So when Hiro cuts through the crowd, headed for the entrance, he really is cutting through the crowd. When things get this jammed together, the computer simplifies things by drawing all of the avatars ghostly and translucent so you can see where you"re going. Hiro appears solid to himself, but everyone else looks like a ghost. He walks through the crowd as if it"s a fogbank, clearly seeing The Black Sun in front of him.
He steps over the property line, and he"s in the doorway. And in that instant he becomes solid and visible to all the avatars milling outside. As one, they all begin screaming. Not that they have any idea who the h.e.l.l he is-Hiro is just a starving CIC stringer who lives in a U-Stor-It by the airport. But in the entire world there are only a couple of thousand people who can step over the line into The Black Sun.
He turns and looks back at ten thousand shrieking groupies. Now that he"s all by himself in the entryway, no longer immersed in a flood of avatars, he can see all of the people in the front row of the crowd with perfect clarity. They are all done up in their wildest and fanciest avatars, hoping that Da5id-The Black Sun"s owner and hacker-in-chief-will invite them inside. They flick and merge together into a hysterical wall. Stunningly beautiful women, computer-airbrushed and retouched at seventy-two frames a second, like Playboy pinups turned three-dimensional-these are would-be actresses hoping to be discovered. Wild-looking abstracts, tornadoes of gyrating light-hackers who are hoping that Da5id will notice their talent, invite them inside, give them a job. A liberal sprinkling of black-and-white people-persons who are accessing the Metaverse through cheap public terminals, and who are rendered in jerky, grainy black and white. A lot of these are run-of-the-mill psycho fans, devoted to the fantasy of stabbing some particular actress to death; they can"t even get close in Reality, so they goggle into the Metaverse to stalk their prey. There are would-be rock stars done up in laser light, as though they just stepped off the concert stage, and the avatars of Nipponese businessmen, exquisitely rendered by their fancy equipment, but utterly reserved and boring in their suits.
There"s one black-and-white who stands out because he"s taller than the rest. The Street protocol states that your avatar can"t be any taller than you are. This is to prevent people from walking around a mile high. Besides, if this guy"s using a pay terminal-which he must be, to judge from the image quality-it can"t jazz up his avatar. It just shows him the way he is, except not as well. Talking to a black-and-white on the Street is like talking to a person who has his face stuck in a xerox machine, repeatedly pounding the copy b.u.t.ton, while you stand by the output tray pulling the sheets out one at a time and looking at them.
He has long hair, parted in the middle like a curtain to reveal a tattoo on his forehead. Given the shifty resolution, there"s no way to see the tattoo clearly, but it appears to consist of words. He has a wispy Fu Manchu mustache.
Hiro realizes that the guy has noticed him and is staring back, looking him up and down, paying particular attention to the swords. A grin spreads across the black-and-white guy"s face. It is a satisfied grin. A grin of recognition. The grin of a man who knows something Hiro doesn"t. The black-and-white guy has been standing with his arms folded across his chest, like a man who is bored, who"s been waiting for something, and now his arms drop to his sides, swing loosely at the shoulders, like an athlete limbering up. He steps as close as he can and leans forward; he"s so tall that the only thing behind him is empty black sky, torn with the glowing vapor trails of pa.s.sing animercials.
"Hey, Hiro," the black-and-white guy says, "you want to try some Snow Crash?"
A lot of people hang around in front of The Black Sun saying weird things. You ignore them. But this gets Hiro"s attention.
Oddity the first: The guy knows Hiro"s name. But people have ways of getting that information. It"s probably nothing.
The second: This sounds like an offer from a drug pusher. Which would be normal in front of a Reality bar. But this is the Metaverse. And you can"t sell drugs in the Metaverse, because you can"t get high by looking at something.
The third: The name of the drug. Hiro"s never heard of a drug called Snow Crash before. That"s not unusual-a thousand new drugs get invented each year, and each of them sells under half a dozen brand names.
But a "snow crash" is computer lingo. 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, making it spray wildly across the screen, turning the perfect gridwork of pixels into a gyrating blizzard. Hiro has seen it happen a million times. But it"s a very peculiar name for a drug.
The thing that really gets Hiro"s attention is his confidence. He has an utterly calm, stolid presence. It"s like talking to an asteroid. Which would be okay if he were doing something that made the tiniest little bit of sense. Hiro"s trying to read some clues in the guy"s face, but the closer he looks, the more his shifty black-and-white avatar seems to break up into jittering, hard-edged pixels. It"s like putting his nose against the gla.s.s of a busted TV. It makes his teeth hurt.
"Excuse me," Hiro says. "What did you say?"
