Neuromancer Chapters 9 - 11

We pick up our Neuromancer read-through right as the AI Wintermute starts speaking through familiar faces, laying out its limits and its leverage.

From there we step into Freeside, the glossy space resort that feels like a tourist paradise until you notice the decadent underbelly. 

Case goes chasing a buzz, the dinner goes sideways, and Riviera puts on an unsettling holographic cabaret that leads us to learning more about Molly's backstory. 

Transcript

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Welcome And Reading Plan

Michael Kentris 0:06

Hello and welcome back to Brothers Reading Books. We are your hosts, The Brothers. I am Michael, and I am joined by my brother Will. Will, how are you? I'm Will. I'm good. How are you? I'm doing alright. So so we're continuing our read through William Gibson's Neuromancer, and we're hitting chapters nine through eleven today. So let's start off with just uh Will's famous bird's eye views. So what do you have for us today? So kind of what I have reduced the contents of these chapters to is uh a quick chat with the winter mute, and then we have Case getting some deliveries, and then we wrap things up with dinner and a show and some personal history. Yeah, that's a summary.

Zion Transfer Toward Freeside

Michael Kentris 0:54

All right. So so yeah, starting out, we uh we are with the Tug. We're with Malcolm and Case here in the Marcus Garvey, which they describe as being like a steel drum. You know, they're really leaning into these Rastafarian references here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean it definitely reminded me a little bit of like the Titan Submersible, just in terms of how like small and bare bones it was. That's a heck of a reference. Yeah. So so yeah, they're Case is still dealing with his motion sickness, so he's got uh scopolamine patch, much like we use today when you're having seasickness. So it's nice to know that some things haven't changed. But but yeah, so so they're just kind of doing this transfer over to kind of like the the nice part of town, if you will. Right. Yeah, they're going from what was it, Zion to yeah, Freeside, that's where we're headed. Yes. And so as as he's kind of going over there, he jacks in and he ends up having a conversation with uh the Dixie Flatline. Kind of getting us some more information about uh some of this this Right, yeah. This is when Case finally tells Molly about that interaction they originally had with Winterme with the that cool scene with the phones ringing. And Molly's definitely like, hey, go talk to him talk to him some more. Yeah, right. So yeah, like before we get to that, there was this little part that I thought was kind of funny, because he's he's talking with uh Flatline and uh he's talking about your experience with like trying to hack into AIs, and he's like, Yeah, first time I did it was when I flatlined. And and uh Case says to him, like, can you think of any reason not to? And he replies, not unless you've got a morbid fear of death. So it's just kind of funny, right? So he he's kind of doing this thing here, but yeah, he he ends up having to pull the plug uh somewhat abruptly because it's coming after him. And that's I think uh he wakes up and Molly's there, right? Well, so as he's kind of fleeing from that digital version of the AI, that's when he wakes up and like you said, Molly is trying to figure out what's going on, and then we get that sort of scene change back

