Neuromancer Chapters 6 - 8

We continue with chapters six through eight in Neuromancer.

In this episode:

• we collect the last member of the team, Peter Riviera
• Learn more about who, or what, "Armitage" actually is
• we start making our way to the corrupt and decadent Freeside, a cyberpunk Babylon

Transcript

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Welcome Back And Chapter Roadmap

Michael Kentris 0:06

Hello and welcome back to Brothers Reading Books. We are your brothers. I am Michael, and I'm joined as always by my brother.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Will.

Michael Kentris 0:15

Hey Will. How's it going?

SPEAKER_02 0:16

It's going pretty well about you.

Michael Kentris 0:18

I'm tired, but I'm glad I'm here. We are continuing our you know, I should uh I should use our our neuromancer speak. You know, we're gonna jack into this deck of a novel here and uh continue on in chapters six to eight. So do you want to give us your 2,000 bird's eye view of what we're talking about today?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So chapter six, we have Detective Case on the case of Armatig's backstory. And then in chapter seven, we recruit the, I assume, last member of our crew.

Michael Kentris 0:51

Right. And then our Oceans 11 scenario.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Right. And l honestly, uh especially in again, chapter eight, as we are prepping for the heist, that is what I have in mind as we're like learning about freeside specifically. It's like we got all our specialists on the case.

Michael Kentris 1:10

Yes. So so yeah, starting out, as you said, we kind of start out with case uh you know, having a conversation with the flatline construct, and they are they're doing some research here into Armitage's background. So we end up uh, you know, he he does some hacking things in the in the uh the net here, or what do they call it, the cyberspace. But yeah, there's just a couple things I I saw here. They're kind of like little um anachronisms, I suppose, or things that might seem a bit dated. You know, they talk about Bell Europa as a company here. For those who are too young to remember about uh the Bell Corporation, that was kind of the big phone carrier. You know, they called it Ma Bell for the longest time. One of the kind of the early, I shouldn't say early, but kind of mid-mid-century capitalist monopolies in the US.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

They were like the technology developers.

Michael Kentris 2:08

Right. Right. And yeah, they talk about uh tapping his way into Bell Europa and switched to a standard phone code. So this is like dial-up uh type internet language here. Aaron Ross Powell Right, which I mean even for the time it was still like advanced, so very right.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

You can only you can only predict so many things.

Michael Kentris 2:31

I know. It's just it is kind of interesting to see like what did people think the future would be like, you know, however many years ago, right? So this would be forty something years ago at this point in time. So it's it's not too far off base. Certainly better than I would do. But we we get interest or introduced to this name, Colonel Willis Corto. And what what do we learn about Colonel Corto?

SPEAKER_02 2:59

So apparently that was Armitage's previous identity when he was originally in the military. So yeah, we get kind of this what's the term that they use for like

The Corto Files And Armitage’s Origin

SPEAKER_02 3:10

the sort of consolidation of information? A prestice. Yes, the prestice. So yeah, we get a prestice on uh Colonel Corto. Like a profile. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so again, it's not that much information, but we learned that he was part of some sort of military operation, Screaming Fist, where they're trying to break into some Russian defenses, things go bad, he gets captured, and it sounds like eventually he's able to commandeer a ship, despite the fact that we learned that he's blind, he has lost some of his limbs, he's missing his jaw, just in real bad shape.

Michael Kentris 3:50

Well, I think some of that might have been near the end of this escapade, if you will. Right? Because as you said, right, they're they're punching through, they get shot down a little bit, you know. There's I think he's the only surviving member that we know of at this point. And uh they get hit by an EMP, so all their stuff goes dead, and he's got a console man with him, right? So they're kind of on these like ultralight flyers. Instead of weapons and defense, they have weight balance for hacksaws. So his partner is dead, and then he he steals this other flight device, and yeah, as he gets into Helsinki on the outskirts, basically this this mini gun blows him to smithereens, and as you said, that leaves him kind of as a wreckage with, as I said here, blind, legless, and missing most of his jaw. And I thought this was a very visceral description. As he's here in the rehab unit, he listened to the sound of tubes draining. Which, you know, anyone who's been to like intensive care unit or anything, there's tubes everywhere. But it can be a depressing environment sometimes. Never uplifting. You know, rarely. So, but yeah, it's uh it's definitely got like kind of that very very again, visceral is the best word that I can think of for it. Right? Engaging those senses. Right. So kind of as he's there, we get a Washington operative shows up and says that they want him to testify. And they're saying that uh this whole thing is ripe for water gating. So they they say, Oh, we'll fix you up, we'll get you, you know, put back together so you can testify. And Corto says, I'd rather testify as I am, like as a wreck of a person. And the the aide says, uh no, they're being televised, we're not going to do that.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Right. We need you to look pretty for the camera.

Michael Kentris 5:52

Right. So basically he he does it, he was instrumental, saves some people's careers, and after his role in the trials are over, this same aide tells him that he is not wanted in Washington, and I like this. In an M Street restaurant over asparagus crepes, the aide explained the terminal dangers involved in talking to the wrong people, which I thought was such a euphemistic way of saying that if you talk about this, we'll have you killed. Right. In response, Corto crushed the man's larynx with the rigid fingers of his right hand. The congressional aide strangled his face in an asparagus crepe, and Corto stepped out into cool Washington September. So, in case we didn't already know, because this man is involved with like a presumably like kind of black ops type situations here, uh, yeah, it turns out he's he's one bad mofo. And we kind of get this litany of escapades. I mean, I'm using escapades too much today. But let's say criminal operations he becomes involved in. Yes. So we get this just litany here. I like this. He he seemed to grow obsessed with the idea of betrayal to load the scientists and technicians he bought out for his employers. He beat a Russian engineer to death in a hotel and set fire to his room. Then he was in Thailand overseeing heroin factory, then in California, gambling cartel, then a paid killer in the ruins of Bonn. Uh then he robbed a bank in Wichita. This sounds like a Johnny Cash song. But um, yeah, so it just kind of goes on and on and on here, and then uh they say that the gaps became bigger and bigger and he became harder to pin down. So that's kind of the end of our flashback, and then we kind of switch back to present day.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Well, we find out that sort of after those trail of crimes had come to an end, that he had wound up in a French hospital, it sounds like, and ended up kind of like a catatonic state.

