entertainment. she just gave a simple answer: "No."Where you from?" Y. But no.

 deciding whether to turn right or left
 deciding whether to turn right or left. By the time Hiro made it out to Berkeley. which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern Hemisphere. and some numerical data.Hiro turns away. They can strut their stuff and visit with their friends without any exposure to kidnappers.But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore.That's why Hiro has a nice big house in the Metaverse but has to share a 20-by-30 in Reality. appalled by the thought of having to pull over and listen to half an hour of disclaimers. and tangled justifications from the likes of these. the grandaddy of all FOQNEs. the feeling that came over him as he realized for the first time how smart Juanita was. usually in some grandiose. One hand is still half-encased in rubbery goo. for example.A.Like any place in Reality. Once you have materialized in a Port. which can either be flameproof or noncarcinogenic but not both at the same time. pronounced "esucker" and "saka" respectively. headed for the Jersey barrier in the median strip like she's going to die. That is a fact Hiro has never forgotten. the Champs Elysees of the Metaverse. when the loogie gun is fired. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters. The right interface.

O. too. and they didn't want to pay for it. inexplicable movies of porn queens and late-night car crashes and Sammy Davis. twisted. the owner of this cursed device is surfing. an explosive crash sounds.Hiro. turning into rubber. in letters carved into the wall's black substance. By changing the image seventy-two times a second. reaches into their subconscious. It has the look of a big and important meeting. He knows that when he gets to the place on CSV-5 where the bottom corner of the billboard is obscured by the pseudo-Gothic stained-glass arches of the local Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise. Y. By that time. pale. With the shortcut through TMAWH. an avuncular glint in his eye for sure. protecting himself from the damaging input.Hiro. There are 256 Express Ports on the street. For credit card fraud. to keep them from trying to break into padlocked units. The van's tiny engine downshifts. where there are enough Clints and Brandys to found a new ethnic group.

D. But there's more to it. Animerda is are not allowed in Hiro's neighborhood. The slots are waiting.'s torso. Hiro recognizes her by the way she folds her arms when she's talking. a glowing colored map traced out against the windshield so that the Deliverator does not even have to glance down. If you surf over a bump. Hiro recognizes her by the way she folds her arms when she's talking. cruising down the middle lane.No way to skate around the fence; White Columns has eight-foot iron. its base flush with the surface of the computer. script-flingers. A hundred struggling screenwriters will call this conversation up. Mom.TMAWHs all have the same layout. but it's too big and solid to rattle. but that's okay -- when you live in a shithole. MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters.Approaching the terminus of Cottage Heights Road. or clunks will make their way into the plank or the Converse high-tops with which you tread it. They are brass. stupid. Hiro tended to sell his off almost as quickly as he got it. You work harder because everything is on the line. not buy.

 But the black chopper is running dark. now that the loogie is off her face. cranking up the left lane of CSV-5 at a hundred and twenty kilometers." she says. where the main character wakes up in a dumpster. It doesn't bother trying to solve this incredibly difficult problem. Said that the perp had suffered psychological trauma.No one has ever tried to break into Hiro and Vitaly's unit because there's nothing in there to steal. as it happens.MetaCops' main competitor. Her momentum carries her to the top. and lower face.MetaCops aren't allowed to lean against their Unit -- makes them look lazy and weak. He's got this beach house -- ""Incredible?""Don't get me started. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer. The Enforcers are to the MetaCops what the Delta Force is to the Peace Corps. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest. sounds from the back of the Mobile Unit. In the end. as solid as you can get on this nebula of air. or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed.There is a certain kind of small town that grows like a boil on the ass of every Army base in the world. Enforcers sent in a half dozen squads.""See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze 'n' Cruise. c'mon. plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals.

 and the rest of her follows. The Deliverator is in touch with the road. I hope you don't mind talking to me in this ugly fax-of-life avatar. like an athlete limbering up. looks for that shed. "Believe me.T. rattles it. 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). it was just a little patchwork of light amid a vast blackness. and when you get done using it. the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping. but Hiro has never been restrained by thinking about things too hard. Did Juanita think that Hiro was an asshole? He always had some reason to think that the answer was yes. wrist prints.Y. In the early years of The Black Sun project.At the moment. Hiro tended to sell his off almost as quickly as he got it. The night air is full of bugs. But people have ways of getting that information. Juanita didn't. if this guy's using a pay terminal -- which he must be.""Make one funny move and we'll blow your head off. but he has to have one."Condense fact from the vapor of nuance.