Wintermute Shows Up In The Matrix

Michael Kentris 3:10

to Japan where we kind of picked up on him originally. Kind of like a flashback almost. Yes. Right, right. Again, we don't know this is what's happening currently or it's happening previously. Right. Yeah, and this is this is interesting. So he it's yeah, God, it's it's very well done. This is one of those mind-vending scenes that you get in William Gibson a little bit, because it's like was everything that was happening with with Winter Mute and Armitage and all that stuff bouncing around the globe, was that all just like some sort of high from one of the many drugs that he takes? Because he's waking up, he's back in the arcade. We get this same description. I I like this, that's like some very nice details there, like the tank war console, the Azure Flash. So like some of the wording like is also like it's unique enough that it kind of has that callback aspect, like you said, very very much uh at the beginning of the story. And so so he's talking with this the same girl that he was with before. Yeah, what's her name again? Linda. Okay, yes. And so uh she's asking him, like, are you high? you know, blah, blah, blah. And then like something doesn't seem right. What they said, something shifted at the core of things. The arcade froze vibrated. Uh and then like his memory is kind of like kick back in. She was gone, the weight of the memory came down, he smelled burning meat, and then everything was empty. And uh Case realizes what's going on. He's like, I had a cigarette. I had a cigarette and a girl in a place of sleep. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? Do you hear me? And um he looks down and he sees the cigarettes, and next to that a card, uh book a matchbook rather, with Julius Dean import-export. And so he uh he takes the clue and he starts heading over to Julius' office. Mm-hmm. Right. It's at this point he kind of realizes like I'm still jacked in or some sort of weird exchange with Wintermuters currently happening. Yes. So yeah, he's he's poking around his office, everything's like abandoned, there's nobody there. Uh he finds the old uh 357 Magnum there still, and um he's just talking to the empty room and says, I guess I'm not in any hurry. I guess it's your show. But all this shit, you know, it's getting kind of old. He raised the gun with both hands, aiming for the center of the desk and pulled the trigger. The recoil nearly broke his wrist. You know, it's important to have good stance when you fire a firearm. True. Yeah, nobody ever factors in the recoil because of media. True. Uh so then Julie, quote unquote, shows up. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very much immediately like steps out. It's like you needn't do that old son. And more or less we we learn that this is a manifestation of Wintermute in the guise of Julius Dean. Yes. And he's more or less we kind of get some, I don't know, a hard, hard magic system is how Megan and I often describe these sorts of scenarios where he's like there are certain internal logistics to be honored, and if you use that, you'll see a lot of brains and blood, and it would take me several hours to affect another person. And I was hoping to speak through Linda, but uh a lot of emotional sort of turmoil that made it very tricky and didn't work out too well. So Yes. That's what case is like, oh, this is the Matrix, your winter mute. Right, which is very interesting because you kind of feel like the movie The Matrix basically ripped this scene kind of wholesale out of here. Absolutely. So what was this maybe 20? God, when did the Matrix come out? Early 2000s? 92, I think. Oh my goodness. Yeah, that would that would track. So yeah, this was 1983. Early 80s. Yeah. So anyway, very interesting. And we learned this is like from the SimStim unit. He catch caught him before he was able to jack out of the deck. And so yeah, we get like uh a little bit of uh not an info dump, it's done more eloquently than that. But we get uh we get some information about AI, and we kind of learn like this entity that he is interfacing with, yes, it is part of Wintermute, but it's like what do you say here? Like, you know, do you talk to like just somebody's frontal lobe, or do you talk to a whole person? So he's more like he is a piece of Winter Mute. And uh I like this here. Yeah, he says, I'm the one who arranges things for Armitage, or Corto, who by the way is quite unstable for the next day or so. Yeah, stable enough. Stable. So yeah, we do get some some very interesting information through this conversation. Like he confirms some of the details of what Case has dug up as far as uh his digging on the back of Screaming Fist and Armitage slash Corto, and kind of find out like a lot of these things are basically true. And he says he's not quite a personality, but I'm sure you're aware of that. But Corto was in there somewhere, and I can no longer maintain that delicate balance. He's going to come apart on your case, so I'll be counting on you. Uh to which Case has apparently had enough, and he says, That's good, MFR, and shot him in the mouth with the 357. Uh he'd been right about the brains and the blood. Right. And then Case kind of comes back to reality. And it sounds like he had flatlined for a little bit. They they're 40 seconds. I saw the screen, EEG reading dead, nothing moving 40 seconds. Like, well, he's okay now. Right. And that's the end of the chapter. Right. And so again, right, this is uh one of those things that uh we used to use EEG to measure like for brain death. And I just in the last few years, that was removed as a clinical criteria because it is unreliable. So fun fact. Something that was that was true at the time of writing this novel, but has been removed from the clinical guidelines. So kind of a an interesting thing. So so now we're back in the real world.

Freeside’s Impossible Streets Explained

Michael Kentris 9:33

What is even reality, man? We're on the Rue Jules Verne, which is like such a pompous name for like a sci-fi city in the space, like, oh, Jules Verne. It's like take a right at H.G. Wells Lane. But uh it gives you a flavor of like whoever names stuff in this town is like kind of like full of themselves. Right. They have like a a fondness for the French. Or just like science fiction, you know? Well both, I suppose. Like, I guess the the modern day equivalent would be like Elon Musk's naming of various things. It's like maybe this is trying a little bit too hard.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Kentris 10:14