Michael Kentris 7:51

Oh, right, and they were like doing experiments on him for schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Experiments on him, yes.

Michael Kentris 7:55

Right. Yes. He was the only success in the entire experiment.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

He's a lot of the only ones.

Michael Kentris 8:01

Yeah, it's suspicious. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So we are now we're continuing our globetrottering. Where where are we going to next, Will?

SPEAKER_02 8:10

Going to Constantinople.

Michael Kentris 8:14

Ooh, shots fired. Uh or Istanbul. As uh as they say here in the book. So right. But yes, you know, as as people may remember, Will and I are of Greek uh heritage. It's only been 650 years. Uh but uh but yes, so they're going to Istanbul, and we learn, as you said earlier, they are they're heading out for the final member of their crew. All right. And we know that Molly is still recovering from her severe trauma, physical trauma from the previous. Yes. Yeah, I like this uh description. They talk about uh the dentist uh chin, and she says, I could do another night with chins, and he's like, your dentist? And he's like, You betcha, very discreet. He's got half that rack, full clinic, does repairs for samurai. Which I just love this idea of like street samurai. It's uh I don't know, it's it's just some it's got a certain vibe to it that I just enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Absolutely.

Michael Kentris 9:18

And she says, You ever been to Stanbull? Apostrophe, Stanbull. So we definitely get some weird jargon coming through in the next few chapters. Um, you know, we'll talk more. There's a little bit of like written patois and stuff like that, but I don't think we'll be reading it in the voice.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

No, no.

Michael Kentris 9:36

So anyway, we learn that Molly does not like Istanbul. She says it's a bad old town. Basically, they get a little bit of a travel montage, and there we are.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Bada bang. So yeah, it's interesting.

Michael Kentris 9:51

When they get to Istanbul, they're being driven around, I assume, by like a self-driving Mercedes or something like that. It's kind of what it sounds like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

And it's it's giving like this sort of audio tour as they're driving around. So it's like this was formerly the prosperous European section of Ottoman Istanbul. So Case responds, like, so it's gone down.

Michael Kentris 10:12

There's a lot of like quips and one-liners in these next two chapters that I really like. Right, yeah. Case and Molly are definitely very sarcastic people, which kind of blends into the whole pastiche of I don't want to say nihilism, but kind of like verging on that, where it's like nothing really matters, and you know, this is all kind of you know de rigure. So it's kind of it it it creates an atmosphere, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Absolutely.

Michael Kentris 10:43

And I like this. Uh case asks, how come Armitage flies alone? And then Molly says, because you get up his nose, you're sure getting up mine. So it just one of those things, right? Like, like you said, they're they're kind of just sniping at each other a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

And so, yeah, well, you get this brief little mention that she still uh doesn't know about uh the quarto backstory for Armitage, and it's just very being very cautious about when and where he tells her because you never know if he's listening.

Michael Kentris 11:11

Who is listening? That becomes a recurrent theme uh throughout this section here.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 11:17

So they they meet up with the Finn at uh a hotel. He's wearing a Shinjuku suit, Sariman Black. Uh and Molly just says uh rat in a business suit. Right? So she I like this. She kind of says, again, right, those like you said, more one-liners. Like, do they have to pay you more to uh come over here or to wear that suit, basically?

SPEAKER_02 11:41

Right.

Michael Kentris 11:44

So, yeah, but uh he Finn does not like uh the fin, the Finn does not like this area either. You know, he's as he says, this town sucks. Uh and uh Molly says because it's not under a dome, which again, right, we I think there might have been a hint of that with the uh the sprawl that it was like under a dome, but I don't know if it was explicitly mentioned per se. I can't write wrong. No. But again, kind of gives a little bit of a a flavor of what the future looks like in this world.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

So uh So yeah. They uh kind of make their way towards Armitage's hotel room.

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Alright, and yeah, they're given their next task.

Michael Kentris 12:27

It sounds like they have a contact that they're meeting here. I don't know how to pronounce his name.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yes, him. Terzy.

Michael Kentris 12:40

Yeah, well, as Case says, Jersey Bastion. So yeah, Armenian's not the easiest language necessarily to pronounce, so I'm not going to necessarily hold myself to the highest standard there. But yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

But to that point, then we got Molly kind of being sarcastic again, like, you got on here for language, Case, but you're part of Armenia.

Michael Kentris 13:02

Yeah. So yes. So they meet up with this guy, and um we there's some friction between our characters here, which they don't really explain until kind of the end of their interactions later on. But they do write him. There are some words here. We must, as you say, in Ingolese, take this one very easy. So he's he's also wearing silver sunglasses, and he takes them off and he says, It is better this way, yes? Else we make the tunnel infinity mirror into mirror. And he says, You particularly, he said to her, must take care. In Turkey, there's disapproval of women who sport such modifications. And basically she goes, I know about you, stool for the military, right? And uh she basically pulls a gun on him. Right, but it's just her Fletcher. Right. Yeah, she's like one dart shit face, you won't feel it for months. So, yeah, not not immediately uh clicking with each other, because she he works for the government, which we assume, as most governments are, is corrupt. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

So they are also comes off as a little misogynistic, like he said, just right. In Turkey, there's a disapproval who of women who support such modifications.