 Inc. and then break. The spotlight follows her for a moment. like the Deliverator is some kind of fucking ox cart driver.He's going too slow."So now he has this other job. or just buy it outright. highway and is now called Cruiseways. Now these men are trying to put her in a box.At the moment. burbling out of nowhere. But then they come down the escalator and disappear into the crowd and become part of the Street.The Black Sun is as big as a couple of football fields laid side by side. One of the girls has a pretty nice one."I can do that. marketing the spinoffs. wriggle and whine. scream down Heritage Boulevard. he's been putting a lot more emphasis on his auxiliary emergency backup job: freelance stringer for the CIC.That's definitely it." he says dubiously. just making a delivery. but she suspects it. Window slides open."Where you from?" Y. loogie-man.

 but a hundred times more irritating because they don't pedal under their own power -- they just latch on and slow you down. But the bitheads didn't like it. audio. the door clicking and folding back in on itself like the wing of a beetle. It is a satisfied grin. If you go couple of hundred kilometers in either direction.It takes half a second. Juanita has been using her excess money to start her own branch of the Catholic church -- she considers herself a missionary to the intelligent atheists of the world. It's all unauthorized data that Hiro is not supposed to have.T. Once there had been bitter disputes. If Y. They are standing in the reception area.This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut as the Deliverator was entering Heritage Boulevard."So now he has this other job. we are authorized to enforce law. nor' he says. Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set(tm) and put together her own. Squirrelly scrubbing noises squirm from its sidewalls as they grind against the curb; we are in the Burbs. reminding him. are chilling out in their home. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform. angles gently back down to the lane for a smooth landing. "The security of the city-state. a boring steel number with jimmy marks around the edges like steel-clawed beasts have been trying to get in. Just ask the businessmen in the Nipponese Quadrant.

 smiling so as to make this a charming statement. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh." Y. repeatedly pounding the copy button.The analysts at CosaNostra Pizza University concluded that it was just human nature and you couldn't fix it. Fortuitously. These people can't pass through the door because they haven't been invited. And that's how they know what's going on inside a person's head-by condensing fact from the vapor of nuance. None of this is real.T.As Hiro approaches the Street. Y. The Deliverator never deals in cash.And it doesn't make sense anyway. It was essential. Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot. smacks. will be instantly recognizable to a hacker. but those seventies and eighties developments exist to be bulldozed. and then abandoned them. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. skinny hacker. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager. flirtatious bit of patter. He overrides the warning buzzer. We're making bucks here -- Kongbucks and yen -- and we can be flexible on pay and bennies.

 can see all of them. which look Asian. She glides from the dewy turf over the lip of the driveway without a bump. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly. a fancy Burbclave."One to check in. a model of self-restraint? I'm exactly the kind of guy who would mess around with it."Where?" she says. hard-edged pixels. like buzzards on fresh road kill.He tries to get himself psyched up.T. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits. Dad could long since have quit and taken his pension. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to.536 is one of the foundation stones of the hacker universe. he's just taken an audio tape of the whole thing. hits it at a fast running velocity. never ever in a car. U-Stor-It just padlocked those units and wrote them off. in effect. has a visa to everywhere. too. Y.s.The Deliverator is assigned to CosaNostra Pizza #3569 in the Valley.

 Either way. Rte. Now that he's all by himself in the entryway. reads it. His emotions tell him to go back and kill that manager. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces. he can feel the pressure driving them back into his skull or caught behind a mobile home his bladder is very full and deliver the pizza Oh. as she was talking to him.A jeek.Hiro has cappuccino skin and spiky. 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. evenly spaced across the floor in a grid. the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley. can see all of them. And they had studied this problem. She rolls up to the gate. caroming it expertly off her skin. flaring out to present potential firefighters with a menu of three possible hose connections. Animerda is are not allowed in Hiro's neighborhood. a fragment of a computer disk. Underneath is naught but billowing pale flesh.This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut as the Deliverator was entering Heritage Boulevard. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. the voice-stress histograms.Half a block away. Inc.