Anyway, so we get kind of a a description of this. And it's like one of these weird perspective bending sorts of things. I don't know if you want to talk about that at all, Will. So, yeah, like we've kind of alluded to before, the layout for this entire place, the street side, is not an intuitive structure since gravity is not a central place. We're probably relying a little bit on that certifical force. But so yeah, they're standing in a broad street that seemed to be the floor of a deep slot or canyon, its either end concealed by subtle angles in the shops and buildings that formed its walls. The light here was filtered through fresh green masses of vegetation tumbling from overhanging tiers and balconies that rove above them that rose above them, and the sun dot dot dot. And yeah, it's just it reminds me a little bit of that one scene in Interstellar where Coop wakes up in the hospital in in the space station and some kids hit a baseball and it like breaks a window somewhere up above in a house that's kind of rotating above. It's very it it defies reasonable physics. Yeah, so it is it is one of those kind of weird perspective things because you know, you go high enough up, you come back down, right? So yeah. And we get a little more jaded perspective where Molly says uh it's just a big two when they pour things through it. Tourists, hustlers, anything, and there's fine mesh money screens working every minute. Make sure the money stays here when the people fall back down the well. Yes. So so yeah, we kind of they're they're walking around here and basically we see kind of the the touristy side of things, right? The the fresh paint, so on and so forth, right? Like uh people who are beautiful here on vacation, young, right? So it's uh it's one of these things where you have a rotten underbelly to to this place, but all you're seeing right now is that that very fresh, appealing face of things. And I think before we reach our end today, we see some of that uh rotten underbelly. Oh, for sure. But yeah. He's trying to sleep, keeps having nightmares, thinking about too, his interaction with Wintermute. And then he starts getting like uh kind of this spiral paranoia, and he's wondering, like, but what if Dean, the real Dean, and ordered Linda killed on Wintermute's orders, and it's like Wintermute could build a kind of personnel into a shell, how could a subtle form, how could how subtle a form could manipulation take? And he's just at this point, like you said before, like, what even is reality at this point? Yes. What is real? Right, like how subtle, yeah, as you said, could the manipulation

A Wasp Nest Memory Turns Dark

Michael Kentris 13:15

be? And so he We end up getting this little like memory flashback to when he's fifteen years old, and he was so we gotta get a little flashback that uh case has always been a bit on the wrong side of the law, as it were. So he was hanging out with this girl Marlene, it sounds like in this this flop apartment, and some wasps start building up a place, and he he basically, after they'd gotten drunk, she'd gotten stung by one, and then he ends up like uh spraying them with like some sort of ignition fuel and lighting them on fire. And so Yeah, it's just weird memory. I saw the this one line here was very macabre. He saw the thing the shell of grey paper had concealed, horror, the spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near wasp, wasp. So just this really like in-depth, kind of grotesque dis description of the like the destruction of this wasp nest. Um yeah, just an odd memory. I don't know what to make of it, to be honest. Like it's just a little bit of insight into case, perhaps. Right. Yeah, no, the the entire memory was definitely very unsettling because yeah, like you said before, basically he finds this flamethrower that they have on hand to burn down the wasp nest and it yeah, it shakes loose and collapses. The the only thing that I can kind of maybe like take from this is the way it's specifically like described as being like a spiral, and maybe there's some sort of parallel here with Freeside and the nest, like where we have, like you said, that underbelly of the egg to larva to near wasp, right? Yeah, I mean that that is a fair point. There's always this idea of becoming. Um and that goes back like even to like Platonic thought, right? Like the the kind of god in Platonic thought is like the unmoved mover, right? This uh that you are forever moving towards, like through progress, changing. But um but once you reach like perfection, theoretically, you would uh not be moving any longer. You would be reaching your telos, your purpose, your final end, your final form, if you will. So this is even my final form. That's right. This is not even. So so it does have kind of that same that same flavor, uh, a little bit of like that kind of progression through things, although it is like in a more grotesque fashion. And we do if we think back to kind of the way that Case has characterized things, he's been much more of a creature of the mind rather than the body, where you kind of eskew the flesh as something unnecessary, unneeded, unwanted. Right. And then I will say one other thing that's relevant in this flashback is at the very end, before he actually like douses the nest, he sees like the TA logo of Tessure Ashpool neatly embossed on its side, as though the wasps themselves worked it there. So just another sort of memory he has of Tessure Ashpool kind of being everywhere, but kind of behind the scenes. Absolutely. Alright. So he wakes up again and Molly says, You're too frickin' pale, in so many words. Right, yes. Just coming out of the Ohio winter, although it's been a very cold spring. But um But yeah, right, because he's a sprawl, right? So he's he's like living under domes, he doesn't see the sun, even more so, probably in his case than the average sprawler or perhaps. I don't feel like decking lends itself to the outdoors. No. I like this. You think this looks real? And he's like, no, but it looks like you care enough to fake it. Uh and she's like, there's not enough to do your foot. So I like I like I like the contrast here. He's like, what about you? Are you gonna dye yourself brown? Don't exactly like you spend all your time sunbathing. And she's like dressed, it sounds like in very nice clothing, like black silks and she's like, I'm an exotic. I got a big straw hat for this too. You you just want to look like a cheap ass hood who's up for what he can get, so the the instant tan's okay. Right. Gotta play the role. Yes. So yeah, they're they're kind of at this like fancy, like

