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DOC :ch23.txt

molly fished the key out on its loop of nylon
 you know 3jane said craning forward with interest i
was under the impression that no duplicate existed i sent hideo
to search my fathers things after you killed him he couldnt
find the original
 wintermute managed to get it stuck in the back of a drawer
molly said carefully inserting the chubb keys cylindrical shaft
into the notched opening in the face of the blank rectangular
door he killed the little kid who put it there the key rotated
smoothly when she tried it
 the head case said theres a panel in the back of the
head zircons on it get it off thats where im jacking in
 and then they were inside

christ on a crutch the flatline drawled you do believe
in takin your own good time dont you boy
 kuangs ready
 hot to trot
 okay he flipped

and found himself staring down through mollys one good
eye at a whitefaced wasted figure afloat in a loose fetal
crouch a cyberspace deck between its thighs a band of silver
trodes above closed shadowed eyes the mans cheeks were
hollowed with a days growth of dark beard his face slick with
sweat
 he was looking at himself
 molly had her fletcher in her hand her leg throbbed with
each beat of her pulse but she could still maneuver in zerog 
maelcum drifted nearby 3janes thin arm gripped in a large
brown hand
 a ribbon of fiberoptics looped gracefully from the ono 
sendai to a square opening in the back of the pearlcrusted
terminal
 he tapped the switch again