"You want to try some Snow Crash?"
He has a crisp accent that Hiro can"t quite place. His audio is as bad as his video. Hiro can hear cars going past the guy in the background. He must be goggled in from a public terminal alongside some freeway. "I don"t get this," Hiro says. "What is Snow Crash?"
"It"s a drug, a.s.shole," the guy says. "What do you think?"
"Wait a minute. This is a new one on me," Hiro says. "You honestly think I"m going to give you some money here? And then what do I do, wait for you to mail me the stuff?"
"I said try, not buy," the guy says. "You don"t have to give me any money. Free sample. And you don"t have to wait for no mail. You can have it now." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hypercard.
It looks like a business card. The hypercard is an avatar of sorts. It is used in the Metaverse to represent a chunk of data. It might be text, audio, video, a still image, or any other information that can be represented digitally.
Think of a baseball card, which carries a picture, some text, and some numerical data. A baseball hypercard could contain a highlight film of the player in action, shown in perfect high-def television; a complete biography, read by the player himself, in stereo digital sound; and a complete statistical database along with specialized software to help you look up the numbers you want.
A hypercard can carry a virtually infinite amount of information. For all Hiro knows, this hypercard might contain all the books in the Library of Congress, or every episode of Hawaii Five-O that was ever filmed, or the complete recordings of Jimi Hendrix, or the 1950 Census.
Or-more likely-a wide variety of nasty computer viruses. If Hiro reaches out and takes the hypercard, then the data it represents will be transferred from this guy"s system into Hiro"s computer. Hiro, naturally, wouldn"t touch it under any circ.u.mstances, any more than you would take a free syringe from a stranger in Times Square and jab it into your neck.
And it doesn"t make sense anyway. "That"s a hypercard. I thought you said Snow Crash was a drug," Hiro says, now totally nonplussed.
"It is," the guy says. "Try it."
"Does it f.u.c.k up your brain?" Hiro says. "Or your computer?"
"Both. Neither. What"s the difference?"
Hiro finally realizes that he has just wasted sixty seconds of his life having a meaningless conversation with a paranoid schizophrenic. He turns around and goes into The Black Sun.
At the exit of White Columns sits a black car, curled up like a panther, a burnished steel lens reflecting the loglo of Oahu Road. It is a Unit. It is a Mobile Unit of MetaCops Unlimited. A silvery badge is embossed on its door, a chrome-plated cop badge the size of a dinner plate, bearing the name of said private peace organization and emblazoned DIAL 1-800-THE COPS.
All Major Credit Cards
MetaCops Unlimited is the official peacekeeping force of White Columns, and also of The Mews at Windsor Heights, The Heights at Bear Run, Cinnamon Grove, and The Farms of Cloverdelle. They also enforce traffic regulations on all highways and byways operated by Fairlanes, Inc. A few different FOQNEs also use them: Caymans Plus and The Alps, for example. But franchise nations prefer to have their own security force. You can bet that Metazania and New South Africa handle their own security; that"s the only reason people become citizens, so they can get drafted. Obviously, Nova Sicilia has its own security, too. Narcolombia doesn"t need security because people are scared just to drive past the franchise at less than a hundred miles an hour (Y.T. always snags a nifty power boost in neighborhoods thick with Narcolombia consulates), and Mr. Lee"s Greater Hong Kong, the grandaddy of all FOQNEs, handles it in a typically Hong Kong way, with robots.
MetaCops" main compet.i.tor, WorldBeat Security, handles all roads belonging to Cruiseways, plus has worldwide contracts with Dixie Traditionals, Pickett"s Plantation, Rainbow Heights (check it out-two apartheid Burbclaves and one for black suits), Meadowvale on the [insert name of river] and Brickyard Station. WorldBeat is smaller than MetaCops, handles more upscale contracts, supposedly has a bigger espionage arm-though if that"s what people want, they just talk to an account rep at the Central Intelligence Corporation. And then there"s The Enforcers-but they cost a lot and don"t take well to supervision. It is rumored that, under their uniforms, they wear T-shirts bearing the unofficial Enforcer coat of arms: a fist holding a nightstick, emblazoned with the words SUE ME.
So Y.T. is coasting down a gradual slope toward the heavy iron gate of White Columns, waiting for it to roll aside, waiting, waiting-but the gate does not seem to be opening. No laser pulse has shot out of the guard shack to find out who Y.T. is. The system has been overridden. If Y.T. was a stupid ped she would go up to the MetaCop and ask him why. The MetaCop would say, "The security of the city-state," and nothing more. These Burbclaves! These city-states! So small, so insecure, that just about everything, like not mowing your lawn, or playing your stereo too loud, becomes a national security issue.