Resort Masks And Culture Shock

Michael Kentris 17:44

hotel restaurant, maybe, is kind of what the vibe is. And uh we get a little disruption. Again, right, just kind of the we have some French people talking nearby, uneven tanse, like, but selectively. Uh, we get some description of like, again, like young, pretty people and um another group with a this Hiroshima sackcloth awaiting their Saruman husbands. Uh I thought this was weird. Their oval faces covered with artificial bruises. It was, he knew, an extremely conservative style, one he'd seldom seen in Shiba. I'm about to ask you, is this anything you've ever heard of? Not that I know. The honestly, the only thing I could think of is just like some of the more extreme makeup that they will sometimes do in traditional like Japanese settings, but this one I'm not familiar with. I was wondering if it was maybe like an allusion to just like using blush, but it doesn't sound like it. Interesting. So, like again, just kind of emphasizing, I guess, the the multicultural nature of the clientele here. Uh, and I love this little board. What's that smell? He asked Molly, wrinkling his nose, and she says, uh, the grass smells that way after they cut it. So he's so isolated from nature that he doesn't even know what fresh cut grass smells like, which I thought was like another it's one of those little things that us in our day-to-day lives might take for granted. But if you take kind of like the city folk perspective, and then you just like ramp that up to a thousand where you like never see nature at all, even grass. So it's kind of interesting. Mm-hmm. A nice subtle twist of the knob. And uh Riviera shows up as well. He says, uh, I need I need more of my medicine. And she's like, what if I don't? He's like, I have an audition this afternoon, I have to be at my best. Right. Yeah. No, it's it's very obvious that Molly does not like Riviera. I don't think anybody does. It seemed like Case was kind of growing to like him a little bit during their one flight, but yeah, I don't know. He's he's an unsettling fella. But yeah, sounds like the events of this heist event are starting to be put into place. We got Case kind of having to ship over to the pro shop to get his delivery, and they're going over to a this really nice hotel or restaurant or something along those lines.

The Kuang Icebreaker Delivery

Michael Kentris 20:20

Yes. As Malcolm says, I took I take delivery of Babylon goods for you. So, right, the the way that they talk about stuff from Freeside, essentially. Uh I I appreciate the consistency. So he's kind of hanging over here, and we get a little bit of a description of this thing. Uh he asked him if this is a gun, and he's like, no, but it is a weapon, a virus. And that freaks Malcolm out because it's he's thinking like a bioweapon. Yeah. He's like, no, no, no, not that kind of virus, a virus program. I thought it was kind of funny. So while Case is doing this, Malcolm is doing some work on the ship, and at one point he like pulls out a uh caulk gun. Yes. My my concern is the structural integrity of that little tugboat guy being held together with cock. Like I'm sure there's some sort of, you know, like greater adhesive or whatever it is that they're using, but it's like, oh, we gotta breach in the hall. Gotta gotta seal this real quick. Right. It's like uh, you know, how you got like your regular cock, but then you got your waterproof caulk. Maybe this is your vacuum-proof cock. That's all right. This baby can stand up to 10 P. S. Oh my god. Yeah. I assume it need to be more than that, but I'm not I'm not a physicist. So we get a little description of what this thing is. So we get some some techno babble here.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 21:47

