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DOC :ch4.txt

case sat in the loft with the dermatrodes strapped across his
forehead watching motes dance in the diluted sunlight that
filtered through the grid overhead a countdown was in pro
gress in one corner of the monitor screen
 cowboys didnt get into simstim he thought because it
was basically a meat toy he knew that the trodes he used and
the little plastic tiara dangling from a simstim deck were bas
ically the same and that the cyberspace matrix was actually a
drastic simplification of the human sensorium at least in terms
of presentation but simstim itself struck him as a gratuitous
multiplication of flesh input the commercial stuff was edited
of course so that if tally isham got a headache in the course
of a segment you didnt feel it
 the screen bleeped a twosecond warning
 the new switch was patched into his sendai with a thin
ribbon of fiberoptics
 and one and two and 
 cyberspace slid into existence from the cardinal points 
smooth he thought but not smooth enough have to work on
it
 then he keyed the new switch
 the abrupt jolt into other flesh matrix gone a wave of
sound and color she was moving through a crowded street
past stalls vending discount software prices feltpenned on sheets
of plastic fragments of music from countless speakers smells
of urine free monomers perfume patties of frying krill for
a few frightened seconds he fought helplessly to control her
body then he willed himself into passivity became the pas
senger behind her eyes
 the glasses didnt seem to cut down the sunlight al all he
wondered if the builtin amps compensated automatically blue
alphanumerics winked the time low in her left peripheral field 
showing off he thought
 her body language was disorienting her style foreign she
seemed continually on the verge of colliding with someone
but people melted out of her way stepped sideways made
room
 how you doing case he heard the words and felt her
form them she slid a hand into her jacket a fingertip circling
a nipple under warm silk the sensation made him catch his
breath she laughed but the link was oneway he had no way
to reply
 two blocks later she was threading the outskirts of memory
lane case kept trying to jerk her eyes toward landmarks he
would have used to find his way he began to find the passivity
of the situation irritating
 the transition to cyberspace when he hit the switch was
instantaneous he punched himself down a wall of primitive
ice belonging to the new york public library automatically
counting potential windows keying back into her sensorium
into the sinuous flow of muscle senses sharp and bright
 he found himself wondering about the mind he shared these
sensations with what did he know about her that she was
another professional that she said her being like his was the
thing she did to make a living he knew the way shed moved
against him earlier when she woke their mutual grunt of
unity when hed entered her and that she liked her coffee black
afterward
 her destination was one of the dubious software rental com
plexes that lined memory lane there was a stillness a hush 
booths lined a central hall the clientele were young few of
them out of their teens they all seemed to have carbon sockets
planted behind the left ear but she didnt focus on them the
counters that fronted the booths displayed hundreds of slivers
of microsoft angular fragments of colored silicon mounted
under oblong transparent bubbles on squares of white card
board molly went to the seventh booth along the south wall 
behind the counter a boy with a shaven head stared vacantly
into space a dozen spikes of microsoft protruding from the
socket behind his ear
 larry you in man she positioned herself in front of
him the boys eyes focused he sat up in his chair and pried
a bright magenta splinter from his socket with a dirty thumbnail
 hey larry
 molly he nodded
 i have some work for some of your friends larry
 larry took a flat plastic case from the pocket of his red
sportshirt and flicked it open slotting the microsoft beside a
dozen others his hand hovered selected a glossy black chip
that was slightly longer than the rest and inserted it smoothly
into his head his eyes narrowed
 mollys got a rider he said and larry doesnt like that
 hey she said i didnt know you were so sensitive 
im impressed costs a lot to get that sensitive
 i know you lady the blank look returned you looking
to buy some softs
 im looking for the moderns
 you got a rider molly this says he tapped the black
splinter somebody else using your eyes
 my partner
 tell your partner to go
 got something for the panther moderns larry
 what are you talking about lady
 case you take off she said and he hit the switch in
stantly back in the matrix ghost impressions of the software
complex hung for a few seconds in the buzzing calm of cy
berspace
 panther moderns he said to the hosaka removing the
trodes five minute precis
 ready the computer said
 it wasnt a name he knew something new something that
had come in since hed been in chiba fads swept the youth
of the sprawl at the speed of light entire subcultures could rise
overnight thrive for a dozen weeks and then vanish utterly 
go he said the hosaka had accessed its array of libraries
journals and news services
 the precis began with a long hold on a color still that case
at first assumed was a collage of some kind a boys face
snipped from another image and glued to a photograph of a
paintscrawled wall dark eyes epicanthic folds obviously the
result of surgery an angry dusting of acne across pale narrow
cheeks the hosaka released the freeze the boy moved flow
ing with the sinister grace of a mime pretending to be a jungle
predator his body was nearly invisible an abstract pattern
approximating the scribbled brickwork sliding smoothly across
his tight onepiece mimetic polycarbon
 cut to dr virginia rambali sociology nyu her name
faculty and school pulsing across the screen in pink alphanu
merics
 given their penchant for these random acts of surreal vi
olence someone said it may be difficult for our viewers to
understand why you continue to insist that this phenomenon
isnt a form of terrorism
 dr rambali smiled there is always a point at which the
terrorist ceases to manipulate the media gestalt a point at
which the violence may well escalate but beyond which the
terrorist has become symptomatic of the media gestalt itself 
terrorism as we ordinarily understand it is inately mediare
lated the panther moderns differ from other terrorists pre
cisely in their degree of selfconsciousness in their awareness
of the extent to which media divorce the act of terrorism from
the original sociopolitical intent
 skip it case said