Michael Kentris 14:13

It's like in Turkey, women are still women, it's like, man, piss off. Right. So they they kind of are talking about this guy. And they don't explicitly say initially that it is uh Peter Riviera, but that is who we are talking about. And they they're talking about kind of the pattern he has. He goes to the bazaar, right? Which, you know, Istanbul's famous for the Grand Bazaar, even to this day. So they're kind of just talking about his roots and kind of they talk about this thing, the

Istanbul Jargon And Recruiting Riviera

Michael Kentris 14:45

implants that he has. What can he do? And they they mention this thing called the subliminals, which we kind of get a flavor of this. I think this is a good example of like kind of the show don't tell. Right? So they tell us that these things exist, and you're just really, all right, well, whatever. And then weird stuff starts happening uh in the not too distant future in the story here. So so we'll we'll approach that more as we go. But but basically, he's what do they talk about? Like he has uh one of his lungs has been replaced by some hardware, and so he can do all this kind of weird stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Which we'll find out, like you said, very soon. Right. So yeah, they're on their way to kind of ambush him.

SPEAKER_02 15:31

So, like you said, they we know their route, so we're going to ambush them on the route to heavily recruit them. Conscript them, maybe is a better term.

Michael Kentris 15:40

Right. Oh yeah. No, they did get a little bit of description. What he imagines you see, I figure he could narrow it to a pulse and fry a retina over easy.

SPEAKER_02 15:51

Right, yeah, he talks about how the these people are seeing like a scorpion poised beside a brake lever and end up crashing. So but it's it's always the same story from from the people who experienced it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. These situations. I did like also just another another example of the Finn not liking Istanbul is he makes an appreciative noise, but he's looking away from the Grand Bazaar, he's just looking at like scrapyards.

Michael Kentris 16:19

Right. Yeah. Let's say what it is, like you know, uh lonely for home or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah. Case asking, like, you homesick? It's like place sucks.

Michael Kentris 16:28

Yeah. It's it's everyone's like universally, I don't know, like they all hate being there, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 16:36

So they head to the spice bazaar, sometimes called the Egyptian Bazaar, right? We get some more information from the Mercedes car.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yes.

Michael Kentris 16:45

The city's central market for spices, software, perfumes, drugs. Drugs. Right. Case case immediately latches onto that. Right. It's like, what's that you said before, Jersey about Jersey Bastion, right? About this Riviera being wired. And uh we get a mixture of cocaine and noparidine, demerol, they used to call it. He is a speedball artist, right? So speedball, uppers and downers. So that is essentially uh what he's uh what he's working on here. So this is this guy. He he is flying high.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

And then yeah, we get again, kind of this sort of brief glimpse into the history of the world. There is at some point this pandemic because they're talking about this sort of embalmed horse, and they're like, You ever seen a horse before? And just like saw one in Maryland once. That was a good three years after the pandemic, and trying to similar thing I feel like what we're trying to do with like mastodons. We're trying to recreate them, and it's just like it doesn't hasn't worked out yet.

Michael Kentris 17:46

Get all Jurassic Park up in this situation. A little bit, yeah. So so yeah, they they're going through the market here. Let's buy some cigarettes. He buys we know where he goes each night because he buys his mixture from this guy, Ali, and uh I like this. Case says, can't see shit. And then Finn says, that's okay for sweet meat, which I guess is his nickname for Molly. Yeah, he's called you that a few times. Right. Which is yeah, I I maybe I missed it before. It's just a weird Finn's a weird guy. So we get uh this figure, he comes out into an alley, bright eyes darting left and right, and then the man crumples. Initially thought someone shot him, laying face down, blonde hair pale against the old stone, limp hands, white and pathetic.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

And we get some eldritch horror that like sort of heaves itself out of the back of this man, and just a pair of impossibly wrong rope-tended arms, flexed grayish pink in the glare, and yeah, two meters tall, stood on two legs, seemed to be headless, just this monstrosity that again pulled itself out of the meat suit, so to speak, and kicked the rags of clothing and flesh aside and took a step, the mouth seeming to scan for them as it moved.

Michael Kentris 19:07

Yeah, I like this. Uh it was eyeless, the skin gleaming a wet intestinal pink, which again, literally visceral description. But uh yeah, it's right, it's this like horrible, disgusting monstrosity. And we get a muzzle flash of a pistol, Recebastian dives at the thing, and we get a muzzle flash of a pistol, and then all of a sudden the the light returns, the figure vanishes, and we see the blonde man, whole again, unbloodied, at his feet. And Molly steps out of the shadows, all in black, with her Fletcher in her hand. And we find out they call in the backup to get him out of here. And I like this. Finn says, You were watching the horror show, right? Not the hamburger that got tossed out of sight. Which I think, again, right, they kind of have these terms that they use when they're describing like someone's physical body, very like meat. So uh it's uh it's a very much like an eskewing of the physical body, which is just kind of a recurrent theme throughout this story.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Definitely. And then uh something I really liked here at the end of this section was uh so Molly bends down and picks up a gun.

Michael Kentris 20:21

She's like, Anambu, nice gun.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

And we we learned that when Ter Sebastian had rushed the target, this uh Riviera, apparently he got shot and is missing his middle finger. She's just like, I don't care about that, I care about the gun.