Tell me if any of this has any grounding in reality, Will. Sure. Data transfer from Bakris Systems GMBH. Frankfurt advises under coded transmission that content of shipment is Kuang. Grade Mark Eleven penetration program. Is that uh Quang Grade Mark Eleven? Is that is that a thing? Nothing that I I can lend any credence to. I feel like the only thing that kind of makes sense is they say Mark 11, but we don't usually say it like that. It's it's like version 11. We we version stuff very frequently in in software, but I don't know. It definitely gives off like somebody trying to lend this cool name to their software very similar to the the Rue Jules Verne. Very well. And yeah, so this is a um a Chinese military icebreaker one-shot cassette. I like to call them cassettes as well. Because it's like well, I guess they're gonna have floppy. Yeah, yeah. It's a floppy disk. All right. It's interesting that it's a one-shot, you know? It's not not reusable. Yeah. Like it's somehow being consumed during the process. Who knows? Maybe maybe it only works once because then the program you're cracking adapts to it, perhaps. Right, but it sounds like you use it for all different areas as well. I don't know. Not important. Yeah. So, you know, he he's kind of talking with Dixie a little bit about this stuff, and he's asking, you know, are you familiar with this? No. And I thought it was interesting. He talks about motive. What's the motive with an AI? It's not human. He's like, yeah. It's like, no, I mean it's not human, and you can't get a handle on it. Me, I'm not human either, but I respond like one, see? Uh and forget this old this old question. Wait a sec, K Set, are you sentient or not? Well, it feels like I am, kid, but I'm really just a bunch of romp. It's one of them uh philosophical questions, I guess. Then he laughs. But I ain't likely to write you no poem if you follow me. You're AI, it just might, but it ain't no way human. So we kind of learn a little bit here about like there's weird laws about AIs in some countries. Like, so he's got Wintermute has Swiss citizenship, but it's uh it's kind of a weird thing. Like they're not necessarily fully free. They have like these uh what are they hard-wired shackles that keep this baby from getting any smarter. They had Red Dune and didn't want the uh Butlerian jihad to happen. Right. Yes. Yes, every AI ever built has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead. So yeah. Anyway, so that's kind of the end of the conversation there. And we get back back into the real life with Molly and Case here. Real quick, real quick, just with this further exchange. So again, they're talking about kind of the degree of efficacy of this sort of virus. And when we learn that it's kind of a slow virus, it takes about six hours to crack a target, and it's like his like how about an AI? It's like, can we run it? Flat line's like, sure, unless you got a morbid fear of dying. So just stuff. Another callback to that. Yeah. Yeah, like sometimes you repeat yourself, man. It's like it's my nature. Yeah. So yes, yeah, that is interesting. And you wonder, like, that almost seems like a throwaway line, but is it? Could be some subtle foreshadowing. So case is basically

Case Goes Looking For Stims

Michael Kentris 25:48

want a buzz. He wants to get high. So he was trick pancreas, plugs in my liver, little bags of shit melting. Fuck it all, I want a buzz. So he's he's just had it up to here. And so he left without waking Molly, she was asleep there, and he's kind of wandering around looking for people. So he's eating some sushi at this one place, and someone walks up to him, uh a young woman, and don't tell me, I know it already, you're a gangster, right? And he sees uh you know, a young, young tan lady, uh and she introduces herself as Kath, and he introduces himself as Lupus. And she says, What kind of name is that? And he's like, Greek. Technically correct. Right. Like, are you really a gangster? It's like, I'm a drug addict, Kath. It's like, what kind? Stimulants, central nervous stimulants, extremely powerful central nervous system stimulants. And she's like, Well, do you have any? She leaned closer. No, that's my problem. Do you know where we can get some? And I like this. Uh no coconut amphetamines, but up, gotta be up. And she says, beta-phenolethamine. Sorry, I mispronounced that. Beta-phenylethyl ethylamine. No sweat, but it's on your chip. So this is a real drug. I had to look this up.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Okay.

