Recently 'resigned' from his job as the coolest samurai sword-toting pizza-delivery guy in the world, Hiro has had to fall back on his old hi-tech scavenger ways. Not that he's a nobody on the virtual street - one of the founders of The Black Sun, he helped write the rule book for the digital Metaverse. Which is why he's so confused when he's offered a cyber-drug called Snow Crash- 'cos there are no such things as drugs in their computer-generated world. And yet here it is, complete with devastating side effects. Who could have made it? And what the hell does it actually do?