Michael Kentris 20:36

Yeah. Uh yeah, Molly's final words to uh Ter Sebastian kind of sum it up. You're an asshole. You should have hung back. I had him in my sights, run into you again and I'll kill you. So uh so we we get another word here. Uh so they're they're driving around. Uh, what is this thing? He asked Molly as the Mercedes Parked itself, uh, the surround of the Ceraglio, which we may remember from our adventures through Dune was a word we came across also. So Ceroglio was a uh as they say here, a sort of private whorehouse for the king. But uh yeah, it was kind of like a Turkish courtyard thing where they would keep the guests to euphemise heavily. Uh but yeah, like the harem essentially. But now it's a museum. I like this uh like Finn's shop, diamonds, swords, the left hand of John the Baptist, and I like this. Like in a support vet, and they're like, nah, dead. Got it inside this brass hand thing, little hatch on the side so the Christians could kiss it for luck. Got it off the Christians about a million years ago, and they never dust the goddamn thing because it's an infidel relic. So But yeah, it's uh it's definitely one of those like little things there, which I again kind of give gives a cultural vibe. So in the Orthodox Church at least, right, we have relics still that we venerate. Have things like hands. I mean, more in the old world than in America. If we don't have as many large pieces, like just a little chip of bone or things like that. But yes, you you would have these relics that would get passed around. In fact, in the Middle Ages, there would be like a booming sale for like fake relics. You kind of see references to that in things like the Canterbury Tales and stuff like that. It was kind of an interesting thing. But um But the idea that that people don't know about this at this point in time kind of gives you a disconnect from like what is what are our common cultural touchstones now versus then? And even here in America. Would people necessarily be as familiar with relics given kind of like the heavily Protestant background of the United States? People love a relic. Right. Anyway, so so yeah, they uh they talk about Ferzy, great A scum, secret police torturer, easy to buy out. So kind of get a little more backstory as to why she kind of intensely disliked him.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Mm-hmm. And then we finally get Case telling Molly about the backstory for Corto. So they kind of have a little conjecture there about why he came out of that sort of comatose state in the hospital, the schizophrenic state. And then they assume it's attributed to Winter Mewt, the AI that apparently Armitage is working for.

Michael Kentris 23:28

Right. And yeah, they kind of talk about this. Remolly's like, the guy doesn't have any life going in private, not as far as I can tell. And she says, like, here when he's by himself, he just sits there and stares at the wall until all of a sudden like a switch goes off and he starts like going into hide overdrive. So kind of interesting. And then they they talk thinking out loud, how smart is an AI case? Like, depends. Some aren't much smarter than dogs. Pets, cost a fortune anyway. The real smart ones are as smart as a Turing heat is willing to let him get. And Molly gives him a little bit of hard time here. It's like, look, you're a cowboy. How come you aren't just flat out fascinated with those things? And uh he says, like, all the rare, there's the Turing cops, that's bad heat. I don't know. It just isn't part of the trip. And she's just like, jockeys are all the same, no imagination. So kind of a little uh little bit of insight. These these cowboys are more about the thrill than they are about necessarily learning new things, perhaps. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

And then, yeah, just some more conjecture here, just like she kicks a pebble into the water and she talks about how like that pebble is winter mute, and we're just on the outskirts of the waves where we can't see what's going on, and she assigns him another task of talking to Wintermute.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

And he's like, impossible. Yeah, can't be done.

Michael Kentris 24:48

And then she's like, ask Flatline, the construct. Right. So he's trying, you know, he tries to change his subject. What do you know about Riviera? And she's like, or what do we want with Riviera, rather? And she's like, God knows. I'd assume Killn is look at him. I saw his profile. He's a kind of compulsive Judas. Can't get off sexually unless he knows he's betraying the object of desire. So they have to love him before he is able to betray them and get his kicks off of that. So really twisted kind of guy.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah, this description, and then when we get in his physical description later, honestly put me in mind a lot of like Dorian Gray, because he's described as like being beautiful and just with this sort of sick sort of perversion to his personality, reminding him.

Michael Kentris 25:34

To like talk to someone and corrupt them and then betray them. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's a that's a pretty apt mental picture. But yeah, so that's why Terzabajian knew him so well, is that he gets these young women to become like political activists, and then he betrays them to the Secret Felice. And so that's why they they were able to get such a close bead on his habits, is because they'd had like regular interactions with each other.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 26:05

So I wasn't sure. This phrase, I think I'm going to have to buy myself some special insurance on that, Peter. Which I wasn't sure about that necessarily. Like, is it Saint Peter? Like Peter the Apostle? Is that who they're referencing here? I can only presume so, but I don't I didn't get the context, so Me neither.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

No. I had it highlighted, but yeah, it's like I don't really understand what she's saying here.

Michael Kentris 26:32

But because if I think about it like Peter was executed by the Romans, is it just because like he's gonna go down?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

It bothers me. I feel like I should. But Case does ask, like, what's that mean? She's like, never mind. So yeah, we don't we don't get any uh further evidence to what she's trying to say.

Michael Kentris 26:54

Yeah. Well, it's our own uneducated fault. So after this conversation, Armitage, as is his way, abruptly says, Time to pack, we're leaving. And we get a little insight into Chase's thoughts here. Operators above a certain level tended to submerge their personalities he knew. And he's thinking back to Wage from Chiba, how Wage had vices, lovers, even children possibly, but the blankness he found in Armitage was something else. So just kind of getting a little bit of a flavor of Armitage, how kind of unnatural, right? And if we think back to the earlier chapters, they kept describing his face as a mask, which I think kind of has a double meaning in as much as like now we know that he had like all this reconstructive surgery, and he's also just very flat and sort of devoid of unique personality.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Yeah. Because yeah, they even reference earlier when they're talking about Wintermute.

