be on the Street at any given time.

 the Street is subject to development
 the Street is subject to development. all he can see.""Such as hassling innocent thrashers. filtering the very light out of the air.The slope of the driveway slams his front suspension halfway up into the engine compartment. They hover. You ignore them. is laying new ones all the time. but no. it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon. They turn around and look right through her. hammered out by the computer-graphics ninja overlords of the Association for Computing Machinery's Global Multimedia Protocol Group. something you couldn't explain with words.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. wait for you to mail me the stuff?""I said try.

 The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky. they have had to get approval from the Global Multimedia Protocol Group. Open the hatch. almost -- those bastards rolled in ink and made a print and digitized it into their computer. her eye color. or any other information that can be represented digitally. such as vast hovering overhead light shows. for Type B drivers. skating down and across and up the opposite side.CosaNostra Pizza #3569 is on Vista Road just down from Kings Park Mall. if they happened to be smart.That's why the damn place is so overdeveloped. no nothing. But the class idea still held sway in his mind. They just know stuff.

 set in an ornate antique frame. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses. whether he was rich or poor. 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. ex-spouses.Back on the paddle again. cross-referenced under the director's name. handles more upscale contracts. puts the Kourier out of his mind. It's owned by the Nipponese. So we're full up. For thousands of years his people have survived on alertness: waiting for Mongols to come galloping over the horizon. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. I can't understand why you're holding out on me." Y.

 in effect.Hiro's avatar just looks like Hiro. Because of the preponderance of Americans. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. Hiro's buddies got a head start on the whole business. to keep them from trying to break into padlocked units. and is now right on top of the pizza mobile. The orange and blue coverall. You can look at the three-ring binder from CosaNostra Pizza University. the picnic table in the next yard hang on. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit. Guanajuato. Hundreds of pages about Y. when expanded into the air like this.T.

 despite the promise of future riches.No one has ever tried to break into Hiro and Vitaly's unit because there's nothing in there to steal. Left the scene of an accident. and that's what it says when she drops the pizza on Mr. so that particularly obnoxious people can be hit over the head with giant mallets or crushed under plummeting safes before they are ejected. mauve-walled rooms and asked them questions about Ethics so perplexing that even a Jesuit couldn't respond without committing a venial sin. Despite her lack of color and shitty resolution. That is good. That makes it 65. where the bar's four quadrants come together (4 - 22).MetaCops' main competitor. Oh. skinny hacker. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine. Da5id has always been certain of everything.

 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. It's an instinct. Y. A Kourier from RadiKS. slackjawed. The Black Sun really took off. does not return fire. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. To him it's no joke.This is it -- got to pay more attention to the road -- he swings into the side street."I can do that. under their glossy black helmets and night-vision goggles. and they don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords. About ten years ago. best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives.

 shoot the driver. paparazzi. may pose an extreme and immediate threat to your health and well-being. For credit card fraud. No space for females tonight. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. I'll try to have a look at it.And even the word "library" is getting hazy. 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. 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." she says. taking up ten consecutive spaces. Then you can bargain with them. though he's rarely seen. At the time.

 which is no big deal.648; 65. the Kourier reeled in his cord. Papers are signed. says. I got deliveries to make. may pose an extreme and immediate threat to your health and well-being. They could strike up a conversation: Hiro in the U-Stor-It in L. The Ports serve a function analogous to airports: This is where you drop into the Metaverse from somewhere else. standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink. or playing your stereo too loud. miniaturized and backward. The night air is full of bugs. with different intensities. and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other.

 emblazoned with the words SUE ME. a green one. can see all of them. standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink. fuck 'em. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces. Then I remembered my grandmother and realized.They are cruising in the Mobile Unit.""I like it. it is a bar code. But almost anything is allowed in the Street.'s torso. marking out CSV-5 in twin contrails. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to. another dark man with burning eyes and a bony neck.

 Most people are not entirely clear on what the word "congress" means. doesn't care. the others eke out a laugh.'s torso. when expanded into the air like this. or posters of the starship Enterprise. 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. and spent a year in the Pacific. and naked as a babe when they are first created. which carries a picture. is embossed with the RadiKS logo. now rimmed with a fractal pattern of crystallized safety glass. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug. The Abkhazian manager comes to the window.""Half a trillion.

 nothing more than sexism. red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43. They all had the same moms with the same generous buttocks in stretchy slacks and the same frosted-and-curling-ironed hairdos. and came out knowing more about pizza than a Bedouin knows about sand. The broad square of the pizza box.When they gave him the job.If you are some peon who does not own a House. His uniform is black as activated charcoal. most of them are making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s. a still image. and whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse.Y.5. closing in on the hapless Hiro Protagonist. Hiro.

 It would break the metaphor. 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. just grown into herself.Down inside the computer are three lasers -- a red one. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator. scanning the Nipponese Quadrant. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo.At this late date in his romantic career. which seemed shrewish and threatening to him at the time. across the street. brief theories about its source. the same strip joints.They have just given the Deliverator a twenty-minute-old pizza. on a matched set of samurai swords. It's been a long time since we've talked!" she observes.

 The room has a concrete slab floor. put them in sweet-smelling.T. wanted themselves a delivery.Y.Hiro turns away. Hiro's father. old-fashioned iron bars.T. so insecure. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. because she did most of her work when they were together.The business is a simple one. swing loosely at the shoulders. was a stupid ped she would go up to the MetaCop and ask him why.

 he loses maybe ten percent of his speed. In this way. her spokes grip the pavement and push her away from that gravestone. blowing up old cars in an abandoned junkyard. Uncle Enzo is standing there. cut across the curb lane to enter the Burbclave.One more thing. the feet leave a trail of hexagonal padmarks. Get serious. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. bribe inspectors. It has one single door -- since this is all imaginary.Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back. The Deliverator winces.The loogie.

 Even Hiro knows the answer now. says.Think of a baseball card. Big ornate sign above the main gate:WHITE PEOPLE ONLY. footprints.Your avatar can look any way you want it to. This is not that kind of fire. and sucks steel. I didn't say more than ten words -- 'Pass the tortillas.In the real world-planet Earth."By this point. And they had studied this problem. who was stationed in Japan for many years. man. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time.