case met his first modern two days after hed screened the
hosakas precis the moderns hed decided were a contem
porary version of the big scientists of his own late teens there
was a kind of ghostly teenage dna at work in the sprawl
something that carried the coded precepts of various shortlived
subcults and replicated them at odd intervals the panther mod
erns were a softhead variant on the scientists if the technology
had been available the big scientists would all have had sock
ets stuffed with microsofts it was the style that mattered and
the style was the same the moderns were mercenaries prac
tical jokers nihilistic technofetishists
 the one who showed up at the loft door with a box of
diskettes from the finn was a softvoiced boy called angelo 
his face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark 
cartilage polysaccharides smooth and hideous it was one of
the nastiest pieces of elective surgery case had ever seen when
angelo smiled revealing the razorsharp canines of some large
animal case was actually relieved toothbud transplants hed
seen that before
 you cant let the little pricks generationgap you molly
said case nodded absorbed in the patterns of the sensenet
ice
 this was it this was what he was who he was his being 
he forgot to eat molly left cartons of rice and foam trays of
sushi on the corner of the long table sometimes he resented
having to leave the deck to use the chemical toilet theyd set
up in a corner of the loft ice patterns formed and reformed on
the screen as he probed for gaps skirted the most obvious
traps and mapped the route hed take through sensenets ice 
it was good ice wonderful ice its patterns burned there while
he lay with his arm under mollys shoulders watching the red
dawn through the steel grid of the skylight its rainbow pixel
maze was the first thing he saw when he woke hed go straight
to the deck not bothering to dress and jack in he was cutting
it he was working he lost track of days
 and sometimes falling asleep particularly when molly was
off on one of her reconnaissance trips with her rented cadre of
moderns images of chiba came flooding back faces and
ninsei neon once he woke from a confused dream of linda
lee unable to recall who she was or what shed ever meant
to him when he did remember he jacked in and worked for
nine straight hours
 the cutting of sensenets ice took a total of nine days
 i said a week armitage said unable to conceal his sat
isfaction when case showed him his plan for the run you
took your own good time
 balls case said smiling at the screen thats good work
armitage
 yes armitage admitted but dont let it go to your head 
compared to what youll eventually be up against this is an
arcade toy

love you cat mother whispered the panther moderns
link man his voice was modulated static in cases headset 
atlanta brood looks go go got it mollys voice was
slightly clearer
 to hear is to obey the moderns were using some kind
of chickenwire dish in new jersey to bounce the link mans
scrambled signal off a sons of christ the king satellite in
geosynchronous orbit above manhattan they chose to regard
the entire operation as an elaborate private joke and their
choice of comsats seemed to have been deliberate mollys
signals were being beamed up from a onemeter umbrella dish
epoxyed to the roof of a black glass bank tower nearly as tall
as the sensenet building
 atlanta the recognition code was simple atlanta to boston
to chicago to denver five minutes for each city if anyone
managed to intercept mollys signal unscramble it synth her
voice the code would tip the moderns if she remained in the
building for more than twenty minutes it was highly unlikely
shed be coming out at all
 case gulped the last of his coffee settled the trodes in place
and scratched his chest beneath his black tshirt he had only
a vague idea of what the panther moderns planned as a diver
sion for the sensenet security people his job was to make
sure the intrusion program hed written would link with the
sensenet systems when molly needed it to he watched the
countdown in the corner of the screen two one
 he jacked in and triggered his program mainline breathed
the link man his voice the only sound as case plunged through
the glowing strata of sensenet ice good check molly he
hit the simstim and flipped into her sensorium
 the scrambler blurred the visual input slightly she stood
before a wall of goldflecked mirror in the buildings vast white
lobby chewing gum apparently fascinated by her own reflec
tion aside from the huge pair of sunglasses concealing her
mirrored insets she managed to look remarkably like she
belonged there another tourist girl hoping for a glimpse of
tally isham she wore a pink plastic raincoat a white mesh
top loose white pants cut in a style that had been fashionable
in tokyo the previous year she grinned vacantly and popped
her gum case felt like laughing he could feel the micropore
tape across her ribcage feel the flat little units under it the
radio the simstim unit and the scrambler the throat mike
glued to her neck looked as much as possible like an analgesic
dermadisk her hands in the pockets of the pink coat were
flexing systematically through a series of tensionrelease ex
ercises it took him a few seconds to realize that the peculiar
sensation at the tips of her fingers was caused by the blades as
they were partially extruded then retracted
 he flipped back his program had reached the fifth gate 
he watched as his icebreaker strobed and shifted in front of
him only faintly aware of his hands playing across the deck
making minor adjustments translucent planes of color shuffled
like a trick deck take a card he thought any card
 the gate blurred past he laughed the sensenet ice had
accepted his entry as a routine transfer from the consortiums
los angeles complex he was inside behind him viral sub
programs peeled off meshing with the gates code fabric ready
to deflect the real los angeles data when it arrived
 he flipped again molly was strolling past the enormous
circular reception desk at the rear of the lobby
 120120 as the readout flared in her optic nerve