kuang grade mark eleven is haulin ass in nine seconds
countin seven six five
 the flatline punched them up smooth ascent the ventral
surface of the black chrome shark a microsecond flick of dark
ness
 four three
 case had the strange impression of being in the pilots seat
in a small plane a flat dark surface in front of him suddenly
glowed with a perfect reproduction of the keyboard of his deck
 two an kick ass 
 headlong motion through walls of emerald green milky
jade the sensation of speed beyond anything hed known before
in cyberspace the tessierashpool ice shattered peeling
away from the chinese programs thrust a worrying impression
of solid fluidity as though the shards of a broken mirror bent
and elongated as they fell 
 christ case said awestruck as kuang twisted and banked
above the horizonless fields of the tessierashpool cores an
endless neon cityscape complexity that cut the eye jewel bright
sharp as razors
 hey shit the construct said those things are the rca
building you know the old rca building the kuang pro
gram dived past the gleaming spires of a dozen identical towers
of data each one a blue neon replica of the manhattan sky
scraper
 you ever see resolution this high case asked
 no but i never cracked an ai either
 this thing know where its going
 it better
 they were dropping losing altitude in a canyon of rainbow
neon
 dix 
 an arm of shadow was uncoiling from the flickering floor
below a seething mass of darkness unformed shapeless
 company the flatline said as case hit the representation
of his deck fingers flying automatically across the board the
kuang swerved sickeningly then reversed whipping itself
backward shattering the illusion of a physical vehicle
 the shadow thing was growing spreading blotting out the
city of data case took them straight up above them the dis
tanceless bowl of jadegreen ice
 the city of the cores was gone now obscured entirely by
the dark beneath them
 what is it
 an ais defense system the construct said or part of
it if its your pal wintermute hes not lookin real friendly
 take it case said youre faster
 now your best defense boy its a good offfense
 and the flatline aligned the nose of kuangs sting with the
center of the dark below and dove
 cases sensory input warped with their velocity
 his mouth filled with an aching taste of blue
 his eyes were eggs of unstable crystal vibrating with a
frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains sud
denly sprouting a humming forest of hairfine glass spines the
spines split bisected split again exponential growth under the
dome of the tessierashpool ice
 the roof of his mouth cleaved painlessly admitting rootlets
that whipped around his tongue hungry for the taste of blue
to feed the crystal forests of his eyes forests that pressed
against the green dome pressed and were hindered and spread
growing down filling the universe of ta down into the wait
ing hapless suburbs of the city that was the mind of tessier 
ashpool sa
 and he was remembering an ancient story a king placing
coins on a chessboard doubling the amount at each square
 exponential
 darkness fell in from every side a sphere of singing black
pressure on the extended crystal nerves of the universe of data
he had nearly become
 and when he was nothing compressed at the heart of all
that dark there came a point where the dark could be no more
and something tore
 the kuang program spurted from tarnished cloud cases
consciousness divided like beads of mercury arcing above an
endless beach the color of the dark silver clouds his vision
was spherical as though a single retina lined the inner surface
of a globe that contained all things if all things could be
counted
 and here things could be counted each one he knew the
number of grains of sand in the construct of the beach a number
coded in a mathematical system that existed nowhere outside
the mind that was neuromancer he knew the number of
yellow food packets in the canisters in the bunker four hundred
and seven he knew the number of brass teeth in the left half
of the open zipper of the saltcrusted leather jacket that linda
lee wore as she trudged along the sunset beach swinging a
stick of driftwood in her hand two hundred and two
 he banked kuang above the beach and swung the program
in a wide circle seeing the black shark thing through her eyes
a silent ghost hungry against the banks of lowering cloud she
cringed dropping her stick and ran he knew the rate of her
pulse the length of her stride in measurements that would have
satisfied the most exacting standards of geophysics
 but you do not know her thoughts the boy said beside
him now in the shark things heart i do not know her thoughts 
you were wrong case to live here is to live there is no
difference
 linda in her panic plunging blind through the surf
 stop her he said shell hurt herself
 i cant stop her the boy said his gray eyes mild and
beautiful
 youve got rivieras eyes case said
 there was a flash of white teeth long pink gums but not
his craziness because they are beautiful to me he shrugged 
i need no mask to speak with you unlike my brother i create
my own personality personality is my medium
 case took them up a steep climb away from the beach and
the frightened girl whyd you throw her up to me you little
prick over and fucking over and turning me around you
killed her huh in chiba
 no the boy said
 wintermute
 no i saw her death coming in the patterns you sometimes
imagined you could detect in the dance of the street those
patterns are real i am complex enough in my narrow ways
to read those dances far better than wintermute can i saw
her death in her need for you in the magnetic code of the lock
on the door of your coffin in cheap hotel in julie deanes
account with a hongkong shirtmaker as clear to me as the
shadow of a tumor to a surgeon studying a patients scan when
she took your hitachi to her boy to try to access it she had
no idea what it carried still less how she might sell it and her
deepest wish was that you would pursue and punish her i
intervened my methods are far more subtle than wintermutes 
i brought her here into myself
 why
 hoping i could bring you here as well keep you here but
i failed
 so what now he swung them back into the bank of cloud 
where do we go from here
 i dont know case tonight the very matrix asks itself
that question because you have won you have already won
dont you see you won when you walked away from her on
the beach she was my last line of defense i die soon in one
sense as does wintermute as surely as riviera does now
as he lies paralyzed beside the stump of a wall in the apartments
of my lady 3jane mariefrance his nigrastriatal system un
able to produce the dopamine receptors that could save him
from hideos arrow but riviera will survive only as these eyes
if i am allowed to keep them
 theres the word right the code so howve i won ive
won jack shit
 flip now
 wheres dixie what have you done with the flatline
 mccoy pauley has his wish the boy said and smiled 
his wish and more he punched you here against my wish
drove himself through defenses equal to anything in the matrix 
now flip
 and case was alone in kuangs black sting lost in cloud
 he flipped

into mollys tension her back like rock her hands around
3janes throat funny she said i know exactly what youd
look like i saw it after ashpool did the same thing to your
clone sister her hands were gentle almost a caress 3janes
eyes were wide with terror and lust she was shivering with
fear and longing beyond the freefall tangle of 3janes hair
case saw his own strained white face maelcum behind him
brown hands on the leatherjacketed shoulders steadying him
above the carpets pattern of woven circuitry
 would you 3jane asked her voice a childs i think
you would
 the code molly said tell the head the code
 jacking out