Michael Kentris 27:11

So for those who are interested, it does affect your monoamine regulation. So it's actually uh a dietary supplement used uh in some situations for focus. And uh so monoamy oxidase B metabolism, or MAOA B. So this is actually something that we do have drugs that that do this, like antidepressants and some of the medications used for Parkinson's disease work on this same system. But this is similar, this one in particular, mechanism to amphetamine, although it has an oral half-life of only five to ten minutes. So it has to be administered in a different fashion, which which they do talk about here. So I thought it was uh actually pretty uh pretty well done biology there. Okay, okay. Anyway, so they basically they cruise out and find her drug dealer. Yes. Right. They have a little back and forth about how Case has his, like you said before, the trick chick pancreas and all the bits and bobs that prevent him from metabolizing all the usual drugs that he's fond of. And uh he's like, all right, let's see if I can metabolize it. Right. So, so yeah, he uh yeah, they meet this the drug dealer, Bruce, and uh you know, first one's free, and Kay says, I heard that one before. So he gets these bright blue derms. And then uh we get a scene cut back to him meeting back up with Molly, and she's like, What's got into you? The mirrors followed him across the room, which I just like that phrase because we know she's got mirrored glasses, but it's also sometimes a turn of phrase when people are in a mirrored room and they'll talk about like the mirrors following you, that kind of thing. I don't know, it's just a nice double entange there. Anyway, uh he says, I forget how to pronounce it, and she's just like, Christ, just what we needed. So I let you out of my site for two hours and you score. I hope you're gonna be ready for our big dinner date with Armitage tonight. Uh this 20th century place. We get to watch Riviera strut his stuff too. And uh she kind of just like keeps chastising him about like, man, you're gonna be in bad shape once that wears off. Yeah. And just yeah. Yeah. It's like doom and gloom, all I ever hear. And it sounds like maybe there is some sort of blood thinning aspect to this this drug as well. I don't know about blood thinning. Okay. He's like, uh, you ought to have enough sense to take advantage of my unnatural state. I mean, look at this unnatural state. He looked down. So I mean that there's a pretty heavy implication there about what's going on. Yes. Downstairs. So anyway, then we get a fade to black there.

Riviera’s Cabaret Crosses A Line

Michael Kentris 29:56

So we are now at dinner in the Vink Team sequel. I don't know how the hell to pronounce that. I don't know. There's accents in there. Yeah. Uh it sounds vaguely French-ish. So that means I will mangle it terribly. Right. So anyway, Armatur's like, Case, what's wrong with you? So apparently he does look not well. Mm-hmm. He tries to like feign off, oh, just something I ate, maybe. And Arto's like, hey, I want you checked out by a medic. And then Case just keeps doubling down, like, just this histamine reaction. Get it when I travel, eat different stuff sometimes. It doesn't seem like anybody really buys it, but it's enough to drop it for the moment. Right. And so they got a fancy meal here. So Case has got this uh steak, and Molly says, give me that. You know what this costs? They kind of raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't VAT stuff. So I like this. This is the this is the real deal beef here. That's right. None of that bad stuff. And then you kind of get Case's actual how he's feeling. So his brain was deep fried. No, he decided it'd been thrown into hot fat and left there. The fat had cooled a thick, dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish purple flashes of pain. That sounds pretty bad. Yeah, yeah, it sounds gross and painful. Mm-hmm. Don't do drugs, kids. I just like Molly has zero sympathy. She just says you look effing awful. Um so he tries the wine. The the aftermath of the beta phenylethylamine made it taste like iodine. And then we start having the show that Riviera's going to be putting on. So we get kind of this announcement Restaurant Vitamin Cyclic proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr. Peter Riviera. So it's this very interesting sort of hologram type display, similar to what we've seen him do up to this point. Just very interesting visuals. Yeah. Very unsettling. Very unsettling. As to be expected. So he introduces it and he dedicates this work to Lady Three Jane Marie France Tessier Ashpool. The title of the work is The Doll. Uh, as we learn, right? This is kind of like part of their plan, right? Is to entice this member of the Tessier Ashpool family into making the acquaintance of Riviera, right? He's the face, if we want to use our A-team kind of framework. Something that really bothered me about the title given to this member of the Tessier Ashpool family is her name is Three Jane. And anytime in programming, whenever you're naming variables and whatnot. You never lead off with a number. So the fact that her name is Three Jane rather than like Jane Three, I don't know. It's something something that rows my hackles a little bit. That's funny. Yeah. Because it definitely is. I I think we know the the test of your ash pools have like some sort of implication that there's maybe some sort of cryogenic slash eugenic type program going on up there. So there's definitely some some funny business.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Yes.