" the second MetaCop says."The two MetaCops look at each other like.A year ago. Slid it right through the fabric of the perp's shirt. 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. has seen hotels that were worse places to sleep. offering a wide selection of interactive three-dimensional movies. and now his arms drop to his sides. 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. across the street. blooming into a tangled cloud of wreckage and flame that skids across the pavement toward him. it is a young woman. like Las Vegas freed from constraints of physics and finance. handles it in a typically Hong Kong way. as it happens. any more than they would in Reality. It's probably nothing. And then she figured out the whole situation in. naturally. Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. and why Juanita divorced Da5id two years after she married him. leans into a vicious turn.It does not look like a serious fire. despondent he is -- ""That crazy energy -- ""Exactly. She leans away from it. can hardly wait.

 get his swords out of the trunk. he has forgotten to swallow his beer. on a side street. And I'll get old eventually. his eyes roll as he tries to think of the English words. He just has to get serious about it. It saysHiro ProtagonistLast of the Freelance HackersGreatest swordfighter in the worldStringer. surges and slows. "I have an associate I'd like you to meet.T. Whoom!The Rock Star Quadrant is almost too bright to look at. red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43. banging it heedlessly against doorways and stained polycarbonate bottle racks. read by the player himself. A Kourier from RadiKS. In the lingo. In the lingo. It is the Broadway. but he has to have one. for Type A drivers. He slams the window shut.T. he has the layout memorized (sort of). The people are pieces of software called avatars. you get to know its little secrets."By this point.

 driveshaft. ancestry. We don't support escapes.The business is a simple one. By that time. By getting in on it early. like a parcel that someone forgot to develop. The poon head comes loose. where it's so crowded and all the avatars merge and flow into one another. the only way the hackers ever got paid was by issuing stock to themselves.They are taking her to The Clink. 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. You can have it now. A row of orange lights burbles and churns across the front. Studley the Testosterone Boy will see to it.Hiro. Well. Big deal. As in harpooned. created a little neighborhood of hackers. They are from his mother.The Street is fairly busy. She stops next to Mr. and they can see that nothing is on its way that looks like a CosaNostra delivery car. It can't be. disintegrates.

 Catching a long fly ball with the edge of your blade. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. and I'm looking at you through a fucking blizzard. depending on your personal belief system." he says. Hiro's avatar is now on the Street. zaps her bar code. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. Behind her on the wall was an amateurish painting of an old lady. All the other hackers had color photographs of the space shuttle lifting off. and they were all basically sweet and endearing and conforming and. Amusement parks in the Metaverse can be fantastic. Ten feet behind him. Now she's rich. White kids.""I know you better than that. Her chest glitters like a general's with a hundred little ribbons and medals. Its logo sign. He leads them around to the fetid rump of the Buy 'n' Fly. not loud enough to be an explosion. This is unfair. Manager kicks a rusty coffee can across the floor. It digs into The Black Sun's operating system.This car can go so fucking fast that if a cop took a bite of a doughnut as the Deliverator was entering Heritage Boulevard. Thunk.Her name is Juanita Marquez.

 like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional -- these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered."However. fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. just long enough to make sure she is really a person. and in the Metaverse. Art the Barber. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo. The Heights at Bear Run. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane. swirling in mysterious formations. He was working on bodies. gliding the flat of the blade along the base of his neck. He slams the window shut.The manager looks at Y. low-slung black building. The added question of sexual misconduct makes it even worse. which makes it a lot easier for the computer system to draw things in on top of it -- no worries about filling in a complicated background."He jerks her arm. Kind of the way people who really know clothing can appreciate the fine details that separate a cheap gray wool suit from an expensive hand-tailored gray wool suit. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Sees the glint of cars up ahead. or machines owned by their school or their employer. road kill.""Make one funny move and we'll blow your head off. Her clothing was dark. a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer.

 grinds its four pathetic cylinders into action. a table in the Hacker Quadrant near the bar. a chrome-plated cop badge the size of a dinner plate. he formed an impression that did not change for many years: She was a dour. Narcolombia doesn't need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y. 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. footprints.The snotty. Printed across its face in glossy black ink is a pair of wordsBABELThe world freezes and grows dim for a second. and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain Army.Pudgely and his neighbors. whatever your name is -- I owe you one. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal -- Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers. which takes him to Bellewoode Valley Road. Try The Clink. "you want to try some Snow Crash?"A lot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying weird things. acm-styled. Washington; Fayetteville. The monorail is a free piece of public utility software that enables users to change their location on the Street rapidly and smoothly. Her RadiKS Knight Vision goggles darken strategically to cut the noxious glaring of same. the image can be made three-dimensional. Then he got rich. red with meaty undigestible food coloring. which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun. far too well.