Michael Kentris 27:50

If Wintermute had basically just reconstructed Kortho basically from the ground up, if he even knows that he used to be Corto. Right. Right. So very, very strange. So Case asks Armitage some questions, you know, did Rivere check out Kay, where's Finn? And Armitage, you know, he gives him rear is fine, Finn is on his way home. Armitage smiled. A smile that meant as much as the twitch of some insect's antenna. Don't get too smart, those little sacks are starting to show where, but you don't know how much. So just reminding Case that there's a death sentence, or I shouldn't say a death sentence, but you will lose your ability to log into cyberspace again if you don't do what you need to do. So just a not so gentle reminder of who's really in charge here. Yeah. So where are we headed to next, Will? Now we're headed to Freeside. Freeside. Why wait? Which again is like kind of up in space. Like low orbit or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, they keep talking about these orbitals. So tell us about our next member of the crew. We get a full, full description here.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Yeah, so yeah, Rivery Area is joining them on their flight. Slender, blonde, soft voice, his English accentless and fluid.

Wintermute Calls And Freeside Appears

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Apparently he does not have a nationality and travels under a forged Dutch passport. But yeah, he is very beautiful. And he's just have like subtle updates to his face and everything to make him kind of look very beautiful.

Michael Kentris 29:20

So nothing like Armitage's blandly handsome blended of pop faces. The man's forehead was high and smooth, gray eyes calm and distant.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

His nose, which might have been too nicely sculpted, seemed to have been broken and clumsily reset. Suggestion of brutality offset the delicacy of his jaw and the quickness of his smile. And uh yeah, just seems a little off. He's got a weird personality from these sort of brief interactions with everybody. Yeah.

Michael Kentris 29:48

But yes, uh, Case immediately dislikes him, and he kind of it's like he he's just talking to himself in the lobby here. He's like, I bet you're stoned right now, asshole. And there's uh an Italian woman, an older woman, who overhears him, and so he smiles broadly and says, See a lady, and then she like puts her sunglasses back up and turns away from him. So we do get Case does have kind of like a graceless coarseness about his mannerisms, generally speaking. Which has I think been pretty consistent so far.

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Definitely. And so, as always, he needs his cigarettes, but he doesn't want to go shopping in the gift shop where Armitage and Riviera are, so he kind of walks over to a vending console. And we get kind of this very, very evocative scene where you know he's next to a bunch of these payphones, and the nearest one starts ringing, so he picks it up. You get faint harmonics, tiny and audible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind. And it's like, hello, Case. And ultimately we learn that it's Wintermute. It's like it's time we talk. And Case kind of refuses to talk to it, and he's just kind of freaked out, so he hangs up and is walking by the phone banks, literally each one like ringing as he passes by, just the once. I thought I thought it was a very cool scene to imagine.

Michael Kentris 31:08

Right. Like, if they ever made this into a movie, like that would be a great scene. I definitely get uh like some of this stuff, like the descriptions of cyberspace, make me think about kind of like the way they did Tron and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 31:25

But then like the real life parts, very much more of like a Blade Runner kind of vibe. So it'd be it'd be a very interesting juxtaposition in terms of like cinematography. I don't know if there has been a neuromancer movie, but if there if there has, I I have not seen it. Right. Same. I want to wait now till after I'm done reading the book. Right. Because most within certain eras, most sci-fi movies were, let's just say, less than faithful to the source material.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

Yeah. Or at least not executed well.

Michael Kentris 32:01

Right. Uh so we got uh we're now moving on to part three. Midnight in the Rue Jural's Jules Verne, which I definitely feel like this was a kind of a an homage to like Midnight in the Rue Morgue. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. You know, like kind of that whole uh whatchamacallit, uh murder mystery slash, oh gosh, Edgar Allen Poe type of thing. Yeah. With uh with the orangutan or whatever primate it was. Spoilers, well, spoilers. I know, I know. I mean it's only like 200 years old. It's only 200 years old. People still anyway. So we get kind of this freewheeling info dump, but it's it's done in the typical kind of neuromancer way here, where it's very nebulous and disjointed. Archipelago, the islands, taurus, spindle, cluster, human DNA spreading out from gravity's steep well like an oil slick. Which is just like, right? It's like, what do these words mean together? So we we eventually find out this they're describing Freeside, and as we we get a little more concrete, uh Freeside is brothel and banking nexus, pleasure dome and freeport, border town and spa. Freeside is Las Vegas and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in orbital Geneva and home to a family inbred and most carefully refined, the industrial clan of Tessier and Ashpool. Kind of this uh yeah, this this kind of, like you said, lawless type of place, right? We get all these references, like Las Vegas, Sin City, you know, Hanging Gardens of Babylon, right? This paradise luxury in the desert. Geneva, again, kind of known for being a little more freewheeling. So yeah. Uh or is it Geneva, Switzerland? Yeah, like that of the banks, right? But um so yeah, all these kinds of things juxtaposed, superimposed on one another.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

So yeah, they're on yet another flight, this time to Paris, and we have Molly establishing some boundaries with Riviera because well described. Case like sees like the jewel glow of a Greek island town at one point, and then when he like goes to reach his drink, he sees some something that looks like a giant human sperm in the depths of his bourbon water, and Molly just leans across from him and slaps Riviera in the face. She's like, No baby, no games. You play the subliminal shit around me, I'll hurt you real bad. I can do it without damaging you at all. I like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

And Avatage. Yeah, I go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 34:37

And Armitage is like, that's right, Peter, don't. It's like just very smooth, very calm, just no response, really.

Michael Kentris 34:44

Right. So yeah, Peter just smiles and goes to sleep. Uh so I like this. Uh they're talking about um you've been up, haven't you? And he said, so it's like I initially I th when I was reading this, I thought, like, oh, like, have you been awake?

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Oh, wait, yeah, like a long time.

Michael Kentris 35:03

No. Have you been in space? Uh she's asking. Up vertically. Yes, yes. Not metaphorically. And she's like, hope you don't get SAS, which I initially thought to meant like, you know, sick as uh shoot. So uh no, we we find out that um that is not what they're talking about. They're talking about space adaptation syndrome. Where they say your heartbeat will speed up in zero G, your inner ear goes nuts, kicks in your flight reflex like you'll be getting signals to run, lots of adrenaline, and uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

So they're kind of heading that way. Right? Getting ready to blast off into space. Space. Yeah.

