Neuromancer Chapters 12 - 15: The Straylight Run Begins

Neuromancer shifts into high gear as Case gets nabbed by the Turing Police and the Straylight run has to start up before the situation collapses any further. We also get some thoughts about memory and models of the self and get some more Sim-Stim action as the operation proceeds.

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Welcome Back And Reading Plan

Michael Kentris 0:07

Hello and welcome back to Brothers Reading Books. I am Michael. I am Will. Hey, how are you doing, Will? I'm doing very well. How are you, Michael? I'm good. What are we reading today? Today we are reading chapters twelve through fifteen of Neuromancerf. So so yeah, uh we're we're cooking along and we're we're adding in extra chapters because last episode it seemed like it was a little on the shorter side, so we're just beefing it up a little bit. So we're we're kind of straddling one of our transitions here where we go from the midnight in the rue Jules Verne to part four Stray Light Run. And so I feel like we do get that inflection point of the kind of rising action here. Yeah, now there's definitely, like you said, a point where action ramps up quite a bit, and I feel like there's a lot more that goes on in these chapters than maybe in the last episode. Yeah. So let's let's start off. I might, unless you have your summary ready. Sure.

Rue Jules Verne And Kath’s High

Michael Kentris 1:13

What does chapter 12 hold for us? Chapter 12, uh I have written down Case Explorer's Free Sight, Nightlife, and then Chapter 13, Wintermute Post Bail. 14, starting the run, or maybe a jog in this case, and that's a reference to the slow virus, but yeah. And then 15 is some sim stim switching with Molly. Yeah. So so yeah, chapter 13 kind of picks up right where as you might expect, where chapter 12 left off. So that uh to remind everybody, uh Chase had just had a kind of a long conversation with Molly, had some exposition, and then leading up to that also a kind of big fight with Wintermute in kind of The Matrix. So he's, as you said, wandering around the Rue Jules Verne looking for the nightlife, and he runs into Kath again and basically uh gets high. Yeah. That's that's uh that's a very good summary of chapter twelve. Right. I mean it's a lot of it is kind of like internal descriptions of the sensations and and also the calm down. And we learn a little bit uh background of Straylight itself via Kath. So she's somehow managed to get invited by 3 Jane into La Villa Straylight and has gone in there and she gives him a little bit of a background, also mentions what I think it might be a little foreshadowing with Hideo. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, again, it's the whole what is it, Chekhov's rifle or whatever? Like you don't just introduce things that doesn't serve any purpose, at least not in traditional literature.

unknown 3:00

Right.

Michael Kentris 3:00

It's gotta be a payoff. Yes, Chekhov's gun.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Chekhov's gun, yes. Right.

Michael Kentris 3:07

So, but yeah, I mean, other than that, uh this one is, I think, a fairly straightforward scene as far as that goes. I don't know, do you have anything else kind of going on in this one? Kind of one thing that I did highlight for myself is that uh Case has this sort of knot of rage that he kind of is focusing on. And he kind of contrasts that to his life up to this point in time where it's been a lot of numbness, and he traces it back to uh that impression or sort of Wintermute's sort of facsimile of Linda Lee Linda Lee in that initial conversation that he had with Wintermute. So again, just a lot of rage kind of focused at Wintermute at this point in time. Right. And I don't recall if it's in this chapter or coming up, and he was wondering about that rage, like, and kind of goes back to like it had been so long that he'd been numb since he felt anything that he was kind of keeping it stoked like a coal in his chest. Mm-hmm. But yeah, like you said, he runs into Kath at one of these random bars and she's uh she's not playing hard to get and gives him yeah, another one of those benolethal blue derms. Beniletholamine? Or phenoletholamine. Yeah. Some variation. And it's like uh what did they say here? His hands were hot and dry, and it almost sounds like like ecstasy a little bit, like some MDMA kind of effect. I mean which makes sense. The mechanistically it's kind of similar. But um But yeah, she's like enamored with him because he thinks he's Jacoza, and we just get some little like I thought this was a nice little touch, some perhaps uh age-specific slang. We're talking about Lady Three Jane, she's triff and he's like, How'd you meet these aristos? I I assume meaning aristocrats. And like last time, this drug does give him some priopism, let's say. And basically he just like kind of he's looking at her, and there is some beautiful language. I beautiful might not be the right word. Intense language. Yeah. Uh because he was looking at Kath, saw each pore in the tan skin, eyes flat as dumb glass, a tint of dead metal, a faint bloating, the most minute asymmetries of breast and collarbone. The something flared white behind his eyes. He dropped her hand and stumbled for the door, shoving someone out of the way. And then she's pissed, and she just says, like F you, uh you rip off other expletive. So yeah, it's basically she just walks around. And as the morning comes, I like this description of when the the drugs wear off. The high wore away, the chrome skeleton corroding hourly, flesh growing solid, the drug flesh replaced with the meat of his life. He couldn't think. He liked that very much, to be conscious and unable to think. And a little foreshadowing here. He seemed to become each thing he saw, a park bench, a cloud of white moths around an antique streetlight, a robot gardener striped diagonally with black and yellow. Robot gardener, you say. That's right. So so yeah, basically he he eats breakfast, and then he goes back to his hotel, and what does he find

Turing Police Interrogation On Freeside

Michael Kentris 6:40

waiting there? It's those three teenagers, and they're caps. Right. I had to think back at like these uh right, they're perfect white sports clothes and stenciled tans. Mm-hmm. I'm like, oh wait a minute. They've been talking about these like in previous chapters, just like in the background. It was so subtly woven in. I had to do a double take on this. Yeah, same. I was like, it's I know it's the same lady, it's it's the same three men before who gave him the drugs, and who, yeah, he's just been like interacting with as these side characters and like at the hotel. Yeah, twist their undercover. Right. And we learn, so moving to chapter 13, we learn that Case's full name is Henry Dorset Case. Very uh, I was wondering, yeah, is that the first time we've heard his full name? I think so. She they know who he is, they've got his his identification number, aliases, blah, blah, blah. And they ask him, where is Kolodney? And again, this is a name that we have not heard before. But based on their questions, we can, I think, presume that this is Molly they're referring to. Right. And again, they that it's kind of foreshadowing again from earlier when Kath was originally hitting up Case at that bar and she's kind of like asking about Molly, be like it seems very innocuous at first because like she like feigns it off as being like sexually interested in her, but it seems like more it's just like she's one of their targets as well. So Well, I guess I should ask Will. Are you saying that Kath is related to these three French teens? Isn't she one of the three French teens? No, different group. No? No. I thought she was. No. Yeah, so it's a it's a dip these are like if you look back at some of the previous chapters, there's mention of like when Armitage, Molly, and Case are like sitting around in the cafe, chatter of French from a nearby table, or they're perfect spray stenciled tans, things like that. So it's a it's an entirely different group of people from Kath and Bruce. And I think we get their names here. Michelle, Roland, and Pierre. Gotcha. Okay. Very French.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yes.

Michael Kentris 9:00

Should be like Roland.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

And they're kind of doing like a bad cop, good cop kind of thing. Bad cop, good cop, stenographer. Kind of, yeah.