No way to skate around the fence; White Columns has eight-foot iron, robo-wrought, all the way around. She rolls up to the gate, grabs the bars, rattles it, but it"s too big and solid to rattle.
MetaCops aren"t allowed to lean against their Unit-makes them look lazy and weak. They can almost lean, look like they"re leaning, they can even brandish a big leaning-against-the-car "tude like this particular individual, but they can"t lean. Besides, with the complete, glinting majesty of their Personal Portable Equipment Suite hanging on their Personal Modular Equipment Harness, they would scratch the finish of the Unit.
"Jack this barrier to commerce, man, I got deliveries to make," Y.T. announces to the MetaCop.
A wet, smacking burst, not loud enough to be an explosion, sounds from the back of the Mobile Unit. It is the soft thup of a thick wrestler"s loogie being propelled through a rolled-up tongue. It is the distant, m.u.f.fled splurt of a baby having a big one. Y.T."s hand, still gripping the bars of the gate, stings for a moment, then feels cold and hot at the same time. She can barely move it. She smells vinyl.
The MetaCop"s partner climbs out of the back seat of the Mobile Unit. The window of the back door is open, but everything on the Mobile Unit is so black and shiny you can"t tell that until the door moves. Both MetaCops, under their glossy black helmets and night-vision goggles, are grinning. The one getting out of the Mobile Unit is carrying a Short-Range Chemical Restraint Projector-a loogie gun. Their little plan has worked. Y.T. didn"t think to aim her Knight Visions into the back seat to check for a goo-firing sniper.
The loogie, when expanded into the air like this, is about the size of a football. Miles and miles of eensy but strong fibers, like spaghetti. The sauce on the spaghetti is sticky, goopy stuff that stays fluid for an instant, when the loogie gun is fired, then sets quickly.
MetaCops have to tote this kind of gear because when each franchulate is so small, you can"t be chasing people around. The perp-almost always an innocent thrasher-is always a three-second skateboard ride away from asylum in the neighboring franchulate. Also, 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, people just start laughing at them. So instead of losing some pounds, they just clip more stuff onto their harnesses, like the loogie gun.
The snotty, fibrous drop of stuff has wrapped all the way around her hand and forearm and lashed them onto the bar of the gate. Excess goo has sagged and run down the bar a short ways, but is setting now, turning into rubber. A few loose strands have also whipped forward and gained footholds on her shoulder, chest, and lower face. She backs away and the adhesive separates from the fibers, stretching out into long, infinitely thin strands, like hot mozzarelL.A. These set instantly, become solid, and then break, curling away like smoke. it is not quite so grotendous, now that the loogie is off her face, but her hand is still perfectly immobilized.
"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, as well as consequential psychological and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. Any movement on your part const.i.tutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk," the first MetaCop says. There is a little speaker on his belt, simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and j.a.panese.
"Or as we used to say," the other MetaCop says, "freeze, sucker!"
The untranslatable word resonates from the little speaker, p.r.o.nounced "esucker" and "saka" respectively.
"We are authorized Deputies of MetaCops Unlimited. Under Section 24.5.2 of the White Columns Code, we are authorized to carry out the actions of a police force on this territory."
"Such as ha.s.sling innocent thrashers," Y.T. says.
The MetaCop turns off the translator. "By speaking English you implicitly and irrevocably agree for all our future conversation to take place in the English language," he says.
"You can"t even rez what Y.T. says," Y.T. says.
"You have been identified as an Investigatory Focus of a Registered Criminal Event that is alleged to have taken place on another territory, namely, The Mews at Windsor Heights."
"That"s another country, man. This is White Columns!"
"Under provisions of the The Mews at Windsor Heights Code, we are authorized to enforce law, national security concerns, and societal harmony on said territory also. A treaty between The Mews at Windsor Heights and White Columns authorizes us to place you in temporary custody until your status as an Investigatory Focus has been resolved."
"Your a.s.s is busted," the second MetaCop says.
"As your demeanor has been nonaggressive and you carry no visible weapons, we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation," the first MetaCop says.
"You stay cool and we"ll stay cool," the second MetaCop says.
"However, we are equipped with devices, including but not limited to projectile weapons, which, if used, may pose an extreme and immediate threat to your health and well-being."
"Make one funny move and we"ll blow your head off," the second MetaCop says.
"Just unglom my f.u.c.kin" hand," Y.T. says. She has heard all this a million times before.
White Columns, like most Burbclaves, has no jail, no police station. So unsightly. Property values. Think of the liability exposure. MetaCops has a franchise just down the road that serves as headquarters. As for a jail, some place to habeas the occasional stray corpus, any half-decent franchise strip has one.