Michael Kentris 35:46

So they're kind of, you know, they're getting there, and then as they're making this travel there, I like this. 20 minutes, then gravity came down on him like a great soft hand with bones of ancient stone. Right? Just the way that he has with words while he's writing some of these descriptions is just so evocative. So we find out they are not going directly to Freeside. They are making a detour to Zion Cluster.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Right. Yeah, it sounds like they're gonna be doing a little bit of time there to sort of adapt to this new environment, especially Case and Molly, since they're gonna be working in a low z low gravity environment, and you make sure that they can still operate well.

Michael Kentris 36:33

Right. And so we get a little bit of a description about a Zion cluster, and he's like, funny choice of venue, and he's like, How's that? Dreads, Rastas, colony's about 30 years old now. And we find out like uh she said, it's an okay place by me. Anyway, if they'll let you smoke your cigarettes there, which we find out that it's it's essentially kind of like a like a Rastafarian space cluster. So, yes, lots of smoking. We kind of find out uh Zion had been founded by five workers who'd refused to return, turning their backs on the well, the gravity well. They'd suffered calcium loss, heart shrinkage before the rotational gravity was established in the colony's central torus.

unknown 37:11

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 37:11

And Chase is still struggling with the SAS.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

So Molly tries to give him some tips on how to handle it, and it's kind of like is messing with his head a little bit just in terms of climbing backwards on rungs and things like that.

Michael Kentris 37:26

Yeah. It kind of reminds me of like those famous scenes in uh 2001 Space Odyssey where he's like they do all those weird perspective shifts when he's like climbing ladders or walking, right, in different things. And uh you get these different perspective shifts. It's it's kind of that same feeling as far as like in my mental picture for like what's what's happening, right? Because you kind of think like, oh, I'm like I'm climbing down, but now I'm climbing up. So at some point, your like center of reference shifts all of a sudden. It's it's very relativistic in a weird kind of way.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Absolutely. So yeah, he eventually like gets the end of the tunnel, he embraces the weak gravity like a drowning man finding a pocket of air, and Mala's just like, you're gonna kiss it next.

Michael Kentris 38:13

Right. Yeah, like uh like a sailor reaching the shore, right? Right. And she was like, All right, you gotta help you gotta play house, you help me string this up.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

So they have this, yeah, sort of elaborate setup of cables and these sort of steel rings balling on every service that they used to construct kind of a a base of operations, a home, kind of like a tent, it almost sounds like.

Michael Kentris 38:35

Yeah. So this kind of amused me here. As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed con constantly through the cluster. It was called Dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop. It was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community. So I find it and I I don't know if dubstep existed at this point in time, or if the name dubstep came from like this as an like an etymological origin. I should have looked this up before. But uh but it's very interesting to me that like because in my head, right, as a a person in the twenties thinking, uh dub, dubstep, you know, with like that pardon my sick beats. But uh So I don't know. It's but it's it's definitely one of those things where it conjures a like who knows. When someone was reading this when it first came out in the 1980s, what did someone imagine then versus like now where someone has

Zion Cluster And Surviving Low Gravity

Michael Kentris 39:40

entitled a genre, like dub was it the same 40 years ago as it was now? I can't imagine that it was. But but it conjures a different mental image for me than than probably it would have even 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Definitely.

Michael Kentris 39:56

Yeah. So we learned Zion smelled of cooked vegetables, humanity, and ganja. So again, kind of leaning into that Rastafarian milieu a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 40:10

In my very brief, and I apologize if I mischaracterize any of this, but from what I my brief reading on Rastafarianism is that smoking of cannabis is considered like kind of a sacramental sort of act. So it is part of the practice in large.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Okay. Yeah, I'm not too familiar. Armitage, Riviera showing up. Uh Riviera is also kind of not the most graceful in this low gravity situation. And I did I did enjoy this uh sort of minor illusion that he's conjuring up. So Case is like, where were you when it needed doing? And he opens his mouth to speak, and a small trout swims out, trailing impossible bubbles. They glided past Case's cheek in the head, Riviera said and smiled. Case laughed. So like, that's cute. It's fun.

Michael Kentris 41:04

Right. So he's just kind of like, I'm I'm useless with my hands, and then he has like double, quadruple hands. And Molly's like, just the harmless clown, right, Riviera? And so, you know, Errol, who is the the local who initially came with them, calls the case and is like, You want to come with me, cowboy man? This is written in patois, I'm not going to read it in patois. But to be fair, there there's some books where there's like more of an effort to write in like dialect sorts of ways, like whether that's different types of English, or even like if you think of like Brian Jacques with the moles, where they're like some sort of country English dialect that I can't quite place. But I don't know. It's like I understand it's for flavor, but sometimes it does make things a little harder to read.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Absolutely.

Michael Kentris 41:55

So as they're going, uh to get Case's gear, Errol asks him, maybe you want something to eat, and uh Case's mouth floods with saliva. He shook his head, right? So he's he's still on the verge of throwing up. No. But yeah, they kind of get his stuff up, they come back, and basically uh they find Riviera stoned, naked, curled up like a cat. And uh Armitage is saying you need to practice in the low G so that you can be used to it. And cases like uh it doesn't matter where I am, it's all the same. And Armitage counters, your adrenal levels are higher, you've still got the SAS, you won't have time for it to wear off, you're going to learn to work with it. And so they're basically saying, like, this is practice, you're practicing up here. And we got a little conversation with uh the flat line here, which I thought was interesting. But I'll let you run this one out for us.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, he ejacks into his deck, they're in cyberspace, and again, since cyberspace is not directly linked with physical whereabouts, he ends up at the same place that he was last time he logged in. The Eastern Seaboard Fishing Authority's Aztec Pyramid of Data. And like you said, he sort of starts talking with Dixie, asking him how he's doing. He's like, I'm dead case, got enough time in on this Osaka to figure that one out. And he's like, How does it feel?