Michael Kentris 9:13

So they tell him, you know, Armitage is already in custody and he lets slip Corto, and like they're momentarily surprised that he knows that. But um, he's like, you know, everything he's thinking to himself, everything I'm saying from this point forward is probably going to be recorded for evidence, so he's gotta make sure he watches what he says. But he already slipped on Corto. They focus on that quite a bit here in the interrogation. Yes. So they're trying to figure out a little bit about, you know, where's where's Molly? What's what are you doing here? And he's like, I'm just I'm just a hired gun, basically, is what he's saying.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Right.

Michael Kentris 9:56

Yeah, again, just trying to figure out what what's the target? What are you doing? And they don't completely buy the fact that he doesn't know anything, despite the fact he doesn't know anything. Right. But uh Yeah, you just uh they keep trying to like kind of hammer down on him to give him to spill anything at this point in time. Case even kind of just like tries to appeal to their sense of reason, be like, hey, I am sick, I took this drug, I'm just gonna lay down, you already have me, you can ask me more questions in a minute, ask Armitage, I'm just hired help. So yeah, it's just he's he's not being very cooperative, which is on brand for case. Yes. So so we get a little bit of how they found him. Apparently, the first mistake, as they say here, was the repairs that he had done in Chiba because that was a very unusual thing, and the operator of that black clinic in Chiba now has a controlling interest in three major medical research consortiums. So because that was so atypical, it drew the wrong kind of attention to the operation. Right. Yeah, he filed like seven patents, and now, yeah, just little little something that sparked interest and yeah, drew the wrong attention, so oops. And then, yeah, they mention, of course, how they traced him to Sprawl, where there was that whole riot that they had incited at SenseNet and were able to steal the uh construct, a flatline, who they refer to as McCoy Polly. Right. So it's kind of interesting. At one point here, Case is kind of observing them and the eyes of this woman in particular, okay, because they look like teenagers, and he's just basically like, you know, teenagers don't have eyes like this, so he's wondering how old they actually are.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 11:56

Yeah, I know at one point they mentioned kind of like, yeah, the the eyes are sort of the I know it's not what they say, but the eyes are the window of the soul, but like they don't they don't have young eyes. How old are they? Right. So So they say that you know we were following you all over from Switzerland to Istanbul and as you were saying. And then you came here, and we were pleased, and we were delighted. And Chasers Plus, chance to work on your tan. So he's he's maintaining his sarcastic veneer here. And so they're kind of debating like, where will we take you? To Switzerland, where you'll be a pawn in the trial of an AI, or to Le Bahma, where you can be proven to have participated not only in data invasion and larceny, but in an act of public mischief which cost fourteen innocent lives. So And Case just straight up asks here is like, how old are you, boss? And old enough to know you are effed burnt, that this is over, and you are in the way. And then uh case, again, right, he's just being very confrontational. It's like uh one thing, do you guys have any real jurisdiction out here? I mean, shouldn't you have the Freeside Security team in on this party? And uh he sees the eyes hardened and he expects one of the one of the guys to basically smack him in the face, but uh the blow did not come. And then yeah, Roland makes the comment that they're used to working in these sort of legally gray areas and that they're just kind of smuggle him out covertly, and if he does anything to attract attention, they'll just straight up kill him. So I think this is a good point to refresh our memories, right? Say that they said they're part of touring. So this is the organization that basically hunts down AI that is trying to become self-determinant, autonomous, you know, so forth. So and we get this quote from Michelle here. You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of packs with demons. Only now are such things possible, and what would you be paid with? What would your price be for aiding this thing to free itself and grow? So it kind of hints that maybe there's something deeper at play here. I thought that was like a very kind of heavy sounding sentiment. Definitely. Very ominous. And then yeah, she makes the comments like you will come with us, uh, we'll return you to Geneva, you'll give testimony in the trial, otherwise we will kill you now. And they're also planning on erasing the uh construct as well, since uh it's supposed to not be owned. It's uh also kind of a dangerous item that SenseNet should not have had in their inventory.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Right.

Michael Kentris 14:43

So basically he gets dressed, because he uh we should mention uh he's been uh sitting here. They they had him stripped down, so he was sitting there basically in his skivvies. Yes. And they mentioned specifically his one embarrassing untanned foot sitting there. And he asks at one point, can I get dressed? And they just basically told him no. So now he gets dressed. Um and he feels like he's again, he's right, he's in this come down from the from the drugs here. So he is feels like his limbs are wood, warped, like he's walking on stilts. And this was the line that clued me in here, right? Lunch was being served beneath the trees under the bright umbrellas. Roland and Michelle fell into character, chattering brightly in French. And that was the phrase that really triggered my my memory for like, oh, chattering brightly in French. That was that was what was mentioned, like almost verbatim in the earlier chapters when they were at the cafe. So basically, they're walking along, Chase is looking around, he sees a giant butterfly, blah blah blah. He's kind of looking at all the beauty, right? She they're pretending to be like happy teens right now. So there's like these beautiful pools, casinos, sunbathers, all this kind of stuff. And uh she's poking him basically with the barrel of her her walther.

Microlight Ambush And The Run Goes Live

Michael Kentris 16:01

So as they're walking across this iron bridge, this micro light struck, electric engine silent until the carbon fiber prop chopped away the top of Pierre's skull. So this is like very dramatic transition from like kind of like everything is beautiful, relaxing, right? It's like a it's a tourist resort. And then all of a sudden this guy's head is chopped in half. Yes. Very violent. And uh, that's not all that happens. So immediately Michelle kind of rolls on her back, trying to like shoot her gun at the at the aircraft, and case it's just like that's a waste of effort, and he starts running, and Roland chases after him, but he sees the biplane strike the iron railing of the bridge, it crumples and takes the girl with it down into Desiderata, and Roland's still chasing him, but as they pass under a tree, the aforementioned robot gardener basically pounces on him like a spider.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

They describe as a crab and takes him out as well.

Michael Kentris 17:11

And then we get uh Case. You killed him. Crazy MFR, you killed them all. So that is the end of chapter 13. Right. Chase was in custody for a very brief period of time here. Right, right. Basically, Case uh scoots it back to the uh the ship. So he meets up with Errol, and they find out that the Marcus Garvey is under say, it's it's being held by by this uh large larger ship, a Japanese yacht. The same one that brought the package. And they see the name Haniwa. Does that mean anything to you, Will? You know, I tried looking up something regarding it because in of itself it doesn't mean a lot to me. Without the characters, it's hard to tell since Japan has an absurd number of homophones. But the actual word itself means like a type of terracotta, like a hollow terracotta used in traditional uh pottery, but also you could split it up into the words ha and niwa, which was like a feather gar garden of leaves. Garden of feathers. I don't know. It's it's hard to tell just based off the English intriguing. Maybe maybe that's the point. Yeah, if I got the uh cluster of Japanese underneath, I could tell ya. Nice, nice. So yeah, Case is thinking, uh quote, maybe it's time we got our ass out of here anyway. And uh Malcolm agrees as well. So they're kind of looking what they can do here, and basically uh Malcolm tells him, it's like, uh, see what the ghost says. A computer keeps asking for you. So he he jacks in and he's uh talking with Dixie. And uh Dixie, Dixie's an interesting character, because sometimes he like knows what's going on, sometimes he doesn't. But here, he's like, What you getting up to, boy? I've been hearing lurid stories. Husaka's patched into a twin bank on your boss's boat now. Really hopping. You pull some Turing heat, and uh Case just says, Yeah, but Wintermute killed him. And Dixie's like, doesn't even phase him, he's just like, well, that won't hold him long. Plenty more where those came from.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Uh your boss, Case, he says, go, run it, run it now. So time. Yeah. Time to punch deck. Punch and deck, man. So so he does.