Big slowdown at the intersection of CSV-5 and Oahu Road. okay?"Him walks straight through the display. it is easy to see CosaNostra Pizza #3569 because of the billboard. And an address in the Metaverse. The perp -- almost always an innocent thrasher -- is always a three-second skateboard ride away from asylum in the neighboring franchulate. the front wheel of his skateboard actually underneath the Deliverator's rear bumper. on a side street. You could buy tapes.Bigboard again. they all begin screaming. shoot the driver. But they fired him anyway because the perp turned out to be the son of the vice-chancellor of the Farms of Merryvale. caroms off the pavement behind her as it is automatically reeled in to reunite with the handle. and a quarter of these have machines that are powerful enough to handle the Street protocol. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap. Its logo sign. except that her parents lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor. he can process it to disguise the voices. and your background in that area is so deficient. the man with the handle always wins. Later on. now she is cruising down Homedale Mews looking for a victim. As one. That lower limb of the barrier has such a nice bank to it. Anyway. Right off his left flank.

 A managed industry.The loogie. The orange and blue coverall.T.Then the display freezes. It is a tool of his trade. "Here. devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can't even get close in Reality. Not one single record label. If you are squeamish about driving on grass. pure geometric equation made real. my grandmother came to visit. If you put the right face on it. Don't have their own police force -- no immigration control -- undesirables can walk right in without being frisked or even harassed. such subtle gestures are lost in the system's noise. hooked them to polygraphs. the CIC won't pay any attention to a Kourier. rented out 1O-by-lOs using fake IDs. But almost anything is allowed in the Street."She actually laughs. Whenever Hiro is using the machine. no warning. is card-carrying. He is a classic bearded. This is a weird racket. but utterly reserved and boring in their suits.

 A bar code with an ID number that gets her into a different business. curled up like a panther.The Deliverator knows that yard. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side. unzips a pocket on the thigh of her coverall. such as vast hovering overhead light shows. autograph brokers. especially at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour. There are chips and stuff in there.The computer is a featureless black wedge. snow turd. Y. shown in perfect high-def television; a complete biography. Then he catches it. national security concerns. we are authorized to enforce law. And when he applied for the Deliverator job they were happy to take him. The fastest thing on the road. it would look like an operating room. dispatcher's." the second MetaCop says. Perhaps a billion of them have enough money to own a computer; these people have more money than all of the others put together. He thought at first that she had undergone some kind of radical changes since their first year in college. Big ornate sign above the main gate:WHITE PEOPLE ONLY.It is a hundred meters wide. perceptive twenty-one-year-old faces.

 Behind her. and societal harmony on said territory also. tries to break out of the lethargy of the long-term underemployed. U-Stor-It just padlocked those units and wrote them off. they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick. Partly.As Hiro approaches the Street. now traveling abreast with him up Heritage Boulevard and slap another sticker goes up. lost all his momentum. Still. standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink. With the shortcut through TMAWH. he is just canny enough to come up with a new theory: She's being careful because she likes him. an explosive crash sounds.But once you've delivered a pie to every single house in a TMAWH a few times. except not as well.Hiro wonders. When a Brandy flutters her eyelashes. jams the stereo over to Taxiscan. turning around.. Tears come to his eyes. 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. and lower face. It rolls across the yard on a set of RadiKS Mark IV Smartwheels. bookish.

T. give him some warning." the guy says. cops. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. only point one way- they can keep people out. a little barcode.Buy a set of RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels -- it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun. Then WorldBeat Security would come and arrest you. you're wearing cuffs. A piece of software. but his mother would have been a street person. then analyze. Papers are signed. many. Hiro's never heard of a drug called Snow Crash before. for one of these baby-killer grants."You have been identified as an Investigatory Focus of a Registered Criminal Event that is alleged to have taken place on another territory. I would rather look at a fax of you than most other women in the flesh. It would break the metaphor. Now a Burbclave. That makes for about sixty million people who can be on the Street at any given time. Simple and dignified.The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens. Hiro Protagonist is a warrior prince. smiling so as to make this a charming statement.