They are cruising in the Mobile Unit. Y.T."s hands are cuffed together in front of her. One hand is still half-encased in rubbery goo, smelling so intensely of vinyl fumes that both MetaCops have rolled down their windows. Six feet of loose fibers trail into her lap, across the floor of the Unit, out the door, and drag on the pavement The MetaCops are taking it easy, cruising down the middle lane, not above issuing a speeding ticket here and there as long as they"re in their jurisdiction. Motorists around them drive slowly and sanely, appalled by the thought of having to pull over and listen to half an hour of disclaimers, advis.e.m.e.nts, and tangled justifications from the likes of these. The occasional CosaNostra delivery boy whips past them in the left lane, orange lights aflame, and they pretend not to notice.
"What"s it gonna be, the Hoosegow or The Clink?" the first MetaCop says. From the way he is talking, he must be talking to the other MetaCop.
"The Hoosegow, please," Y.T. says.
"The Clink!" the other MetaCop says, turning around, sneering at her through the antiballistic gla.s.s, wallowing in power.
The whole interior of the car lights up as they drive past a Buy "n" Fly. Loiter in the parking lot of a Buy "n" Fly and you"d get a suntan. Then WorldBeat Security would come and arrest you. All that security-inducing light makes the Visa and MasterCard stickers on the driver"s-side window glow for a moment.
"Y.T. is card-carrying," Y.T. says. "What does it cost to get off?"
"How come you keep calling yourself Whitey?" the second MetaCop says. Like many people of color, he has misconstrued her name.
"Not whitey. Y.T.," The first MetaCop says.
"That"s what Y.T. is called," Y.T. says.
"That"s what I said," the second MetaCop says. "Whitey."
"Y.T.," the first one says, accenting the T so brutally that he throws a glittering burst of saliva against the windshield. "Let me guess-Yolanda Truman?"
"Yvonne Thomas?"
"What"s it stand for?"
"Nothing?"
Actually, it stands for Yours Truly, but if they can"t figure that out, f.u.c.k "em.
"You can"t afford it," the first MetaCop says. "You"re going up against TMAWH here."
"I don"t have to officially get off. I could just escape."
"This is a cla.s.s Unit. We don"t support escapes," the first MetaCop says.
"Tell you what," the second one says. "You pay us a trillion bucks and we"ll take you to a Hoosegow. Then you can bargain with them."
"Half a trillion," Y.T. says.
"Seven hundred and fifty billion," the MetaCop says. "Final. s.h.i.t, you"re wearing cuffs, you can"t be bargaining with us."
Y.T. unzips a pocket on the thigh of her coverall, pulls out the card with her clean hand, runs it through a slot on the back of the front seat, puts it back in her pocket.
The Hoosegow looks like a nice new one. Y.T. has seen hotels that were worse places to sleep. Its logo sign, a saguaro cactus with a black cowboy hat resting on top of it at a jaunty angle, is brand-new and clean.
THE HOOSEGOW.
Premium incarceration and restraint services We welcome busloads!
There are a couple of other MetaCop cars in the lot, and an Enforcer paddybus parked across the back, taking up ten consecutive s.p.a.ces. This draws much attention from the MetaCops. The Enforcers are to the MetaCops what the Delta Force is to the Peace Corps.
"One to check in," says the second MetaCop. They are standing in the reception area. The walls are lined with illuminated signs, each one bearing the image of some Old West desperado. Annie Oakley stares down blankly at Y.T., providing a role model. The check-in counter is faux rustic; the employees all wear cowboy hats and five-pointed stars with their names embossed on them. In back is a door made of hokey, old-fashioned iron bars. Once you got through there, it would look like an operating room. A whole line of little cells, curvy and white like prefab shower stalls-in fact, they double as shower stalls, you bathe in the middle of the room. Bright lights that turn themselves off at eleven o"clock. Coin-operated TV. Private phone line. Y.T. can hardly wait.
The cowboy behind the desk aims a scanner at Y.T., zaps her bar code. Hundreds of pages about Y.T."s personal life zoom up on a graphics screen.
"Huh," he says. "Female."
The two MetaCops look at each other like, what a genius-this guy could never be a MetaCop.
"Sorry, boys, we"re full up. No s.p.a.ce for females tonight."
"Aw, c"mon."
"See that bus in back? There was a riot at Snooze "n" Cruise. Some Narcolombians were selling a bad batch of Vertigo. Place went nuts. Enforcers sent in a half dozen squads, brought in about thirty. So we"re full up. Try The Clink, down the street."
Y.T. does not like the looks of this.