Michael Kentris 19:39

So he let's see, uh, Dixie does this uh jump. Blurred phase as the flatline executed an intricate series of jumps with a speed and accuracy that made Case wince with envy. And uh yeah, so he's he's still good. He's good at the job. Right. And it's funny because he's like, I was that good when I was alive, you ain't seen nothing, no hands. So they're kind of eyeballing the test your ashpool ice here. Um as he said, King Hell ice, black as the grave and slick as glass. Fry your brain as soon as look at you. And so they're just kind of staring at it, it's like, yeah, screw it, we'll run it. And uh so he jacks out quickly, tells Malcolm, I'm gonna probably be under the trodes for eight hours straight, and uh so I can't get to the head. So, you know, gotta take care of the meat, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 20:33

So he's prepared for this. You know, Malcolm's got some tubing and whatnot. Now, are you familiar with the Texas catheter? I am not. I did highlight it, but I don't know what it is. So it's also sometimes referred to as a condom catheter. So obviously it can only be used for men, but uh it is what it sounds like. It is a catheter that uh basically attaches to like a condom kind of thing, and you place it over the genitals there, and so it can drain the urine. It's less invasive than a traditional foley catheter which goes into the bladder via the urethra. Is there a specific use case for this or yeah. I mean, basically it's when you can't get up and go to the bathroom. Uh there's a higher risk for infection with it in some situations, so it's not a long-term solution, but if you're only using it for a short period of time, it's let's just say much less painful than the alternative. Sure, sure. Yeah, I know. I've I've heard descriptions. Right, right. And quote, uh Case didn't like it at all. And I would just say Case would like the opposite the the foli catheter option, much less. So yeah. Anyway. Alright. And he tells Malcolm, if it gets really funny, you can grab my left wrist, I'll feel it. Otherwise, do what the Hosaka tells you. And uh Malcolm, sure thing, Malcolm lit up a fresh joint. And uh Case tells him, turn the scrubber up. I don't want that shit tangling with my neurotransmitters. I got a bad hang on. As it is. And then he jacks back in. There's a lot of jacking back and forth. That is true. There is. And flipping switches. Yeah, we're gonna be doing we're gonna do less jacking, more switching now. Yes. Okay. Oh so yeah, he's jacked in.

Quang Mark 11 And ICE Invisibility

Michael Kentris 22:19

God, he's just so immature. I know. And again, this is something that I really like about Gibson's language here. You know, polychrome shadow, countless translucent layers shifting and recombining. Protean, enormous. It towered above them, blotting out the void. So it's just like this really evocative language that is just like this kind of heaviness to it. Yeah, for the Chinese virus. Yeah, it's it's a very interesting like I struggle with the visualization, but the verbiage is very evocative. Right. Right. I think that's that's kind of what it's supposed to be like, right? It's not a physical space, and it shouldn't feel physical, but it has a physicality, if that makes sense. Yeah. So case checks on Molly. He does a sim stim switch, and during free fall, she is going through some concrete tube with lights at two-minute intervals. And basically he just flips back. She's doing she's on her run, right? Yeah.

unknown 23:26

Right.

Michael Kentris 23:26

And then we get a little description more about how this virus is actually working. So it's actually kind of rendering them invisible to the ice. Uh apparently it is pseudo-triggered by distance. So if you get close enough to this sort of stuff, that's when it starts to react to you or fry your brain or whatever, whatever it is that it does. Right. But uh they got close enough here where it should have triggered, but it's not responding to them. And again, cases like maybe it's defective and flat lines just like, I doubt it. Just like it just doesn't register. If it did, we'd read to some kind of Chinese sneak attack, but nobody's twigged to us at all. Maybe not even the folks in stray light. Right. Yeah, they keep talking about how this is military grade stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yes.

Michael Kentris 24:13

So yeah, uh, and I like this. They they kind of talk about it as is um I checked old Klang 11. It's real friendly as long as you're on the trigger end. Just polite and helpful as can be. Like there's a a personality, like some sort of personal interface that uh that it does with you.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Like clippy.

Michael Kentris 24:33

Right. And uh so that you find out this is like you were saying, a slow virus. The typical, I guess, would be like bore and inject. Kind of makes me think of like a uh bacteriophage kind of thing. You know, where it just like clamps on.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Yeah, yeah.

Michael Kentris 24:48

This is saying the interface is so slow, the ice doesn't feel it. Uh we go siamele's twin on them before they even get restless. So they kind of like it it kind of comes up as a chameleon thing where it matches the code or whatever, and then it starts integrating itself into the the circles of the logic and trying to interface. It's a nice techno babble. Sure, absolutely. Like I I understand at the high level what he's going for here. It's like we're gonna sneak our way in and it's gonna be slow. Right. Yeah, as this is going on, he hits the sim sim sim stim

Wintermute As The Finn Talks Memory

Michael Kentris 25:24

switch again. This is what it's like say that ten times fast, right? Yeah. And he crashes into some uh newspapers and whatnot. So the fin is here, but he's not really the fin. It's Winter Butte. Gasp. So what has he got to say this time? So kind of like going down It's a lot of kind of talking about the nature of memory, honestly, which was very interesting. So initially Case is kind of like he's working off of Case's memories here to create this way to talk to one another, as we had mentioned before the last time he'd done this interaction. But um case is like, can I just keep walking around? Like, how far does this actually go? And ultimately the Finn slash winter meocon just poses it as more like a philosophical question. Like, it's like that tree falls in the woods, and maybe there's nobody here. You can go for a walk if you wanna, it's all there, or anyway, all the parts of it you ever saw. This is memory, right? I tap you, sort it out, and feed it back in. And then yeah, they discuss, like, oh, I don't have that good of a memory. And the Finn's like, everybody does, but not many of you can access it. And yeah, it's kind of just this iteration of like memory and the purpose of why AI was made in the first place, is like this representation of human memory. It's it's very interesting. Yeah. It it is kind of it does verge on the philosophical there. But uh before I get on that rabbit trail, how do you mean holographic? Memory is holographic for you. I'm different. The holographic paradigm is the closest thing you've worked out to a representation of human memory, is all. But you've never done anything about it. People, I mean. Maybe if you had, I wouldn't be happening. And he just says, What's that supposed to mean? And he just says, I'm trying to help you, Case. So I feel like that's a big dodge right there. So the holographic paradigm.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 27:22

