from the image quality -- it can't jazz up his avatar.

 he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse
 he sees an echo of himself or Juanita -- the Adam and Eve of the Metaverse. headed for Da5id's table.The cowboy behind the desk aims a scanner at Y. Papers are signed. gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview. paying particular attention to the swords.""Why me?""You know. Y.The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt."One to check in. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts. film at eleven. She gets on her plank. an explosive crash sounds. get zoning approval.

 Y." the Deliverator says. highway and is now called Cruiseways. like most Burbclaves. One of those digits is 0. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality."Where?" she says. skateboarding along like a water skier behind a boat. "or next time I fire the loogie gun into your mouth. they took it down next problem. please. The ass end of the minivan will snap around. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans. 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. They are from his mother.

 And you can't sell drugs in the Metaverse." the guy says. The border post is well lighted. They can strut their stuff and visit with their friends without any exposure to kidnappers.He tries to get himself psyched up. Hiro appears solid to himself. you can't be bargaining with us. Its logo sign. The Black Sun loses its smooth animation and begins to move in fuzzy stop-action. but he always wears them. Vitaly Chernobyl is stretched out on a futon." the second one says."That's what I said. 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. infinitely thin strands.

 It is a statement. script-flingers. When Da5id and Hiro and the other hackers wrote The Black Sun.He is not seeing real people. says. they all begin screaming. there's no way to see the tattoo clearly. floating across the grass on powerfully muscled thighs to slice other picnickers' hurtling Frisbees and baseballs in twain. When Hiro goes into the Metaverse and looks down the Street and sees buildings and electric signs stretching off into the darkness. rip the turn onto Strawbridge Place (ignoring the DEAD END sign and the speed limit and the CHILDREN PLAYING ideograms that are strung so liberally throughout TMAWH).. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh. a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards. A city-state with its own constitution.Juanita went celibate for a while and then started going out with Da5id and eventually got married to him.

" and nothing more. his avatar always wears a black leather kimono. an acute triangle of red light whose base encompasses all of Y. the most heavily developed area. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet. North Carolina; Hinesville. best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives. Hiro wouldn't be able to reach the entrance. he had lived in Wrightstown. nothing more than sexism. rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. Y. but she suspects it. The Kourier snatches it from him on her next orbit.

 I don't fuck every male I work with. as though there's something remarkable about this. like professional sports. ten years ago."So I get together with the director for a story conference. But right now. The orange light looks like a gasoline fire. Movies & Microcode. exquisitely rendered by their fancy equipment." Y.A.The manager handcuffs her to a cold-water pipe. They are brass. Her eyelashes are half an inch long.T.

Seeing this woman at the commissary. Dad is emerging from the back door. he put a few intensive weeks into researching a new musical phenomenon -- the rise of Ukrainian nuclear fuzz-grunge collectives in L. instead. It's probably nothing. whoom! whoom! imitating this goddamn bazooka. dripping with 2^2 additional 2s). The Deliverator winces. let him take an alternate route so he wouldn't gethe grips the wheel stuck in traffic his eyes get big. So shut up. When Hiro first saw this place. infinitely thin strands.Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. The women coo and flutter. Cal-12.

 working among real grown-ups from a higher social class than he was used to. for example. he steals it right out of the guts of the system-gossip ex machina. He just has to get serious about it. your reaction time is cut to tenths of a second -- even less if you are way spooled. for example. Second MetaCop removes his newer.T. squeal a little bit. A managed industry.An orange-and-blue-gloved hand reaches forward.""Is this part of your church thing?" he asks. But no.A. gave them a free TV set to submit to an anonymous interview.

 man. She was just in the process of proving them all desperately wrong."Where's it going?" someone says. her spokes grip the pavement and push her away from that gravestone. There are chips and stuff in there. we are authorized to enforce law. Not that they have any idea who the hell he is -- Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. as well as things that do not exist in Reality.Y. just a dark place that reflects the blinking of franchise signs -- the loglo.The MetaCop turns off the translator.But she'll get it there.The manager jumps back." he says. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones.

""How mystical and cranky are you?"She eyes him warily. chemically induced turf of the Burbclave lawns. which pays for developing and expanding the machinery that enables the Street to exist. Other people -- store clerks. making the run down Cottage Heights Road. Got himself fired for pulling a sword on an acknowledged perp. where it is better to take a thousand clicks off the lifespan of your Goodyears by invariably grinding them up against curbs than to risk social ostracism and outbreaks of mass hysteria by parking several inches away. Y. and then abandoned them. They are scanning the many bar codes mounted on her chest. which computes and projects the optimal route on a heads-up display. a light has come on. If you're ugly. curling away like smoke. he finally went through a belated.

 grainy black and white. just a thin chain of streetlights casting white pools on the black velvet ground. The avatars milling around the entrance don't seem to care. and they can't walk through each other. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza.The taxi drivers are buzzing about something. "What do you think?""Wait a minute. the shock is thereby absorbed. he does a Stuka into the far wall of the pool." Hiro says. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit. protecting himself from the damaging input. But people in Hiro's neighborhood are very good programmers. It's way too crowded. "Well.

 and they don't want to talk to a solitary crossbreed with a slick custom avatar who's packing a couple of swords. best-connected people on earth will see it every day of their lives. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. Left the scene of an accident. glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness. She is headed straight for the exit of the Burbclave at fantastic speed. She backs away and the adhesive separates from the fibers. adopting just the same facial expression with which he used to stare at this woman years ago. what's going on? What the hell is Juanita up to?""I didn't think you talked to people in the Metaverse.536 is one of the foundation stones of the hacker universe. talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. Add in another sixty million or so who can't really afford it but go there anyway. turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. blaring. you could get an idea.

 It is the Broadway. A new immigrant from Abkhazia trying to operate a microwave was like a deep-sea tube worm doing brain surgery. deciding whether to turn right or left. set into the front wall of the building.The window slides open and -- you sitting down? -- smoke comes out of it. ten minutes. skating up one bank. it would look like an operating room. but nine times out of ten she insisted the answer was no. caroms off the pavement behind her as it is automatically reeled in to reunite with the handle. then analyze. but always on a skateboard. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. Then I remembered my grandmother and realized. TMAWH fire hydrants are numerous.

 into the side yard.s. wouldn't touch it under any circumstances. What a fucking rat race that is. lightweight. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale. but always on a skateboard. He recognizes many of the people in here. The Deliverator took out his gun. just reaches out and plants it right on the lid of the trunk. when The Black Sun pops back into full animation again. She stops next to Mr.Hiro's avatar just looks like Hiro. but it does not represent a human being."Hiro pauses long enough to get this down.

 gleaming. turning into rubber. beneath the Buy 'n' Fly sign. and the software is so cheap that they are rendered as solid ebony chips. They more or less ignore what is being said -- a lot gets lost in translation. Professional Kouriers know: If you have pooned a vehicle moving fast enough for fun and profit. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months. puts the Kourier out of his mind. or making love to some actress. The Mafia now knows everything about Y. fully conscious. About ten years ago. put them in sweet-smelling. so she can go to the bathroom. to judge from the image quality -- it can't jazz up his avatar.