Michael Kentris 33:29

So I don't think we need to go too in-depth into the cabaret itself. But generally speaking, uh we get a room, and it's kind of a yellowed plaster, yellowed white plaster, single bulb dangling above it. And he says, I couldn't remember ever having lived in any other room. I'd always been alone in the room, but I do remember that at first she was only a haze, a shadow. So it starts with like a kind of like this, it's very dreamy, ephemeral, kind of very unusual. And right, this is a cabaret, and so there is definitely an erotic nature to a lot of the scene here. So we end up getting like a hand that he's kissing, and we start seeing more and more of it. Um and I like this. The act progressed with a surreal internal logic of its own. So it went from like a hand and an arm to uh a hand to the arms, to the feet, to the legs. Riviera's naked, his closing clothing had also been part of the projection. And then we realized that the figure that he is creating is actually Molly. Um but there are some details wrong, probably things that Case hasn't, or that uh Case has seen, let's say, that Riviera has not, such as parts that would normally be covered by clothing. So we get this little scene here. Case glanced at Molly, her face was blank, the colors of Riviera's projection heaved and turned in her mirrors. So as this is going on here, right there, in an embrace, let's say, and then Molly's kind of knife claws extend and starts raking down Riviera's back to the point where it exposes even his spine. And Case uh basically gets up, he's nauseated, he vomits over the railing into the waters of the lake. And uh we learn that this is a art form, a medium he had seen once before when he was a teenager called Dreaming Real. And uh the end here. He could guess the end of the finale. There was an inverted symmetry. Riviera puts the dream girl together, the dream girl takes him apart with those hands, dream blood soaking the rotten lace. So very odd, unsettling kind of performance, I would say. Yeah. Right, and then Case hears some cheering and whatnot, so he goes back into the restaurant, it's done, but Molly is now missing, and Case obviously cares very deeply for Molly, so he's

Molly Disappears And Panic Spreads

Michael Kentris 36:05

asking where she is. Amitage just says, gone. And uh Case initially thinks, like, oh, did she go after him because he thought it was disgusting? She probably thought it was disgusting, and more or less is like, put her out of your mind, and she's gone to prepare herself, you won't see her again, you'll be together during the run. So Armitage is like, put her out of your mind, we're on to the next phase. Right. And yeah, he goes back to the room, he doesn't find anything, um, no notes. And he calls up Malcolm and he's like, You gotta modem. And hold on one second. Essentially, he kind of goes in there and uh he is upset, let's just say. So he's kind of like burning things down here a little bit. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he's he's definitely like alerting the general area to their presence by doing all sorts of things to kind of locate, navigate, find where she went. And even Flatline Dixie at one point is like, hey man, you gotta cool down, you're getting all sort of action following us, like this is not gonna work out well for us. Right. So eventually, right, he he ends up uh connecting in, and Wintermute kind of steps in again, this time in the form of Lonnie Zone, who is another guy from the the past in Chiba.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yes.

Michael Kentris 37:40

And he's like uh basically saying, You're really screwing up tonight. You're setting off alarm bells all over uh all over town. And uh basically says, uh, I didn't think you'd do that. It's outside the profile. Right. And then Winter Mute just seems to exacerbate the situation. Like, can't keep too good track of your woman, can you, Case? Keep losing them one way or another. Yeah, uh Case is like, I'll bring this thing down around your ears. He's like, No, you aren't that kind of man. I know that. You know something, Case. I figure you've got it figured out that it was me told Dean to off that little friend of yours in Chiba. But he kind of refutes that immediately. But what's it matter? How much does it really matter to Mr. Case? And uh I know you're Linda man, I know all the Lindas. Know why she decided to rip you off? Love. So you'd give a shit. Wanna talk love? She loved you. I know that. For the little she was worth, she loved you. You couldn't handle it. She's dead. Yeah, then he he punches uh glass and he's like, Don't f up your hands, man. As soon as you punch deck.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 38:46

Those are your instruments, you gotta take care of 'em.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

That's right.

