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The coming of giga-bit networks makes possible the realization of a single nationwide virtual computer comprised of a variety of geographically distributed high-performance machines and workstations. To realize the potential that the physical infrastructure provides, software must be developed that is easy to use, supports large degrees of parallelism in applications code, and manages the complexity of the underlying physical system for the user. This paper describes our approach to constructing and exploiting such “metasystems”. Our approach inherits features of earlier work on parallel processing systems and heterogeneous distributed computing systems. In particular, we are building on Mentat, an object-oriented parallel processing system developed at the University of Virginia. This report is a preliminary document. We expect changes to occur as the architecture and design of the system mature.