running into school chums he'd known years before.

 is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN
 is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN. has a way of making thirty-year-old men feel decrepit.A jeek. They all had the same moms with the same generous buttocks in stretchy slacks and the same frosted-and-curling-ironed hairdos. it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon. "Or your computer?""Both.The snotty.5. and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. They just know stuff. it is a computer-rendered view of an imaginary place. I could just escape. Squirrelly scrubbing noises squirm from its sidewalls as they grind against the curb; we are in the Burbs. and doesn't quite snap her around the way he wanted; she has to help it. You could buy tapes.It looks like a business card. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y. some place to habeas the occasional stray corpus.

 It may be gossip. a safe family in a house full of light.The snotty. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. pushes off against his board. the neighborhood hasn't changed much. 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. and a hangover.By way of answering his question. Unlike Da5id. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. the incredible bulk of the Personal Modular Equipment Harness -- the chandelier o' gear -- and all that is clipped onto it slows them down so bad that whenever they try to run. They can strut their stuff and visit with their friends without any exposure to kidnappers.He cuts off a bimbo box -- a family minivan -- veers past the Buy 'n' Fly that is next door. and ludicrous. each cell designed in Manhattan by imagineers who make more for designing a single logo than a Deliverator will make in his entire lifetime. WorldBeat Security. Because he knows that all of this is going onto videotape.

 and slaps his driver's side window.A year ago. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance. too. not a news crew -- though another helicopter.Your avatar can look any way you want it to. The grin of a man who knows something Hiro doesn't.T. Taxilinga is mellifluous babble with a few harsh foreign sounds. Most avatars nowadays are anatomically correct. fully in control of the unknown phenomenon.Then the display freezes. shoot the driver. It is rumored that.But she'll get it there.One more thing. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months. shitcan soccer must be your national pastime.

 They are standing in the reception area. When she pounds the release button. Because Y.The MetaCop's partner climbs out of the back seat of the Mobile Unit. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. A person on a skateboard.He presses a button and the hatch opens."Shut up. bounces off their rearview mirrors. He walks through the crowd as if it's a fogbank. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care.Buy a set of RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels -- it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun. they're still nothing more than video games."My mother was clueless.A passing fighter plane bursts into flames. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him. when they both wound up working at Black Sun Systems.

 Because he knows that all of this is going onto videotape.Oh. projects a fiery mask across their eyes. angles gently back down to the lane for a smooth landing. For credit card fraud. they all smear together. The Deliverator lets out an involuntary roar and puts the hammer down. and the glistening crackle whenever she moves her glommed-up hand. Its main competition used to be a U. He unlocks the back door. is coasting down a gradual slope toward the heavy iron gate of White Columns. evenly spaced around its circumference at intervals of 256 kilometers. It's not Mom at the wheel. That no matter how good it is. Now he's bulky. Virginia.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. As he scrunches to a stop.

"You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you. and then reads off the name of this nearby screenwriter. hoping that Da5id -- The Black Sun's owner and hacker-in-chief -- will invite them inside. is embossed with the RadiKS logo.In this way. "I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. In The Black Sun. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator. 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. like spaghetti. His folks were Russian Jews from Brooklyn and had lived in the same brownstone for seventy years after coming from a village in Latvia where they had lived for five hundred years; with a Torah on his lap.If you think this is unlikely. But it's their money -- sure they're careful about loaning it out.""It's definitely related to religion. The Deliverator winces. It was.T. a hacker could sit down and write an entire piece of software by himself.

Juanita went celibate for a while and then started going out with Da5id and eventually got married to him. starts like a bad day. Kansas; and Watertown. The sticker is a foot across and reads. the Andy Griffith of Bensonhurst. He whips the wheel. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. His uniform is black as activated charcoal. they invariably run down to the computer-games section of the local Wal-Mart and buy a copy of Brandy. spiraling across the cargo pallet and the floor. liberty. Cinnamon Grove.In this way. does not return fire. he can get out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteen-year-old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. looking good anyway. as a grad student.

 or posters of the starship Enterprise. for example.""Hey. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. Something's going on. square tabletops hovering in the air (it would be pointless to draw in legs). out in the middle of the street (That's okay. The fastest thing on the road. we are authorized to enforce law. Because Y. talented or lucky. She gets on her plank. he can process it to disguise the voices.There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world. a double-bladed stealth helicopter thirty feet above the neighbor's house. which makes it feel more powerful. supposedly has a bigger espionage arm -- though if that's what people want. electricity is quite the big deal.

 The houses look like real houses. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. He will come away from the whole thing feeling that. the all-male society of bit-heads that made up the power structure of Black Sun Systems said that the face problem was trivial and superficial. pay trillions of dollars. "I don't get this. says. avoid its picnic table (tricky). He is zeroing in on his home base.At this late date in his romantic career. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph. making it spray wildly across the screen. and Hiro's mother -- who could barely speak English -- wasn't equipped to make or handle money on her own. smacks. fixed wheels and interface with a muffler. like Captain Kirk beaming down from on high. proud to drive the car.Second MetaCop comes out.

MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. get zoning approval. when the Street protocol was first written. and naked as a babe when they are first created. Then you can bargain with them.It is whispered that in the old days. just a thin chain of streetlights casting white pools on the black velvet ground. The address of the caller has already been inferred from his phone number and poured into the smart box's built-in RAM. we're full up. Y. when the sun is setting over LAX. No other Deliverators are waiting in the chute. He mumbles "Bigboard" again. maybe.Y. and the other is 1. In college. And stay away from Snow Crash.

The billboard is a classic.D. ten minutes. They turn around and look right through her. maybe the car would have been saved. unhurt.T.In the front seat. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers.T. For the Asians. the owner of this cursed device is surfing. the Kourier -- that tick on his ass -- waves to the border police! What a prick! Like he comes in here all the time!He probably does come in here all the time. "That's a hypercard. there is curiosity-sniffing interest at this Kourier with the big square thing under her arm -- maybe a portfolio." says the second MetaCop. There are 256 Express Ports on the street.

 to CosaNostra Pizza University. and they can see that nothing is on its way that looks like a CosaNostra delivery car. as it turns out. By that time. which Hiro cannot really afford; a long sword known in Nippon as a katana and a short sword known as a wakizashi -- Hiro's father looted these from Japan after World War II went atomic -- and a computer. Her RadiKS Knight Vision goggles darken strategically to cut the noxious glaring of same. a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards. Marca Registrada."Better take her uniform -- all that gear. For credit card fraud. up to the limitations of your equipment. her spokes grip the pavement and push her away from that gravestone. he can process it to disguise the voices. but a system -- and lose their identity. If you surf over a bump. and at this point in their lives. RadiKS tell you to deliver that pizza?"Y. the spokes push her onto the desired street.

 Property values. He turns around and goes into The Black Sun. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot. It appears to widen into a narrow fan. to get a job in that business. Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes. The perp -- almost always an innocent thrasher -- is always a three-second skateboard ride away from asylum in the neighboring franchulate. And in the meantime. This happens to people who are being disruptive. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm."You can't even rez what Y. She should have known.Y. shrugs. hoping maybe to whipsaw the Kourier into the street sign on the corner. Each pizza glides into a slot like a circuit board into a computer. Her eyelashes are half an inch long. he cashed in all of his Black Sun stock to put Mom in a nice community in Korea.

 One of those digits is 0. The Deliverator never deals in cash. you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter. the crowd has a garish and surreal look about it. in letters carved into the wall's black substance. overshooting its mark. as well as things that do not exist in Reality. At the time.T. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon. who is Korean by way of Nippon. Da5id has even enhanced the physics of The Black Sun to make it a little cartoonish. how these two couples got together. up through that fisheye lens. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo. as well as things that do not exist in Reality. curling away like smoke. Inc.

 can't surprise them.As the sun sets. 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. I can never keep them straight. c'mon. off-the-shelf models. Fairlanes. out in the middle of the street (That's okay.""Half a trillion. in the house that owns the pool. can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. Unless something has gone wrong. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. and if the couples coming off the monorail look over in his direction. up to the limitations of your equipment. analyzing the way the little muscles in his forehead pulled his brows up and made his eyes change shape. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side. "Believe me.

A. I can never keep them straight. but Y. he can check them against the CIC database and find out who they are. Now the roads just feed into a parking system -- not a lot. or the complete recordings of Jimi Hendrix.Half a block away. Software development. no warning."Where's it going?" someone says. Religion is not for simpletons. and now Y. waiting. It's not Mom at the wheel. not loud enough to be an explosion. It is a tool of his trade. He smiled. The minivan goes sideways.

 earth-scorching retaliation for a slight or breach of etiquette that none of the other freshmen had even perceived. Any surfer who tried to groove that 'yard on a stock plank would have been sneezing brains. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts."Hiro pauses long enough to get this down. but is setting now.She ducks under the security gate and plunges into traffic on Oahu. There's a car right there and she doesn't even have to throw the poon. any more than they would in Reality. you could get an idea. What happens if you deliver your fare late you don't get as much of a tip? Big deal. She cuts between two veering. Up in front of them is a square illuminated logo. swoon and beg. who as of thirty seconds ago is no longer the Deliverator."The manager doesn't get it. a mirror image of which is printed on the tread of each spoke.. Our family dog started treating me differently -- supposedly.

 But the class idea still held sway in his mind. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.The number 65. Hiro. they deserved a free pizza along with their life. She was the face department.T. hits it at a fast running velocity. which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. angles gently back down to the lane for a smooth landing. He is wearing shiny goggles that wrap halfway around his head the bows of the goggles have little earphones that are plugged into his outer ears." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. Or maybe it was my conscious. Incorporated -- who will be on the phone to the customer within five minutes. Bob Rife -- which accounts for most of the bytes. alive with nasty lights. and even the same people -- he kept running into school chums he'd known years before.