she wants it he screamed the bitch wants it
 he opened his eyes to the cool ruby stare of the terminal
its platinum face crusted with pearl and lapis beyond it molly
and 3jane twisted in a slow motion embrace
 give us the fucking code he said if you dont whatll
change whatll ever fucking change for you youll wind up
like the old man youll tear it all down and start building
again youll build the walls back tighter and tighter i got
no idea at all whatll happen if wintermute wins but itll
change something he was shaking his teeth chattering
 3jane went limp mollys hands still around her slender
throat her dark hair drifting tangled a soft brown caul
 the ducal palace at mantua she said contains a series
of increasingly smaller rooms they twine around the grand
apartments beyond beautifully carved doorframes one stoops
to enter they housed the court dwarfs she smiled wanly i
might aspire to that i suppose but in a sense my family has
already accomplished a grander version of the same scheme 
her eyes were calm now distant then she gazed down at
case take your word thief he jacked

kuang slid out of the clouds below him the neon city 
behind him a sphere of darkness dwindled
 dixie you here man you hear me dixie
 he was alone
 fucker got you he said
 blind momentum as he hurtled across the infinite datascape
 you gotta hate somebody before this is over said the
finns voice them me it doesnt matter
 wheres dixie
 thats kinda hard to explain case
 a sense of the finns presence surrounded him smell of
cuban cigarettes smoke locked in musty tweed old machines
given up to the mineral rituals of rust
 hatell get you through the voice said so many little
triggers in the brain and you just go yankin em all now
you gotta hate the lock that screens the hardwiring its down
under those towers the flatline showed you when you came
in he wont try to stop you
 neuromancer case said
 his names not something i can know but hes given up
now its the ta ice you gotta worry about not the wall but
internal virus systems kuangs wide open to some of the stuff
they got running loose in here
 hate case said who do i hate you tell me
 who do you love the finns voice asked
 he whipped the program through a turn and dived for the
blue towers
 things were launching themselves from the ornate sunburst
spires glittering leech shapes made of shifting planes of light 
there were hundreds of them rising in a whirl their move
ments random as windblown paper down dawn streets glitch
systems the voice said
 he came in steep fueled by selfloathing when the kuang
program met the first of the defenders scattering the leaves of
light he felt the shark thing lose a degree of substantiality the
fabric of information loosening
 and then old alchemy of the brain and its vast phar
macy his hate flowed into his hands
 in the instant before he drove kuangs sting through the
base of the first tower he attained a level of proficiency ex
ceeding anything hed known or imagined beyond ego be
yond personality beyond awareness he moved kuang moving
with him evading his attackers with an ancient dance hideos
dance grace of the mindbody interface granted him in that
second by the clarity and singleness of his wish to die
 and one step in that dance was the lightest touch on the
switch barely enough to flip

now
 and his voice the cry of a bird
unknown
 3jane answering in song three
notes high and pure
 a true name

neon forest rain sizzling across hot pavement the smell
of frying food a girls hands locked across the small of his
back in the sweating darkness of a portside coffin
 but all of this receding as the cityscape recedes city as
chiba as the ranked data of tessierashpool sa as the roads
and crossroads scribed on the face of a microchip the sweat
stained pattern on a folded knotted scarf

waking to a voice that was music the platinum terminal
piping melodically endlessly speaking of numbered swiss
accounts of payment to be made to zion via a bahamian orbital
bank of passports and passages and of deep and basic changes
to be effected in the memory of turing
 turing he remembered stenciled flesh beneath a projected
sky spun beyond an iron railing he remembered desiderata
street
 and the voice sang on piping him back into the dark but
it was his own darkness pulse and blood the one where hed
always slept behind his eyes and no others
 and he woke again thinking he dreamed to a wide white
smile framed with gold incisors aerol strapping him into a
gweb in babylon rocker
 and then the long pulse of zion dub

...

Top topics in this doc (% words in doc assigned to this topic)

	(9%)	things dark neuromancer won change pulse shark stick string blind ...
	(8%)	virus kuang hate ghost smell endless turning cloud cut towers ...
	(7%)	hand youre looked hands back time wall place small whats ...
	(7%)	eyes man hed black face dark past good open back ...
	(6%)	case molly thing back left im head asked didnt began ...
	(6%)	killed wintermute janes ashpool jane cores crystal lock ta voice ...
	(6%)	punched building darkness voice data filled damn kuangs smoothly growth ...

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