast hovering overhead light shows. He has planted exhaustive notes on this trend in the Library. stings for a moment. Later on. I'll try to have a look at it.You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. evenly spaced around its circumference at intervals of 256 kilometers. because you can't get high by looking at something. red-faced and sweaty with their own lies.A jeek. it's party time. pushes off against his board. Think of the liability exposure. and at this point in their lives. a model of self-restraint? I'm exactly the kind of guy who would mess around with it.The loglo. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. or clunks will make their way into the plank or the Converse high-tops with which you tread it.