But yeah, human memory is is like memory is a weird thing. Because we tend to think of like in our modern era, memory is something if you were there with a video camera and you were taking it down, and you can look back and watch it and see it frame by frame, exactly as it happened. But that's not for most of human history what people thought of as memory per se. Uh it was more of the like an idea like you would get, like, say, someone committed a crime, someone stole something, and you had like two, four witnesses. They have different perspectives, and as they report that story to you, there's going to be discrepancies between their story that don't necessarily invalidate the event that happened, but they're all true from that person's perspective, because that's what they experienced. Does that make sense? It sounds a lot like Akira Kurosawa's Roshoman. But I mean that's that's kind of the idea, though, is that uh what do you mean by memory? Essentially. Yeah, not the way I remembered it. Exactly. Um and that's kind of what they get into a little bit here of like, can you read my mind? And he's like, no, uh minds aren't read. You've still got the paradigms print gave you, and you're barely print literate. Uh I can access your memory, but that's not the same as your mind. And I think that's that's an important distinguished distinguishing thing. And that's something I think a lot of philosophers have talked about. Like, how does memory differ from you as an individual? Our experiences change us, make us who we are. To what extent do we consciously remember those experiences in our day-to-day interactions and behaviors? It's it's a weird question. And it's it's kind of one of those deep ones that doesn't have necessarily a clear-cut answer. Right, right. And he's talking about you're always building models, stone circles, cathedrals, pipe organs, adding machines. I got no idea why I'm here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you'll have finally managed the real thing. Uh I don't know what you're talking about. Case case is sometimes just like a perfect foil for these kinds of conversations. That's you in the collective, your species. He's just like, I don't understand. Basically, and so he's just like, you killed those Turins. It's like, Hada, Hada, you would you should give a shit. They would have offed you and never thought twice.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

And then we get a little call back here. Yes, the charred wesp not Yes.

Michael Kentris 29:58

Yeah, freaking a fuel in the closest of the dark shop. And again, he's just trying to like, do you know why it's important? Again, case case again, very very good self-insert here, shakes his head. Yeah. No, right? Because it's the closest thing you got to what Teshir Ashpool would like to be, the human equivalent. Stray lights like that nest, or any it was supposed to work out that way. I figure it'll make you feel better. Feel better. We got some solid snake type dialogue going on here. To know what they're like. You were starting to hate my guts for a while there. That's good. But hate them instead. Same difference. Right. Let the let the hate flow through you. He doesn't feel the anger right now though. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh he says, uh, TA, they made me. The French girls, she said you were selling out the species. Demon she said I was. It doesn't much matter. You gotta hate somebody before this is over. And uh it's like, come on, I'll show you a little bit of stray light while I got you here. And so they kind of like go through this like curtain and come out somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

So kind of a neat thing. Alright, a little bit of tour of stray light here. Right.

Three Jane’s Essay And Straylight Semiotics

Michael Kentris 31:16

So we kind of start at the at the front entrance, obviously. Mm-hmm. And this is a little bit that he got off of Molly here. And you know, normally there'd be like shops and kind of the touristy stuff around the entrance here, and he just says this is a little blurry because it's just a little snapshot I got from you guys. So he jumps ahead, they go through a bunch of corner or around corners through corridors, and almost seem like they're passing through several meters of solid wall, and all of a sudden they're in a perfectly square room. And this is a it's a weird room. Uh floors covered by a single square of brilliant carpet patterned after a microchip, circuits traced in blue and scarlet wool. In the exact center of the room, aligned precisely with the carpet pattern stood a square pedestal of frosted white glass. And we get a little like kind of museum description here. The Villa Straylight, said a jewel thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music, is a body grown in upon itself, a gothic folly. Each space in stray light is in some way secret. This endless series of chambers linked by passages, by stairwells, vaulted like intestines, where the eye is trapped in narrow curves, carried past ornate screens, empty alcoves, dot dot dot. And Finn just kind of like things are like essay of three Janes, wrote that when she was twelve, semiotics course.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

Of course.

Michael Kentris 32:45

Like we all take when we're twelve years old. So Will, what is your familiarity with semiotics? I would say none. So this is something I I've kind of amateurely become interested in over the years. Um and it's because I I kind of like in my work there's a related discipline called semiology. Okay. But you can kind of think of it, it it originated with linguistics, where the basic idea is looking at the relationship between the signifier and the thing which is signified. So stay with me here. An example would be, like in our language, we have a word cat.

SPEAKER_01 33:27

Yes.

Michael Kentris 33:28

The word cat is not the thing cat, but we see a cat and we have to have a way to communicate that in our own thoughts and to other people. And so we give it a representation. So it is a representative of another thing. That's basically the broad strokes of of like like semiotics. And this applies to like everything. So like when they're talking about here the gosh, what was it? The architects of Freestyle went to great pains to conceal the fact that the interior of the spindle is arranged with the banal precision of furniture in a hotel room. In stray light, the hole's inner surface is overgrown with a desperate proliferation of structures, forms flowing, interlocking, rising toward a solid core of microcircuitry, or clan's corporate heart, a cylinder of silicon, wormholed with narrow maintenance tunnels, some no wider than a man's hand, the bright crabs burrow there, the drones alert for micromechanical decay or sabotage. Uh Tesser and Ashville climbed the well of gravity to discover that they loathed space. They built freeside to tap the wealth of the new islands, grew rich and eccentric, and began the construction of an extended body in stray light. We have sealed ourselves away behind our money, growing inward, generating a seamless universe of self. The Villa Straylight knows no sky, recorded or otherwise. At the Villa's Silicon Core is a small room, the only rectilinear chamber in the complex. Here, on a plain pedestal of glass rests an ornate bust, platinum and closinet, studded with lapis and pearl. The bright marbles of its eyes were cut from the synthetic ruby viewport of the ship that brought the first tessier up the well and returned for the first ashpool. The head fell silent. So it was an unfinished essay. So we get this elaborate description of stray light as a metaphor for the Tessier Ashpool family. Right? They they came up from they're pushing the frontier, and then they find they get there, they hate it, and they build this inward-facing self-referential enclave. So what do we know about the Tessier Ashpools as a family? Well, they're really weird, right? Uh they go into cryogenic sleep, there's cloning probably going on, all this kind of weird stuff. And we get a little bit more of this inward projection of the family in uh upcoming chapter as well, which has a darker element to it also. Sure does. Yeah. So so I think this is a really good aspect of like the idea of semiotics, inasmuch as like we have this physical structure as a referent to the family which inhabits it. So kind of an interesting comparison there. Very detailed. And as I said here, you could say it is very gothic as far as that goes, right, in terms of the elaborateness of it. So that's that's my take on that little scene there. My my brief addition is I do know what cloisenae is. So that that's typically when you uh have like a wire that you use to create boundaries in enameling. So use like a silver wire or something, and then you go ahead and do wet packing with your various glass powders and whatnot to help create a more defined image. Like I I did one in a class a few months ago of a lotus leaf, and it turned out pretty good. Nice. Take an art class as well. I do. Columbus offers a very large number of very affordable art classes, and it's it's a nice way to do do things that I was not inclined to participate in in my youth. Yeah, no, that's excellent. Unfortunately, I have to do most of my classes online. So more uh music and language in my case.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

That's fair. But very cool.

Michael Kentris 37:28

So yeah, I mean, God, I went on this whole long thing here, and then the Finn says, uh, the semiotics of the villa bespeak a turning in, a denial of the bright void behind beyond the hole. So I guess that's a shorter way of saying it, too. And again, it it sounds like there's some sort of magic word here that needs to be said to more or less free Wintermute in this room. And obviously the Wintermute does not know what it is because that would defeat the whole purpose of this secret. And uh he needs Case and Co. to more or less be that retrieval mechanism of both the word and the utterance of it. Right. There has to be a physical person present. And I guess we would be remiss. This this head, this bus that they're describing, sounds very familiar, does it not?

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I can't recall.