Michael Kentris 43:22

It doesn't, does it bother you? What bothers me is nothing does.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

And so ultimately, it does seem like this construct is becoming at least self-aware of the current situation, like whereas before, when he logged in and logged out and logged back in again, he hadn't retained any information.

Michael Kentris 43:41

So this guy's been last he's sort of been instanced long enough in this current iteration where he's like, hey, I don't like this, so do me a favor. Uh when this game of yours is over, go ahead and erase this thing.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

So yeah, Dixie's Dixie don't want to be a construct, or at least

Michael Kentris 44:00

Yeah, he he kind of relates that story of uh a friend of his who lost his thumb to frostbite, and they're kind of describing like a phantom pain type of situation. Yeah. And so yeah, kind of a little macabre uh aside here. So then we we go back to to Case, kind of talking with Errol and Molly, and we just get Case didn't understand the Zionites. So Errol's telling this story about a baby no bigger than your finger who would burst from his head and run into a forest of hydroponic ganja. Um and Molly says, like, it's not like bullshit, more like poetry. So it's uh it happened, it happened to him. So kind of this weird thing. And then we get this little bit, uh, Zionites always touched you when they were talking, hands on your shoulder. He didn't like that. Which again, tracks with case where he's like, you know, the mind is more important than the body. So kind of like this reminder of his physicality perhaps is undesirable to him. Right. And so, yeah, he like kind of is interested in seeing how Errol responds to cyberspace, so he jacks him into his deck, he has a response to it, and he powers him off.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

He's like, What did you see, man? It's like Babylon.

Michael Kentris 45:24

And he seems very sad by that, just handing him the troods and kicking off down the corridor. Right. Right. So so yeah, uh so Babylon in in most Christian traditions is kind of like the representation of like bad things, like corruption and and all that kind of like the uh being being away from God. And I think in in Rastafarianism, Babylon's often equated with like the West. But yeah, historically, you can read in a lot of Christian literature that they'll reference Babylon, and even though they're talking about Babylon, the Babylon had fallen like years ago. So it's always kind of like a stand-in for like the bad thing to a greater or lesser extent. So whatever he saw is it's bad and some sort of anti-good sort of thing, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 46:14

Absolutely. We get kind of this interesting interaction between Case and Riviera. So the focus right now is on Riviera.

Michael Kentris 46:22

He's sitting on his phone pad, and he's holding this jeweled-scaled snake, its eyes like Ruby Neon, and then he also has this scorpion on his arm, and the scorpion is piercing his arm, and then the illusion disappears, and it's it's him shooting up. He's he's got his speedball mixture ready to go, because for some reason he needs that to operate his illusions. Right. Which it kind of makes sense, I suppose, if if it's if his abilities operate based on what he can imagine, then I can imagine being high as a kite would make it easier to imagine like fantastical and possible things. So I can I can see that. Uh very dark way to think about it, but it it makes sense in a way.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Right. And then cases is like, you always make it into a little show, and Rivier is like, yeah, it's more fun. Yeah.

Michael Kentris 47:20

Yeah. I was just, yeah, I was gonna say, uh, I like this part, uh, but just before what you were gonna mention here. I have a membrane set in just over the veins, so I never have to worry about the condition of the needle. Right. So basically he's made it easier for him to be able to shoot up. And as you're about to say, Will.

SPEAKER_02 47:35

And then Kaza asks, yeah, doesn't it hurt? And he's like, of course it does. That's part of it, isn't it? Case is like, I just use derbs like pedestrian.

Michael Kentris 47:44

Right. Yeah, it's like uh someone who's like saying, like, oh, you use a word processor to write things. I only handwrite in calligraphy, uh, you you bourgeois.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

I use a I use a typewriter.

Michael Kentris 47:58

Right, exactly. Yeah, that kind of that uh dedication to the art, if you will. Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

So then Revere asks, like, get high yourself, K. It's like I had to give it up.

Michael Kentris 48:10

Yes. In a manner of speaking. So we kind of again, right? There's no transition here. It's just all of a sudden, uh, it's like bam, new scene. So we get this, it's basically kind of like the uh rundown of the geography of Freeside. So we kind of have this like big cigar-shaped thing. Hotels, properties, big shops, blue areas or lakes, narrow at the ends. And uh like this mountain effect as it narrows. Ground seems to get higher, more rocky, but it's an easy climb. Higher you climb, the lower the gravity. Um like this sports up there, there's a velodrome ring here. A what? It's like they race bicycles, Molly said. Low grav, high traction tires, get up over 100 kilos an hour, and Armitage says, this end doesn't concern us. And Molly says, Shit, I'm an avid cyclist. So yes, right. The the sarcasm continues to bubble to the surface.

SPEAKER_02 49:09

And then Armitage directs their attention towards the other end where With will be focusing their heist activities.

Michael Kentris 49:17

So they have the Villa Stray Light, and there's

Dixie’s Existential Plea And Zion’s Warning

Michael Kentris 49:20

a single entrance, zero gravity, and Ruvier's sort of asking, like, what's inside boss? And Armitas is like, well, you're gonna be finding out because you're gonna be the first one going in there. And then once you're in, you'll see that Molly gets in. So starting the plan of their operation. Right, which kind of makes sense, right? We we know that Peter's background is that he gets people to love him uh so that he can betray them. So that's right, he's probably gonna be like the faceman, if you will, right? So charm his way inside to get an invitation.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Case, of course, is still thinking about that one story regarding Smith, Jimmy, the ninja that came and took them out.