at midnight synched with the chip behind mollys eye the
link man in jersey had given his command mainline nine
moderns scattered along two hundred miles of the sprawl
had simultaneously dialed max emerg from pay phones 
each modern delivered a short set speech hung up and drifted
out into the night peeling off surgical gloves nine different
police departments and public security agencies were absorbing
the information that an obscure subsect of militant christian
fundamentalists had just taken credit for having introduced
clinical levels of an outlawed psychoactive agent known as
blue nine into the ventilation system of the sensenet pyramid 
blue nine known in california as grievous angel had been
shown to produce acute paranoia and homicidal psychosis in
eightyfive percent of experimental subjects

case hit the switch as his program surged through the gates
of the subsystem that controlled security for the sensenet
research library he found himself stepping into an elevator
 excuse me but are you an employee the guard raised
his eyebrows molly popped her gum no she said driving
the first two knuckles of her right hand into the mans solar
plexus as he doubled over clawing for the beeper on his belt
she slammed his head sideways against the wall of the elevator
 chewing a little more rapidly now she touched close
door and stop on the illuminated panel she took a blackbox
from her coat pocket and inserted a lead in the keyhole of the
lock that secured the panels circuitry

the panther moderns allowed four minutes for their first
move to take effect then injected a second carefully prepared
dose of misinformation this time they shot it directly into
the sensenet buildings internal video system
 at 120403 every screen in the building strobed for eigh
teen seconds in a frequency that produced seizures in a sus
ceptible segment of sensenet employees then something only
vaguely like a human face filled the screens its features stretched
across asymmetrical expanses of bone like some obscene mer
cator projection blue lips parted wetly as the twisted elongated
jaw moved something perhaps a hand a thing like a reddish
clump of gnarled roots fumbled toward the camera blurred
and vanished subliminally rapid images of contamination
graphics of the buildings water supply system gloved hands
manipulating laboratory glassware something tumbling down
into darkness a pale splash the audio track its pitch ad
justed to run at just less than twice the standard playback speed
was part of a monthold newscast detailing potential military
uses of a substance known as hsg a biochemical governing
the human skeletal growth factor overdoses of hsg threw
certain bone cells into overdrive accelerating growth by factors
as high as one thousand percent
 at 120500 the mirrorsheathed nexus of the sensenet
consortium held just over three thousand employees at five
minutes after midnight as the moderns message ended in a
flare of white screen the sensenet pyramid screamed
 half a dozen nypd tactical hovercraft responding to the
possibility of blue nine in the buildings ventilation system
were converging on the sensenet pyramid they were running
full riot lights a bama rapid deployment helicopter was
lifting off from its pad on rikers

case triggered his second program a carefully engineered
virus attacked the code fabric screening primary custodial com
mands for the subbasement that housed the sensenet research
materials boston mollys voice came across the link im
downstairs case switched and saw the blank wall of the
elevator she was unzipping the white pants a bulky packet
exactly the shade of her pale ankle was secured there with
micropore she knelt and peeled the tape away streaks of
burgundy flickered across the mimetic polycarbon as she un
folded the modern suit she removed the pink raincoat threw
it down beside the white pants and began to pull the suit on
over the white mesh top
 120626
 cases virus had bored a window through the librarys com
mand ice he punched himself through and found an infinite
blue space ranged with colorcoded spheres strung on a tight
grid of pale blue neon in the nonspace of the matrix the interior
of a given data construct possessed unlimited subjective di
mension a childs toy calculator accessed through cases sen
dai would have presented limitless gulfs of nothingness hung
with a few basic commands case began to key the sequence
the finn had purchased from a mideschelon sarariman with
severe drug problems he began to glide through the spheres
as if he were on invisible tracks
 here this one
 punching his way into the sphere chill blue neon vault above
him starless and smooth as frosted glass he triggered a sub
program that effected certain alterations in the core custodial
commands
 out now reversing smoothly the virus reknitting the fabric
of the window
 done