Michael Kentris 38:18

So there was that story that the Finn told, Case and Molly, right? About uh some guy who had robbed the stray light and then basically got axed by some sort of Vat ninja. Yes, I do I do recall now, absolutely. Right. So it sounds very suspicious for said head. Absolutely. Doesn't that make sense? That's that is a very appropriate connection to have made. But to you, our listener, uh there will be no gap that you are able to discern. But uh Will and I have had life happening at us, so and yeah, Case said I thought this was interesting, again kind of tying back to the theme of memory in this chapter. Case asks him, so what's the word? I don't know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don't know, because I can't know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew man and told me, I couldn't know, it's hardwired in. Someone else has to learn it and bring it here. Just when you and the flat line punch through that ice and scramble the cores. I guess what happens then? I don't exist. After that I cease. And Case just says, Okay by me, and he replies, sure, but watch your ass, Case.

Lobes At War And Split Brain Parallels

Michael Kentris 39:44

My other lobe is onto us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another, and armitage is starting to go. It's like what's that mean? So that's like, oh, like what what does that mean? That it has implications. And we had that earlier conversation with Wintermutte where he says, like, I'm one lobe of a thing. Right. And it sounds like the different projections of this entity are working kind of at cross purposes with one another.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Yeah.

unknown 40:16

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 40:17

What is it is like that instance in human biology where people who have like the separated um uh you probably know obviously what the word is, the the part of the brain that when it was split in two, it had people kind of disassociating like what they were doing with each side of the body correspondingly. Yeah. You're probably talking about the corpus callosum, that thick part in the middle there that connects the left and right hemispheres. Yeah. Right. Yeah, you can get what's called a disconnection syndrome. Sometimes they'll surgically do that if people have certain kinds of epilepsy or if there's brain tumors there. They try not to do that because it is such a disabling condition. And it causes a lot of weird behavioral stuff. But uh yeah, it's uh it is described in the literature. You can also get something called alien hand syndrome, if that's what you're thinking of, where literally the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing.

SPEAKER_01 41:10

Yes.

Michael Kentris 41:11

That's seen more in different kinds of neurodegenerative conditions, like the classic example is something called cortical basal syndrome, which is it's a type of dementia, essentially. But yes. So yes, those are things. And I think that's why they're talking about like the lobes. There are actually there's there's a very slight digression into my own field for a second. Uh they'll sometimes do what they call a functional disconnection. And what that means is like, so let's say we've got this is typically in younger kids, like under the age of 10, 12 years old. But if they have this like terribly uncontrollable epilepsy that's in one half of the brain, in the old days, they'll go in, they just like scoop it out, uh, surgically speaking. And um that caused problems, right? Because as they say, nature abhors a vacuum, uh, that includes within your own head. So things would get a little wonky in terms of the spatiality of it. But what they do now is what they they'll disconnect those parts of the brain, and so you can go through and at certain points surgically disconnect those lobes, leave them there, but you put some EEG leads on the scalp, and you'll see one hemisphere is normal, and the other one's kind of firing away, like constantly having seizures, but the person you're looking at right in front of you, just sitting there normal as day.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

Wild.

Michael Kentris 42:38

Weird stuff. So that basically ends our conversation with Finn as Wintermute, or Wintermute as Finn, I should say.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yes. Chapter 15. Chapter 15.

Flatlines And The Real Cost Of Shutdown

Michael Kentris 42:55

So I really like the opening to this uh chapter because as we saw before the last time that Chase uh was talking with Wintermute, his brain flatlined and did the same thing again just now. And you have Dixie kind of like chiming in sarcastically, you're trying to break my record, son? You were brain dead again, five seconds. Right. And part of me wonders if there's any sort of long-term consequences to this talking directly interfacing with the AI. Obviously, Corto had to have some sort of long-term communication with Wintermutte, and so part of me is wondering did he just like flatline like thousands of times to reconstruct this persona that he is acting now as like his little puppet? I don't know. I haven't read that. That's a great question. What I can tell you from real world data is so so let's say in someone who is going like having surgery done, and depending Depending on the type of surgery, sometimes they'll put a small number of EEG electrodes. Some trodes. Some trodes, if you will. Some trodes. I'll just start calling them that at work. But uh they put some trodes on the head and they'll watch their brain activity as they're putting them under anesthesia. They don't it's not necessarily a hundred percent of the time they do this, but in some cases they will. And that looks at brainwave activity during the surgery because you want obviously the person to be anesthetized. You don't want them to remember the surgery, you don't want them to be in pain during the surgery. That would be terrible. There's all these stories out there of people whose anesthesia didn't work, and they're like, I was awake the entire time, they were cutting my abdomen open, right? Which is like horrifying. Yeah. But uh what we do know is that there's a certain level, right? So there's certain frequencies of brain activity, like you and me, uh, when we are in the awake state, most of our brain activity is kind of in the alpha beta range.

unknown 44:59

Uh-uh.

Michael Kentris 44:59

As you get drowsy, it drifts down to the theta. As you go into sleep, it's more into the delta, right? So it gets slower essentially. Just ignore the order of the Greek letters because they're listed in terms of how they were discovered historically, not in terms of their frequencies. But what we know is that the slower it gets, so you kind of go like from fast frequency, then it slows down, and then you start losing amplitude. The waves start getting smaller. And so when they say a flat line, what we typically mean is less than like less than two microvolts.

SPEAKER_01 45:31

Okay.

Michael Kentris 45:32

Which typically brain activity is variable, but it's anywhere from like 20 to 100 microvolts. Depends. It varies by age and medications and blah, blah, blah. Stuff we don't need to go into. But people who have gone under like deep anesthesia for prolonged periods of time have had instances of having like, as they come out of it, like down the road, kind of like a like a mild cognitive problem, like not necessarily a dementia, but kind of looking like that, um, which has been associated with sometimes prolonged uh significant anesthesia. We saw a lot of this actually with um with COVID, where some of these people were uh they were doing what they call proning. So they were in these roto beds where they'd get flipped over because they had such bad lung disease. And so they were under deep uh sedation, also paralyzed a lot of the time. And uh they were getting they're in that situation for sometimes days or weeks. And that can show sometimes it's called post-ICU syndrome, where you'll get this like cognitive decline afterwards. So so it is something that's like if you have severe suppression of your brain activity over and over again, I would say yes, it's going to cause problems. In fact, we know that for young children, they try and avoid using as severe of anesthesia or even avoiding if there's surgeries that can be put off till they're slightly older, things like that, because there is some evidence that might show some cognitive issues with very young children with anesthesia. Like repetitively. So you definitely have to be judicious in in your use. So we tend to think of you know it's just fine, it's fine, everything's fine. Like, well, well, that's maybe some things we don't know so much. So anyway, it's it's a little bit on the edge of what we know, but uh but there is, I think, some evidence that would suggest that flatlining your brain is bad. All right. That's my my official medical take. Uh don't flatline your brain. Yeah. Alright, so what do we got in front of us now? So, yes, in this chapter, we are going to be sim stim switching to Molly frequently.