Michael Kentris 50:02

Right. Just like very dangerous, very dangerous. So we get a couple street names here. You know, the aforementioned Rue Jules Jules Verne, but we also get something called Desiderata Street, which I had to look this up. My my Latin is not very good. But uh it's a it's a Latin word, and it basically means the things desired or things needed.

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Okay.

Michael Kentris 50:29

It's kind of interesting, right? You definitely get this what's the word I want to look for here? Uh this kind of pompous uh sort of naming conventions for these streets here. So uh in response to this, Riviera rolled his eyes. So uh as Armitage is naming the streets of all these uh different places on Free Side, uh Riviera's putting bright pustules on his nose. Molly laughs, Armitage pauses and looks at them coldly with his empty eyes.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

Pay attention basically. So we kind of yeah, we finish up our briefing.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

And we uh are hanging out now again with Case and Molly, and he's waking up, but she is alert, and she cuts through one of the plastic yellow sheets that had been serving as like their domicile.

Michael Kentris 51:30

And it is one of the Zionists. Zionites? Zionites. Yes. Yes, yeah. Careful, careful, watch your step there. So yeah, so he's he's looking for a case in Molly, essentially. Molly's gotten herself this nickname, uh stepping razor. Uh, we learned this character here is named Malcolm. So they they want to talk with you two. It's like who? The founders, the the elders of Zion. No relation. So basically the the founders of this Zion cluster here. Yeah. So they they find out you know, a couple old men here with the accelerated aging that overtakes men who spend too many years outside the embrace of gravity.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

So we find out eventually that it sounds like there was a message received by them from, as they call it, Winter Mute. So obviously the AI that we've been referring to so far. And uh a mighty voice came out of the babble of tongues and speaking to us, it played us a mighty dub, which I thought was a crazy sentence. The mute talked to us, the first founder said. The mute said we are to help you. And that happened before they even docked at Zion.

Michael Kentris 52:47

Right. And so they try to like, like, well, this is an AI, so it could have just, you know, tabbed your banks and cooked up whatever it thought you'd like to. And they're like, yeah, we know, but we're still we're still gonna follow it. Right. So it kind of says here, uh to go back just a little bit. So they're they're talking about like leading the tribes home, up and out of Babylon, uh, soon come the final days, uh voices crying in the wilderness, prophesying ruin unto Babylon. So they're they're kind of jumbling a bunch of stuff together here, right? Which, again, if we think about like this voices crying in the wilderness, um, this is a kind of a it's actually another Saint John the Baptist reference here, because there's one crying with a voice in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. But yes, so it's kind of they're mushing all these things together a little bit. Again, a babble of tongues, as you were saying before the mighty dub played.

SPEAKER_02 53:47

Mighty dub.

Michael Kentris 53:49

There's an important thing at the end here, if these are final days, we must expect false prophets. And so that that is the the tricky thing there. Yeah, it's like, do we trust it or not? As you were saying, Will. And so, you know, Babylon mothers many demons, I know, multitude hoard. So it's it's one of those things where they're on guard, but also inclined to follow the instructions. So the main way they're told to help them is to basically send Malcolm with them and his tug Garvey to the Babylon port of Reeside.

SPEAKER_02 54:26

And we heard that Malcolm is a root boy and a righteous tug pilot. So I assuming, yeah. Some sort of small spaceship or something like that.

Michael Kentris 54:36

Right. The Babylon rocker. And so Garvey actually is another Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican political activist in the like early 1900s. Uh also an important influence on Rastafarianism, so kind of maintains that through line there in terms of naming conventions.

SPEAKER_02 54:58

Yeah, that's that's kind of the end of the chapter. We're left on them probably heading up to Freeside next chapter.

Michael Kentris 55:04

Yep. That that is where we end. So yeah, a lot of a lot of things are happening. Uh kind of we're we're coalescing, kind of bouncing around, you know, globetrotting, collecting our cast of characters and moving things into position. So it it is definitely got that heist kind of thing going right now, but also a very like kind of surreal aspect

Heist Roles Locked In And Closing Notes

Michael Kentris 55:30

to certain parts of it. I don't know. What are your thoughts, Will?

SPEAKER_02 55:34

I mean there's definitely a lot of times, particularly in these past few chapters, where it was putting me in mind of like the Ocean's 11, like multi-camera split screen, like here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna come in and do this, and then we're gonna come in. Like, obviously, you know, it's very similarly where we're not given the whole picture. So eventually we kind of get enlightened to the actual operations of how it's going to happen and any sort of hiccups that happen that may or may not be anticipated at this point in time.

Michael Kentris 56:03

So there's right, there's inevitably something goes wrong with the plan in these kinds of stories. So it's just a question as to how and to what extent. Yeah. So and I'll be honest, I don't I know I read this story a long time ago. I don't remember what exactly happens, like up to this point. I think I remember vaguely up to this point, which where are we? You know, we're like a third or so of the way through the book. Almost half.

SPEAKER_02 56:31

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 56:32

It's like under 300 pages. Right. So we're we're cooking along pretty good on this one. It's not nearly as long as some of our past books that we've been working on. But but yeah, I I don't remember how it ends, which I guess is good. So um yeah, I'm looking forward to working our way through the rest of this. And you know, next time we'll be hit another three chapters up. So read along with us, and you can always shoot us a message on X at Brothers Reading. Find us online on our website, brothersreadingbooks.com, or uh you can always send us an email at brothersreadingbooks at gmail.com. All right, Will, I will see you and our next our listeners next week.

SPEAKER_02 57:17

Sounds good.

Michael Kentris 57:18

Talk to you later, Mike. Talk to you later.