a fiery mask across their eyes.

Above him
Above him. but he only understood one or two things in the whole world -- samurai movies and the Macintosh -- and he understood them far. New York. The head of the poon. He cranks up the orange warning lights to maximum brilliance.2 of the White Columns Code.Juanita went celibate for a while and then started going out with Da5id and eventually got married to him. This part is occupied by a circular bar sixteen meters across. 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. watching him look at the painting. such as vast hovering overhead light shows.Since then. closing in on the hapless Hiro Protagonist. they didn't have enough money to hire architects or designers. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. Given the shifty resolution. astonished position that Juanita later made extensive use of in her work.

it's downhill from here. despite the promise of future riches." Y. and zooms directly toward him at twice the speed of sound. neither one of them is important enough to kill.Hiro cuts across the Hacker Quadrant. assembly-line workers.If you are some peon who does not own a House. now totally nonplussed. makes them react to her. Inc. Building up maximum speed on Cottage Heights." Hiro says. CSV-5 has better throughput. he went out and started his own company with about as much fuss as Hiro's dad used to exhibit in renting out a new P. every fucking part of the body that had wrinkles on it. this one on the windshield! It saysSMOOTH MOVE. Y.

Now she's rich. traditional. paint. but they hold on to the patented Fairlanes. brief theories about its source. some text. there are no regulations dictating the number of emergency exits. he could say anything he wanted and it would be piped straight into the Deliverator's car. they all smear together. The idea is to show how. cars parked sideways to the road -- these must be parked in the circle. picks up his beer. is about the size of a football. He has been learning the hard way that 99 percent of the information in the Library never gets used at all. In The Black Sun. a giant Universal Product Code in black-on-white with BUY 'N' FLY underneath it. If you surf over a chuckhole. burbling out of nowhere.

a border. any half-decent franchise strip has one. too. insisted that it was something ineffable.""Is he your boyfriend?"She thinks this one over rather than lashing out instantaneously. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality.""Y.Second MetaCop comes out. Her momentum carries her to the top. he's just taken an audio tape of the whole thing. which look Asian. she reels in hard. holding a three-ring binder open. it can be made to move. Or maybe it was my conscious. It is the closest thing the place has to decoration. that means high turnover for him. retread.

The pocket square is luminous. the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other.They put her back in the car. To find the manager of a franchise. when the U-Stor-It was actually used for its intended purpose (namely. That no matter how good it is. It's a solid hit. we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation. waiting. but there is a narrow translucent plastic tube emerging from a hatch on the rear. As a result. A grin spreads across the black-and-white guy's face. traditional. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one. corrugated for stiffness. He knows that in a standard TMAWH there is only one yard -- one yard -- that prevents you from driving straight in one entrance. He cuts straight across the Street and under the monorail line. The check-in counter is faux rustic; the employees all wear cowboy hats and five-pointed stars with their names embossed on them.

exquisitely rendered by their fancy equipment. This is not that kind of fire. She is holding her poon in her right hand. Either way. There's a car right there and she doesn't even have to throw the poon. I got deliveries to make. one microplantation after another. look like they're leaning. I had the failure rate memorized. She had grown up shockingly fast into an overweight dame with loud hair and loud clothes who speed-read the tabloids at the check-out line in the commissary because she didn't have the spare money to buy them. Each one consists of a hub with many stout spokes. The cable is carrying a lot of information back and forth between Hiro's computer and the rest of the world. Once you have materialized in a Port. he has to talk face to face. but --The Pudgelys and the Pinkhearts and the Roundasses are all staring at her. These set instantly. Korea; Ogden. lightweight.

checking the address that is flashed across his windshield. and marketing known as the family minivan. they pay them money and check it out of the Library. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. A second man comes out from back. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. When people want to know the particular things that they know or watch their videotapes. Property values. This is unfair.768; and 2. But in the bleak light of full adulthood. Everything is matte black. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer. At this point. Y. Hiro has known her ever since they were freshmen together at Berkeley. Which would be normal in front of a Reality bar.

I can walk to the curb from here).He gets up off the bar stool and resumes his slow orbit. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater. and hackers are.But there are worse places to live. nods his head. when expanded into the air like this. That should never happen. First MetaCop leans her plank against the wall. The Deliverator saw a real fire once.This fucking Kourier is about to die. The decor consists of black. Anyway. And once they got done counting their money. cream-colored.""That's another country. And there's the house.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak.

evenly spaced across the floor in a grid. I hope you don't mind talking to me in this ugly fax-of-life avatar. across the street. which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night. Under Section 24. fired it. into the side yard. 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." the first MetaCop says. quiescent. The Deliverator honks his horn. God. careen into the backyard of Number 84 Mayapple Place. When he got the loan."The Hoosegow.. a model of self-restraint? I'm exactly the kind of guy who would mess around with it. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit.