Molly’s Infiltration And Johnny Mnemonic Past

Michael Kentris 47:45

So he does that pretty much right away. And even though it's a one-way link, Wintermute does have some capability here to provide either minimal directions or text that Molly is able to see in her fancy bionic eyes. And so when he switches in, she's seeing case, case, case, case popping up. Uh basically, she gets told, like, hey, it's time to go. The run is starting. She's we are starting her uh portion of the run. And I thought this part was really cool. So again, we obviously know she has several body modifications, her eyes, her knife, blade fingertips. But uh now we get another one where she presses her tongue hard against her lower front teeth, and one moves slightly, activating her microchannel amps. The random bounce of photons through the darkness was converted to a pulse of electrons, the concrete around her coming up ghost pale and grainy. Okay, honey, now I go out to play. So some sort of dark vision. Right. Yeah, yeah. So definitely interesting. We don't know all the modifications she's got.

SPEAKER_01 48:57

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 48:58

So anyway, yeah, she she starts going here, and this this chapter, I agree. Like it was a very interesting juxtaposition here, and one of the things that really caught me was that we get this shifting of perspective. And this they did this a little bit during like the SenseNet run, too, where it's kind of like flipping back and forth, and it's a little almost disorienting to an extent, where you get like because there's a thing in writing they call head hopping, where you're changing your point of view too often, and it can be disorienting. But here, you're literally in the heads of two of your main characters, and so it has this jarring juxtaposition at times because you'll get thoughts from one person, then from another person. So I don't know, I thought it was uh very neat and appropriately like disorienting, not not excessively, but enough to make you feel like something weird is happening. So we get some history on Molly here. She tells me tells us, I should say, right? Oh, it's already working. I'm gonna tell you a story. Had me this boy once, you kind of remind me. Johnny, his name was, and so it kind of alternates between this story, the action, and just bouncing back and forth here. So we kind of uh get a description like these old-looking things, like old furniture, lots of levels of carpet here.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 50:26

Ancient lamps, all this kind of stuff. So she's walking along, and we we see my Johnny, see, he was smart, real flash boy, started out as a stash on memory lane, chips in his head, and people paid to hide data there. Does that sound like anything to you, Will? Sounds like uh some of those guys we saw not too long ago at the Sensenet iteration. So I was like, that sound that story sounds awfully familiar. And I was like, it sounds like Johnny Mnemonic. And so I I looked back, I was like, oh yeah, Johnny Mnemonic was a short story written by William Gibson. Nice. So so this is this is basically a link in with that story.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

Okay, okay.

Michael Kentris 51:11

So basically Molly was obviously part of that country here. So had the yak after him, the yakuza. Um night I met him, I did for their assassin more luck than anything else. So they got all this this uh data. So they had a setup that could read the traces, started twisting these ex-clients. She was the bag man, muscle watchdog, happy. He was my boy, we worked together, partners. I was maybe eight weeks out of the puppet house when I met him. Uh and then we find out uh like the you know everything was going well, but it wasn't to last. So the Yakuza, patient like a spider, zen spiders.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

They give you a whole life just so you'll have more to lose when they come and take it away. Yeah.

Michael Kentris 52:00

So they were uh Yeah, then they came. When we were thinking we maybe had enough to be able to quit, pack it in, go to Europe, maybe. Not that either of us knew what we'd do there with nothing to do, but we were living fat. Swiss orbital accounts and a crib full of toys and furniture. Takes the edge off your game. So that first one they'd sent, heaping hot, reflexes like you never saw, implants, enough style for ten ordinary hoods. But the second one, he was, I don't know, like a monk. Cloned, stone killer from the cells on up, headed in a death, this silence he gave it off in a cloud, and obviously that sounds very similar to the story of the Teshu Ashpool assassin that was been referenced several times. Right. And then we get like uh story within a story here. So she kind of was like flashing back to her own childhood. They were you know, squatting down by the Hudson. And we got these large, like chemical rats scrabbling under the floor. They hired this old man, and he was just walking back and forth, back and forth. He'd move, the rat would move, he'd hear it under the floorboards, and all of a sudden he pulls his gun out and he just like points it at the ground, grin or and shoots. And then he rolls up his tools, leaves. And then she crawled under there, rat had a hole between its eyes. And as she says, the again the second one, he was like that. Not old, but he was like that. He killed that way. And so that right, we're kind of bouncing back and forth. So now we're back in the hallway, sea of rich carpets undulated gently beneath an enormous candelabrum, whose lowest crystal pendant reached nearly to the floor. Right, so it's like all this bouncing perspective, like there's a scene from her young adulthood, scene from childhood, back to the present. Just this constant stream of information. There was one line here that I really liked, so we kind of glanced over here. When you're young, you figure you're unique. I was young, right? Which is like that one of the things, like I was not like saying in an indirect fashion, I was not unique. I wasn't special. So anyway, so she was she saw him once. She was on her way back to the apartment, and she knew Johnny was up there. This little guy he caught my eye as he was coming out, didn't say a word. We just looked at each other and I knew. Plain little guy, plain clothes, no pride in him, humble. He looked at me and got into a pedicab. I knew. Went upstairs, and Johnny was sitting in a chair by the window with his mouth a little open, like he just thought of something to say.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Just little guy. So yeah. Uh definitely like a very melancholy story.

Michael Kentris 54:38

Mm-hmm. Alright, again, that's kind of the explanation she gives for why she's been very aloof, sort of her form of self-preservation, never much found anybody I gave a damn about after that. Right. Until Case. Yeah. And then we come back to the present. So we're we're at a locked door, and she's kind of picking the lock, essentially. And we kind of go back to Case's perspective here. A place grown in upon itself, stray light smelled faintly musty, faintly perfumed, like a church. He'd expected more activity, but it had been surprisingly empty. Her monologue made him uneasy. She'd never told him that much about herself before. And so he kind of thinks. She closed her eyes, there was a click that Case felt rather than heard. It made him remember the magnetic locks on the door of a cubicle in the puppet place. The door had opened for him even though he'd had the wrong chip. That was Wintermute, manipulating the lock. But the simple mechanical lock here would pose a real problem for the AI, requiring either a drone or some kind of human agent. And then we kind of go back to her, right? So it's just right, it's this rolling wave of information. You're just like like there's lack of conclusion, it's just like moving into the next thing to an extent. And she says, Guess you're kind of like he was, think you're born to run. Figure out what you were into back in Chiba. That was a stripped down version of what you'd be doing anywhere. Bad luck. It'll do that to you sometimes, get you down to basics.

SPEAKER_01 56:08

And then we get the reference again.

Michael Kentris 56:15

She drew the Fletcher from its holster and dialed the barrel to full auto. But the way it had been sawn down to fit a particular entrance. So again, right, it's this whole thing. Well, before I do that, I guess they talk about it here a little bit. He remembered Three Jane's essay, the fittings had been hauled up the well to flesh out some master plan, a dream long lost in a compulsive effort to fill space to replicate some family image of self. Again, right, this is the semiotics at play here. But the idea that you've taken something beautiful and changed it and made it uglier, again, I think reflecting the family to an extent here. So why are we in this room? Well So ultimately she's being fed these directions, right? So again, as we were saying, basically like a heads-up display in her visual implant. Some sort of HUD. Yeah. And so the chip is telling her like where exactly to go. And so ultimately, it says like third left, five down. She checks all the drawers, there's not really anything in any of them until that fifth one, where she finds uh what is it, a key? Yes. Key that had been left there twenty years ago. Uh and she kind of describes like the very patient, spider-like nature of Wintermute here, how he played a waiting game for years, didn't have any real power then, but he could use the villa security and custodial system to keep track of where everything was, how things moved, where they went. He saw somebody lose this key twenty years ago, and he managed to get somebody else to leave it here. Then he killed him, the boy had brought it here. Kid was eight. And then she's like, so nobody would find it. Dark. Right? Yeah, so it's this brass key with the letters chub, C H U B B, which I don't know if that means anything, but I just want to take note of it. It isn't caps. It's all caps. That's right. But but yeah, uh and she kind of talks about uh Wintermute was basically irritated. Uh they were always effing him over with how old fashioned they were, all their nineteenth century stuff. He said if they'd turned into what they'd wanted to, he could have gotten out a long time ago, but they didn't. Screwed up. Freaks like three Jane. That's what he called her. But he talked like he liked her. So very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

So Case flipping back. We're switching.