Michael Kentris 38:52

So he basically that conversation ends. He punches out of there, and the phone rings in the room, like old modem phone phone modem. It's the flat line, it's like uh some weird nightclub, it's got weird ice around it. And so basically he's got a location. He's angry, he calls up the uh the drug folks, Kath and Bruce. The drug teenagers. Right, basically. And um he shows up, he pushed uh pushes into the room, it's like, hey really man, we're going to help me. You're really glad to see me, because we're friends, right, aren't we? And uh Kath says, uh I knew he was a gangster. So basically they um they drive him over to this place and they say that's the level for the cubicles. And we don't know what the cubicles are necessarily. Maybe it's some sort of work sharing space. It could be. But it's not. It's not. So they they head on over there and this was it, the local action, not the high gloss facade of the Rue Jules Verne, the real

The Cubicles Reveal Molly’s Past

Michael Kentris 40:00

thing, commerce, the dance. Maybe half are tourists, the other half residents of the islands. And uh you know, he shows his freeside chip to a waiter and is like, I want to go downstairs. And so he he goes on down, and there's a girl at a low desk with a terminal on her lap. I assume that would be the nineteen eighties equivalent of a laptop.

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 40:22

But and she just says gender preference, and he says female, and says number thirty-five. So he heads on down, he found his cubicle. He'd been looking for Molly's, now confused, he raised his chip and placed it against a black sensor set directly beneath the number plate. Magnetic locks, the sound reminded him of Cheap Hotel. That's Capital C, Capital H, if we remember back from Jiba City. Uh her eyes were soft and unblinking, automatic pilot, a neural cutout. He backed out of the cubicle and closed the door. The door of forty three was like all the others. He hesitated, the silence of the hallway said that the cubicles were soundproof. It was pointless to try the chip. He wrapped his knuckles against enameled metal. Nothing. The door seemed to absorb the sound. He placed his chip against the black plate. The bolts clicked. Uh and then so yes, this this one is Molly's. She seemed to hit him somehow before he'd actually gotten the door open. Uh blades of her rigid thumbs quivering centimeters from his eyes. She's like, You're an idiot to try that. So basically she's like, How'd you get in here? Um She's like, I'm meditating. The winter mute's been telling me about stray light. Right. Then we get kind of this interaction back and forth about trying to get her reaction about Riviera's performance. And he's like, How come you ran? She says, Because if I had stayed, I might have killed Riviera. And again, like this the show did impact her negatively. And so we get kind of so of Molly's history here as to why it was a bit traumatic for her. She starts off by saying, like, all of her body modifications were very expensive. Like she shows her finger blades. Right. And uh we learned that to earn the money initially, she was doing something very similar back in Chiba, just like cubicle farm, where more or less she is a sex worker that had this sort of how they call it automatic pilot neural cutout thing. So more or less she is not there mentally, but her body is and it is used by clients. So but ultimately the problem was that all the different things that she was getting done to herself started becoming incompatible with the things that had been done to make her kind of face out during these sessions. And so it kept getting kind of worse, apparently. Different clients coming in asking for more and more extreme sort of routines. And it sounds like ultimately she kind of like woke up during one and ended up killing one of the guys. Yeah. Yeah, like her yeah, like you said, her cybernetic enhancements weren't quite finished and became incompatible with what they call cutout time or puppet time. Um so yeah, definitely a very morally gray area in all of this year. Because she started, like you said, yeah, the the memories and so on. So and she had to go on the run for a little bit after that particular event. And uh we find out that the plan, so she kind of says uh, you know, Riviera did hit a nerve last night, as you said, Will. And we learn that he's already there, Stray Light, on the invitation of Lady Three Jane, all that dedication shit. She was there in a private box, kinda, and uh Case remembered the face he'd seen. You're gonna kill him? And she smiled cold. He's going to die, yeah, soon. So So yeah, it's uh That's basically the end of the conversation. They head out, Case heads out, I should say, and uh how was it, Bruce asked? And uh he just says, try it sometime, and she's like, I just can't see you're the kind of guy that goes for the puppets, and uh just drop me where the bars are. So that is the end of our kind of our prelude to

Final Thoughts And Sign-Off

Michael Kentris 44:17

the run. That's right. Some interesting background on our characters here. Yeah, things are progressing.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 44:25

Any final thoughts on this section? Yeah, nothing, nothing too crazy. It's just, yeah, more more build-up. We're getting there to the action. It's it's incoming. But good build up. So, as always, thank you for listening along with us, and we will continue our read on Neuromancer next time. You can always hit us up on X at Brothers Reading or find us on our website at brothersreadingbooks.com, or send us an email at brothersreadingbooks at gmail.com. We'll talk to you next time. Talk to you next time, Mike.