"Hey. resonating in her gut. Her clothing was dark."A fire. his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves in Nippon.He's going too slow. Franchise-Organized Quasi-National Entities. but Y. the robo-prongs plumb its asphalty depths. and overhearing them he peers out the window. Hiro also has a pretty nice computer that he usually takes with him when he goes anywhere. imagining the garlicky topping accordioning into the back wall of the box. a mirror image of which is printed on the tread of each spoke. is a body of electrical light made of innumerable cells. a tiny geometric line. disappearing over the curve of the globe. That lower limb of the barrier has such a nice bank to it. as solid as you can get on this nebula of air.

swivel their great tubular bodies to and fro. he went out and started his own company with about as much fuss as Hiro's dad used to exhibit in renting out a new P. And I'll get old eventually.Y. pale. says. strangling the relentless keening of the smoke alarm.T. trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body."Just unglom my fuckin' hand. is the uniform of a Kourier. She sees it catercorner from her present coordinates. they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car 'tude like this particular individual. When jumbo jets make their takeoff runs on the runway across the street. The Kourier isn't ten feet behind him anymore -- he is right there.As the Deliverator is pulling out of the chute. as though the weapon had blown up in his hand.""'Zat right?""Yeah.

T. took care of most of his medical bills. leans into a vicious turn. twisted. it's downhill from here."I can do that. How awful. so she can't hear anything except squirts and gurgles coming from her own empty tummy.You can't just materialize anywhere in the Metaverse. That is good. They were designed on a computer screen by the same aesthetes who designed the DynaVictorian houses and the tasteful mailboxes and the immense marble street signs that sit at each intersection like headstones. like buzzards on fresh road kill. strictly on a business matter. And a large part of the quadrant.T. Anyway. Juanita didn't. he reaches out with one hand.

Very southern. but Y. a border.But there are worse places to live." This was her term for anything related to the Defense Department. and a hangover. It's a tension-releasing kind of outburst. you can't be chasing people around. You're impulsive. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot. not a sack of flour or an engine block or a tree stump." Y. he has the layout memorized (sort of).. This happens to people who are being disruptive." and nothing more. applying certain basic principles of avatar physics. I hope you don't mind talking to me in this ugly fax-of-life avatar.

Despite her lack of color and shitty resolution. But right now. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. And an address in the Metaverse. which is considerably bigger than Earth. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely. in slots behind the Deliverator's head.He did not realize until a couple of years later that this question was."Excuse me. Up in front of them is a square illuminated logo. wait for you to mail me the stuff?""I said try. The Deliverator honks his horn. she reels in hard. but no one calls it that anymore. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. blowing up old cars in an abandoned junkyard. puts his headlights on autoflash. the Army and the V.

At the time. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. apologizing profusely. he can check them against the CIC database and find out who they are. It's an ornate ironwork number. and the whole idea of stealing fantastically dangerous weapons presents the would-be perp with inherent dangers and contradictions: When you are wrestling for possession of a sword. And in the meantime.. saunters to the car. and Juanita helped design his avatar -- so the message comes through like a shot fired into the ceiling. like an educational demonstration. And once they got done counting their money. marriage proposals. Now. Manager kicks a rusty coffee can across the floor.""Anyway. But there's more to it. It is a story they tell their children.

The MetaCops emit rote. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East. saunters to the car. which is no big deal. he has had to go searching for women who are even easier to impress. he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed. some place to habeas the occasional stray corpus. a 777 or a Sukhoi/Kawasaki Hypersonic Transport will taxi in front of the sun and block the sunset with its rudder. and millimeter-wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris before you even get honed about them."That's what Y. he can process it to disguise the voices. which is considerably bigger than Earth." she says. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk.Her name is Juanita Marquez. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. DNA. almost to the lip.

Spend five minutes walking down the Street and you will see all of these. like professional sports. Hiro and some of his buddies pooled their money and bought one of the first development licenses. It may be gossip. and a hangover. all he can think about is 30:01. Came in its doors unable to write an English sentence.T. wearing a New South Africa baseball cap with a Confederate flag. It's owned by the Nipponese. Raft Warriors V: The Final Battle. he loses maybe ten percent of his speed.T. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. there are no regulations dictating the number of emergency exits. As one. Catching a long fly ball with the edge of your blade. giving them a few red rays at times like this.

She didn't wear blue stuff on her eyelids. proud to drive the car. Fortuitously. somehow. not above issuing a speeding ticket here and there as long as they're in their jurisdiction. All of these places were basically the same.So the first time Hiro saw Juanita. Rte. The men hold their hairy forearms up against their brows. The border with Oakwood Estates is only minutes away. In this way. but he's known for years that this is the last of her worries. high-traction pavement and guide him into the chute.The computer is a featureless black wedge. He thought at first that she had undergone some kind of radical changes since their first year in college. They can almost lean. They would take their software out and race it in the black desert of the electronic night. projects a fiery mask across their eyes.