in the sensenet lobby two panther moderns sat alertly
behind a low rectangular planter taping the riot with a video
camera they both wore chameleon suits tacticals are spray
ing foam barricades now one noted speaking for the benefit
of his throat mike rapids are still trying to land their copter

case hit the simstim switch and flipped into the agony of
broken bone molly was braced against the blank gray wall of
a long corridor her breath coming ragged and uneven case
was back in the matrix instantly a whitehot line of pain fading
in his left thigh
 whats happening brood he asked the link man
 i dunno cutter mothers not talking wait
 cases program was cycling a single hairfine thread of
crimson neon extended from the center of the restored window
to the shifting outline of his icebreaker he didnt have time
to wait taking a deep breath he flipped again
 molly took a single step trying to support her weight on
the corridor wall in the loft case groaned the second step
took her over an outstretched arm uniform sleeve bright with
fresh blood glimpse of a shattered fiberglass shockstave her
vision seemed to have narrowed to a tunnel with the third
step case screamed and found himself back in the matrix
 brood boston baby her voice tight with pain she
coughed little problem with the natives think one of them
broke my leg
 what you need now cat mother the link mans voice
was indistinct nearly lost behind static
 case forced himself to flip back she was leaning against
the wall taking all of her weight on her right leg she fumbled
through the contents of the suits kangaroo pocket and withdrew
a sheet of plastic studded with a rainbow of dermadisks she
selected three and thumbed them hard against her left wrist
over the veins six thousand micrograms of endorphin analog
came down on the pain like a hammer shattering it her back
arched convulsively pink waves of warmth lapped up her thighs 
she sighed and slowly relaxed
 okay brood okay now but ill need a medical team
when i come out tell my people cutter im two minutes
from target can you hold
 tell her im in and holding case said
 molly began to limp down the corridor when she glanced
back once case saw the crumpled bodies of three sensenet
security guards one of them seemed to have no eyes
 tacticals and rapids have sealed the ground floor cat
mother foam barricades lobbys getting juicy
 pretty juicy down here she said swinging herself through
a pair of gray steel doors almost there cutter
 case flipped into the matrix and pulled the trodes from his
forehead he was drenched with sweat he wiped his forehead
with a towel took a quick sip of water from the bicycle bottle
beside the hosaka and checked the map of the library displayed
on the screen a pulsing red cursor crept through the outline
of a doorway only millimeters from the green dot that indi
cated the location of the dixie flatlines construct he won
dered what it was doing to her leg to walk on it that way 
with enough endorphin analog she could walk on a pair of
bloody stumps he tightened the nylon harness that held him
in the chair and replaced the trodes
 routine now trodes jack and flip
 the sensenet research library was a dead storage area the
materials stored here had to be physically removed before they
could be interfaced molly hobbled between rows of identical
gray lockers
 tell her five more and ten to her left brood case said
 five more and ten left cat mother the link man said
 she took the left a whitefaced librarian cowered between
two lockers her cheeks wet eyes blank molly ignored her 
case wondered what the moderns had done to provoke that
level of terror he knew it had something to do with a hoaxed
threat but hed been too involved with his ice to follow mollys
explanation
 thats it case said but shed already stopped in front of
the cabinet that held the construct its lines reminded case of
the neoaztec bookcases in julie deanes anteroom in chiba
 do it cutter molly said
 case flipped to cyberspace and sent a command pulsing
down the crimson thread that pierced the library ice five sep
arate alarm systems were convinced that they were still oper
ative the three elaborate locks deactivated but considered
themselves to have remained locked the librarys central bank
suffered a minute shift in its permanent memory the construct
had been removed per executive order a month before check
ing for the authorization to remove the construct a librarian
would find the records erased
 the door swung open on silent hinges
 0467839 case said and molly drew a black storage unit
from the rack it resembled the magazine of a large assault
rifle its surfaces covered with warning decals and security
ratings
 molly closed the locker door case flipped
 he withdrew the line through the library ice it whipped
back into his program automatically triggering a full system
reversal the sensenet gates snapped past him as he backed
out subprograms whirling back into the core of the icebreaker
as he passed the gates where they had been stationed
 out brood he said and slumped in his chair after the
concentration of an actual run he could remain jacked in an...

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

	(9%)	moderns loft link yonderboy larry lobby minutes wall library molly ...
	(8%)	case molly thing back left im head asked didnt began ...
	(7%)	sensenet screen panther brood fabric thousand bama mr pair woman ...
	(7%)	eyes man hed black face dark past good open back ...
	(7%)	suit pink simstim flipped elevator switch seconds front cut color ...

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