Michael Kentris 58:48

That's right. The Quang Grade Mark 11 was growing. And Case has had his doubts about this the whole time. Dixie, you think this will work? And then we get the classic line Does a bear poop in the woods, only not poop.

unknown 59:03

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 59:08

So yeah, just it is slowly growing. It is slowly kind of like working its way through the ice. Yeah. You were right, Dix. There's some kind of manual override on the hardware that keeps Wintermute under control, however much he is under control. And I thought this was very important. He, the construct, said he, watch that. It, I keep telling you. Again, stop trying to personify this. It's not a human, it does not think or act like a human. Right. I kind of see um some of the videos online these days where it's like interacting with AI in 2023 versus 2026. It's like, yeah, please, blah, blah, blah. It's like, do this or I will, yeah, I will murder your whole family. Exactly. Right. And it's just like, yeah, the the way that people are interfacing even currently with AI is is interesting. But what was there was uh was it Dawkins recently? Did you see this article just recently? I think so. Let me double check this. I'm gonna fact check myself in real time. Where I think it was Richard Dawkins. Yeah, he he was using like one of these LLMs, and he is convinced that AI is conscious. This was as of uh just earlier this month in May. So it's one of those things where it's just like just uh maybe pump the brakes there a little bit, bro. Right. So Yeah, I do know that there was somebody who was conducting an experiment to have an LLM basically escape from its environment. And it eventually and again, it wasn't like connected to anything, and eventually was able to like send an email to the scientist, and I know people are kind of like concerned about that, but yeah, consciousness is a is a big stretch. Right. So yeah, but I think that's a great point you bring up there, Will, is the the personification, right? They they're not the same as us. Yeah. Very much like if watch yourself, your your meaty emotions are going to uh betray you. So they got a bit of time still, the what do they say here? Old Kowang slow but steady. So you know he uh he jacks out and Malcolm's there and is like you dead a while there, Mon. And uh I love Case's response here.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

Right.

Michael Kentris 1:01:32

It happens, he said. I'm getting used to it. It's like you're dealing with the darkness. Only game in town it looks like. Right? It was very uh very noir sounding there.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:42

Yeah, yeah. And he jacks back in and he sim stim flip switch flips. Right. Back to Molly.

Michael Kentris 1:01:54

Yes, yeah, again, right, like perspective. We've got Case's IRL, we've got Case in Molly's head, we've got Molly, and then you know, we've got uh whatever else they throw at us here. I don't think we have any winter mute hallucinations in this chapter, but uh No, no, I don't think so. So as they're walking along, Case uh feels a twinge in Molly's leg, right? This old injury that she was recovering from, probably.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:16

Mm-hmm.

Ashpool’s Suicide Room And Linda Lee’s Face

Michael Kentris 1:02:18

And the the gravity is kind of changing here, so they think they're getting near the tip of the spindle. And uh as they come to a branch here, the the HUD says go left, and she's like, Let me look around, okay? And so she starts going to the right and it says stop, go back, danger. And then uh she hesitates and she hears from a half open door a loud, slurred voice, like the voice of a drunk. And uh we learn about something called a neural disruptor field.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 1:02:52

So basically it like knocks her out, her striated muscles slack, and she struck the door with her forehead. So for those who want to know, I guess, your striated muscles are your skeletal muscles, the ones you have volitional control over, as opposed to like smooth and cardiac muscles. Your intestines. Your intestines, your hearts. Yeah, come with that stuff. So anyway. And I like this. What's what's this? Fancy dress, right? Because she's in her skin tight uh polycarbon suit. Right. So fancy dress. Come visit child now. And so he has a black automatic pistol. Basically courses her into his room. He's old, very tall, and those features remind the case of the girl he had glimpsed in the Vingtum I don't know. The place. The restaurant where Riviera was a weirdo. Yes. Yeah, which I I did look this up. It translates to the twentieth century. And it did have a few references. I should have looked this up before. Uh, when we were in the vingtumse. Sorry. My apologies to French speakers, but not that sorry. But it was it was a couple things. So obviously the 20th century, but there was also a science fiction magazine called the 20th century, kind of tying that in together with like the Rue, Rue, Jules Verne, and all that kind of stuff. So it's probably thematically tied in with more of the science fiction publication than yeah. My thought. Anywho. That makes sense. So we get this odd fellow. Right? Very decadently dressed, heavy robe of maroon silk. He's got quilted around the long cuffs and shawl collar. Uh definitely a little undressed. He's only wearing a slipper on one foot, but he has this gold fox head embroidered on it. And again, just gorgeous her into his room, which again just filled with an assortment of things that made no sense to Case. Just a lot of old-fashioned antiques, kind of like what we've been seeing so far in these corridors. And we learn here very quickly that this is Ashpool, I presume of the Tessure Ashpool, Tessure Dash Ashpool. And we learn that he was planning on committing suicide here pretty shortly. But he starts off by saying, It would be customary for me to kill you now, but tonight I indulge myself in what is your name? And we get kind of this interesting dialogue here. He's like, she says she's Molly, is like Molly Minds Ashpool. And then he notices her eyes after she has noticed like all these things on his table, like a plastic vial of red pills, bottles of liquor, soft plastic envelopes, spilling white powders, hypotherm hypodermic needle, plain steel spoon, a lot of drugs. And but yeah, sir, how do you cry? I see your eyes are walled away. I'm curious. And very reasonable issues like I spit the ducks a red back into my mouth. I liked her initial response. Like I don't cry much. Yeah. But how would you cry if someone made you cry? Right, right. Yeah. And then she gives like a very like concrete answer, as you said, the ducks are routed back into my mouth. Then you've already learned an important lesson for one so young. Mm-hmm. That is the way to handle tears. He pulls a bottle off the table, drinks brandy. That is the way to handle tears. I'm busy tonight, Molly. I built all this and now I'm busy. Dying. And she's like trying to negotiate with them. I can go out the way I came. It's like you intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out. Really, you amaze me. A thief.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

Yes.

