mentality, with line-ups of prospective astronauts ready to take the trip regardless of its inescapable fatal end. The coordinates are the same each time, and referred to as the Highway, Metro, or River by various cultures. In an effort to learn more, a space station is established near the Highway, designed to be paradise. When capsules arrive with live astronauts they are sent to Heaven in an effort to keep the astronauts alive longer and tease out any additional information available before they eventually kill themselves. Halpert is one of the astronauts who had volunteered to go to the Highway, but he was rejected by whatever is out there. The same fate befell his girlfriend Charmian, who holds the record for keeping one survivor alive for two weeks. Halpert and Charmian's role is to meet returning astronauts, soothe their transition to the station, and allow scientists to analyze their findings. What information is returned shows that the technologies on the other side of the Highway are different, but not necessarily more advanced. None of what comes back could possibly explain how the Highway works, and it is assumed the same is true for the other races the astronauts apparently meet on the "other side". Halpert likens it to houseflies meeting in an international airport, happy to converse but utterly unaware of where they are or how they got there. The story is being told as Halpert is being readied to meet a returning female astronaut who is still alive – a "meat shot". While racing to meet the spacecraft, Halpert suffers a massive bout of agoraphobia, called "The Fear", a Lovecraftian sensation of being overwhelmed by the Highway's significance. Forced by electric shocks to enter the capsule, he finds the astronaut recently dead and discovers that she has reprogrammed her robotic surgeon suite to assist her suicide. Diagrams for incredibly powerful molecular switches are scrawled on the walls. Language "Hinterlands" makes extensive use of metaphors. For instance, the story's wormhole is referred to as "The Highway". From this metaphor, Gibson creates several other metaphors. The Highway's travelers are referred to as "hitchhikers", "flies", and "hicks.'". These words have a figurative rather than a literal meaning. The story's title is also a metaphor, comparing the known space to a backwoods area that is far from civilization. The destination at the end of the wormhole is figuratively "the big city". Film and