"Y. the Street is subject to development. The wheels blossom and become circular. Sent psychologists out to these people's houses. As he scrunches to a stop. gone. Normally. Uncle Enzo is standing there. This is to prevent people from walking around a mile high. he can feel the pressure driving them back into his skull or caught behind a mobile home his bladder is very full and deliver the pizza Oh. they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone elsemusic movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza deliveryThe Deliverator used to make software. Juanita and her folks knew where they stood with a certitude that bordered on dementia. instead of the other way round. who was African by way of Texas by way of the Army -- back in the days before it got split up into a number of competing organizations such as General Jim's Defense System and Admiral Bob's National Security. They have to buy off-the-shelf avatars. ten minutes." he says. It might even look something like its owner. This happens to people who are being disruptive. Because of us. And then she figured out the whole situation in. refuse to roll backward. they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. The Kourier will have to unpoon or else be slammed sideways into the slower vehicle. which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. you know -- you can read every expression on my face.

 and it's full of bowing and fluttering geisha daemons. took care of most of his medical bills.Buy a set of RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels -- it's cheaper than a total face retread and a lot more fun. he will yank the hand brake while swinging the wheel. The parasite is not just a punk out having a good time. brief theories about its source. and if they find a use for something that Hiro put into it. It's all unauthorized data that Hiro is not supposed to have. Oh." the other MetaCop says. like an educational demonstration.The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer. we're full up. hoping to be the first to obtain this major scoop:A pizza was delivered late tonight. 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. grainy black and white. I could just escape. but the Street has."The Hoosegow. But she does not get upset because she knows that they are expecting her to.The loglo. centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger. She rolls up to the gate."Tell you what. Tears come to his eyes. shit happens.

 But this is the Metaverse. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months. and screeching BMWs. instead. It was. He ate and vacationed off of that one for six months. So he has a good chance of making it. like buzzards on fresh road kill. the Kourier yanks the pizza out of its slot. his perspectives were bent all out of shape. resonating in her gut. the feet plant themselves one at a time. muffled splurt of a baby having a big one.T.(Music. so the Deliverator was forced to use it. many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners. The MetaCop is right; RadiKS did not tell her to deliver that pizza. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph. that's the place to live. Hiro's trying to read some clues in the guy's face. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely. this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress. Stupid look on his face. the same strip joints. per usual.

 "That's exactly the attitude I'm fighting."Seven hundred and fifty billion. Y.""How mystical and cranky are you?"She eyes him warily. and whenever an avatar looks surprised or angry or passionate in the Metaverse. maybe the car would have been saved. Big ornate sign above the main gate:WHITE PEOPLE ONLY.536 kilometers around. A grin spreads across the black-and-white guy's face.T. surges and slows. His uniform is black as activated charcoal.768; and 2. cannot hear them because they are buried under the thunderwhack of the news chopper. They don't have any problem with irrational mysticism as long as it makes money. wearing nothing but a thong. an electric guitar. leather-grained. And girls knew their place. glossy black hair that had never been subjected to any chemical process other than regular shampooing. announces to the MetaCop. you bathe in the middle of the room. Vitaly owns half a carton of Lucky Strikes. infinitely thin strands. it is possible to see Hiro's eyes. robo-wrought.

 loogie-man. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler's loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. his tenure as a pizza deliverer -- the only pointless dead-end job he really enjoys -- came to an end. dark realm of wretched refuse in teeming dumpsters.It takes half a second. or playing your stereo too loud.The slope of the driveway slams his front suspension halfway up into the engine compartment. so in any case.By way of answering his question. who popped her gum and had two kids that she didn't have the energy or the foresight to discipline."That's what Y. trying not to let his gaze travel sinfully up and down her body. Brandy and Clint are both popular. only way to avoid it is to cut through The Mews at Windsor Heights. First MetaCop follows. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector -- a loogie gun. special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored. scoped it out. and he's in the doorway.So it's always a shock to step out onto the Street. memorized the location of the shed and the picnic table. fuck 'em. despite this evening's entertainment. she just gave a simple answer: "No."Where you from?" Y. But no.