Michael Kentris 1:06:43

And she's like, it's my ass. I just want it's all I got. I just want to get out of here in one piece. Uh he's like, you are a very rude girl. Suicides here are conducted with a degree of decorum. Which makes me wonder, how often are people committing suicide here in La Villa Straylight? Great question. I don't know. Perhaps I'll take you with me tonight down to hell. It would be very Egyptian of me. Gosh. And then he like commands her, yelled bottle, drink. Like it isn't poison, sit on the floor, we'll talk. It's like what about whatever comes to mind, my mind, it's my party. The chorus woke me twenty hours ago. Something was afoot, they said, and I was needed. Were you the something, Molly? Surely didn't need me to handle you. No. Again, we kind of get the sense that he's maybe a little insane, a little mad. I think so, yes. So, yeah, like you said before, he's one of those people who have been put into cryogenesis or cryosleep a number of times, and they say that you don't dream, but I dreamed. They whispered to me lies. Just yeah, just a drop at first, one grain of night seeping in, drawn by the cold, others following it, filling my head the way rain fills an empty pool. Yeah, it's it was very evocative. Uh yeah, let's see. That you don't feel the cold. Lies, yeah. The cold let the outside in. Right, which they talked about um the void and blocking the void out. Right. So this just seems like more of a continuation of that essay by 3Jane. Except like through the lens of madness now. Yes. I like this. Uh you can get Freezerburn, she said carefully.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

It's like nothing burns there.

Michael Kentris 1:08:33

Yeah, what you said. The Corps told me our intelligences are mad and all the billions we paid so long ago. When artificial intelligence was a rather a racy concept, I told the cores I'd deal with it. Bad timing, really, with eight Jean down in Melbourne, and only our sweet three Jane mining the store. Or very good timing, perhaps. Would you know Molly? There are some odd things afoot now in the Villa Straylight. She kind of asks him like do you know Wintermute? And he responds, A name, yes, to conjure with perhaps Lord of Hell, surely, and again, kind of just waxing here about his long life through the lens of madness, like I have known many lords and now a few ladies, why Queen of Spain once in that very bed, but I wander. I'd ordered a Jane Thawd when I woke. Strange to lie every few decades with what legally amounts to one's own daughter.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:26

Yeah Yeah, gross. Yeah.

Michael Kentris 1:09:33

Marie France's eyes, we caused the brain to become allergic to certain of its own neurotransmitters, resulting in a peculiarly pliable imitation of autism. I understand that the effect is now more easily obtained with an embedded microchip. Which weird sentence, don't know what to make of that at all. And uh this has a little double entangle here. The dreams grow like slow ice. So is he talking about the cold? Is this a reference to the slow ice program that Case and Dixie are using? Uh little little blurring of the margins there.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Mm-hmm. And then he passes out.

Michael Kentris 1:10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:14

Drops the gun. She snatches the gun.

Michael Kentris 1:10:17

Right. So she looks over at the bed, a broad puddle of congealed blood, thick and shiny, the body of a girl. Her throat had been slit. The triangular blade of some sort of scraper glinted in the dark pool beside her. Molly knelt, careful to avoid the blood, and turned the dead girl's face to the light. The face Case had seen in the restaurant. There was a click, deep at the very center of things, and the world was frozen. Molly's sim stim broadcast had become a still frame, her fingers on the girl's cheek. The freeze held for three seconds, and then the dead face was altered, became the face of Linda Lee. Another click and the room blurred. Molly was standing looking down at a golden laser disc beside a small console on the marble top of a bedside table. A length of fiber optic ribbon ran like a leash from the console to a socket at the base of the slender neck. This is all kinds of weird. Right. Yeah, like I'm confused about what just happened. Is this a human? Is this a construct? Is this some sort of like matrix type situation? A lot of weird things going on here. But uh but yeah, it's very weird. Very weird. So initially, right, it sounded like this was going to be three Jane who had been killed, but then now you're wondering, like, is this is this human?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

Right, I don't know.

Michael Kentris 1:11:45

But Case knows that Wintermut had altered the broadcast. Molly hadn't seen the dead girl's face swirl like smoke to take on the outline of Linda's death mask.

unknown 1:11:56

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 1:11:56

Wintermuse doing something behind the scenes. We don't know what. And it makes me think that what was it Wintermude had said at the end of the last conversation? One burning bush looks a lot like another in the Matrix. Something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:09

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 1:12:10

So there are people working behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:15

Uh-huh.

Michael Kentris 1:12:16

So Molly, being ever practical, dials her Fletcher over to a single shot and very carefully put a toxin dart through the center of his closed left eyelid. He jerked once, breath halting, mid-intake. His other eye, brown and fathomless, opened slowly. It was still open when she turned and left the room. Yeah, that was a heavy chapter.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

Mm-hmm.

Michael Kentris 1:12:39

A lot of things happening there.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:41

Yeah. So Yeah, the run is underway.

Why The Heist Is Escalating Fast

Michael Kentris 1:12:48

A lot of weird things happening, and we've only been in the Villa Streelite for like one and a half chapters here. Yeah. Any thoughts on what we what we heard today, Will? I feel like something that happens in a lot of these sort of heist films or heist scenarios is that obviously things don't go to plan. So we started off with Case being arrested by the Turing police, and we also have Armitage kind of falling apart somehow, unknown. And it's it's like, all right, well, guess we better start before things get worse. So I'm very curious too, because I obviously things are going to reach some additional point of conflict, I assume, here. I think we see Armitage right out the gate next chapter. So that'll be fun to talk about. Yeah. But no, it's it's been great. I really like I I enjoyed the uh diversion to Freeside just in terms of setting the scene for what we would be getting up to here. But now that we're actually in the run, again, it's it's very exciting. A lot of things happening, and like you had mentioned here, just a number of these chapters, we're getting a lot of sort of constant stream of consciousness slash interspersions of these sort of multiple perspectives at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely a challenging writing style, but uh it doesn't hold your hand. It asks something from you, the reader, to engage, which I I appreciate that. And it's a style that it could very easily like fall apart and turn to like just mush in your hands. So it's very well done because it maintains that pacing where you kind of get this this rise and fall of action like just over and over again, like this inter interweaving of these different uh stories and flock lines. So it's it's been very good. Again, I I had read this book many years ago, and perhaps my brain wasn't ready for it at the time. Sure. So I'm I'm enjoying going through it at this more deliberate pace and really teasing apart the details of it and making sure that like looking at like, does this make sense? What does this mean? Because this feels like the kind of book. And that's really why I I like us doing this podcast together, is that we tend to think of like genre fiction, like sci-fi and fantasy, as being light, puff-pilled, empty carbs of the literature world. But there's there's a lot of things going on in these stories that have deeper meanings, and I think in the in the grand tradition of classic literature, have things to teach us if we uh look for them.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:28

Yeah.

Michael Kentris 1:15:29

No, absolutely. And again, the nice thing with I feel like the books that we've been reading so far is that they have stood the test of time. So it's we we have the uh shoulders of giants to stand on to let us know, like, hey, you should probably check out this. Right, right. Yeah, we're not uh like like with Conan, we're not reading every episode every issue of the magazine that's coming out where you get some duds in there. So we're able to although we did read some of the duds for the Sure did. Um but uh but we are able to focus on the cream that rises to the top. So that that has been very nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:10

So Will.

Michael Kentris 1:16:15

For our listeners, thank you, as always, for listening in. We are roughly by my my ebooks counter here, about 70% of the way through. I guess we're we'll be starting on chapter 16 next week. We'll probably be doing we're shooting for around 40 pages or so, I think. So we'll we'll eyeball that next time. And as always, you can find us on X at Brothers Reading. You can send us a message there. You can also send us a message via email at brothersreadingbooks at gmail.com or find our website, brothersreadingbooks.com. And if you have uh any comments, criticisms, send them on in, and we can always react to those uh down the road. So thank you as always for listening, and uh Will, I'll talk to you next time.