NEUROMANCER: WILLIAM GIBSON

PART 1; CHIBA CITY BLUES

C1.

Case goes to the Chatsubo in Chiba. Case is 24, drugged out, wasted memory and wasted we think from some kind of miliarty operation, Has a friend named Ratz who owns the place. Picked up by Mona. Takes him to see Armitage. Armitage offers him a deal. Will give him a transplant and get his nerves spliced if he'll work for them. He needs to have Case break some ice. Case is a cybercowboy.

Case agrees.

The come back to the US. He needs to break some ice and get into a computer.

PART 2: SHOPPING EXPEDITION

Case needs to get into Sensenet and access a file called Dixie Flatline and recover it for Armitage.

This program is someone's mind.

Molly helps him get into the computer at Sensenet using a group of hackers called the Panther Moderns - these guys this for money.

Molly helos get the file for Case and Armitage. In the meantime, they both want to knpow who Armitage is. They find Armitage is being oprated by Wintermute — which is a recognition code for an AI (p. 73) which is owned by Tessier-Ashpool.

Story revolves around how thiks Flatline data that Case is supposed to get relates to Wintermute and then to TA.

Chap. 6

In searching for the identity of Armitage, he is searching for his own. He was in special forces when he was wasted in an operation in Finland. His commander was Col. Willis Corto. As it turns out, Armitage is the bio-genetically reconstructed Corto.

This explains why they chose Case for this mission. In addition, Armitage tells him that they have implanted two poison sacks and won't give him the anecdote unless he cooperates. (They want someone who is both drive and afraid. Not simply someone who has been bought. Like a merc.)

Armitage says they're going with Finn to Istanbul. He doesn't explain why.

Chap. 7

Istanbul, Turkey

They're looking for something. Case doesn't know what. Case finds out Corto went a lot of countries after he had been reconstructed. Case is finding out more and more about Corto as he goes on this wild goose chase.

Go to marketplace and get ambused. Case believes that Corto was saved at a hospital in Paris by Wintermute and hence by T/A. This is the reason Armitage is being operated by Wintermute.

They meet Armitage and go to Paris. Case get';s a call from Wintermute who says they need to talk.

He gets brochures for Freeside – space stations which offer various services, such as vacations.

PART 3: MIDNIGHT IN THE RUE JULES VERNE

Freeside is somehow connected to whatever is happening to Case. Freeside is brotherl, banking, free port and spa. Space version of Geneva. Also home of the Tessier-Ashpools.

Case and Arm are on a jetliner to Paris. From there they go to space. Freeside.

Meet these Jewish-Rastafarians who run a space taxi.

Flatline is a person/program that Case ripped off from Sensenet. It is in Case's computer and has been guiding him.

p. 105: Freeside, Villa Straylight. Case still doesn't knwo what's going on.

He's there with Armit and Molly.

Get on space shuttle, Marcus Garvey, go to Freeside.

He tries to jaxck into Wintermute, the AI in Berne. Case gets zapped. He's wired into the deck. So energy can be transferred into his brain.

Wintermute can create surrogates like avatars that allow it to speak to people in the real world as in VR, Dean. Dean explains that Wintermute is only one part of a two part AI. It's like two parts of the same brain. Dean says that Armitage is going to lose it and then Case shoots Dean.

Armitage tells him to get on the Garvey in his space suit. Dixie tells Case that Armitage seems to be getting ready to start a run on the TA computer in Berne. The mainframes in Berne but it is also linked to an other one in Rio. Apparently, through the computer at Freeside which is acting like link. Hence, Case and Dixie are supposed to cut their way in using a Chinese ice breaker – this is to allow Armtiage to do his thing.

So if Wintermute is paying Armitage, then Wintermute is paying Case and Co. to burn it. It wants to burn itself. This is Dixie's conclusion.

On the other hand, Wintermute is, through Dean, trying to get Case to shaft Atmitage. Nothing makes sense to Case or Dixie.

Contradiction: Do p and not-p.

Dixie thinks it has something to do with the autonomy of the AI. The parent company, TA, does not want their AI to become smarter and therefore autonomous. But if they start to limit the AI, it becomes aware of this and everyone becomes paranoid.

Case goes to a bar and scores on some dope. he can't understand this.

He watches Riveria do his VR sex show.

Molly disappears. Case looks for her. They fight. She wants to be alone. She used to some VR hooker. Wants her own identity.

They find out about Lady 3 Jane just as they startv their run on Wintermute. She is an Ashcroft and her family owns Freeside.

He keeps getting loaded with drugs.

PART 4: STRAYLIGHT RUN

Here he's going to start to break into Wintermute. However, he gets busted by the cops for conspcircy to augemnt an AI, Armitage has also been bused. They traced him all the way from Chiba. The charge is going to be data invasion.

This charge is ironic - because is working for the AI. People do not want humans to try to make computers more autonomous.

Wintermute zaps the cops and so he is free to begin his run. Wintermute tells him that he wants Case to help him to be free from TA.

I don't know what this run is supposed to accomplish. Villa Straylight. TA family lives. Rich and eccentric. To destroy Wintermute, he needs a password. Winter does not know it. He needs it.

He realizes that there is a logic to this after all. The TA AI has two lobes. The one in Geneva is Wintermute. It wants to be shutdown. The one in Rio does not want to be shutdown - it does not want Case to have the password.

He goes with Molly into STAY. Molly shoots Old man Ashpool and kills him. IS THIS HAPPENING IN VR? The family is cryogenically preserved. Lady 3 Jane is conscious. Corto/Armitage has gone nuts.

Armitage is the only one who has the antidote to the poison.

Armitage is dead - floating out in space, Ashpool is dead.

Ice has penetrated to the core of the computer.

op. 205. Case is confused. Talks to Wintermute. Looking for password. Needs antidotes. Case wants to know how he will be paid if he succeeds.

Wintermute is acting on impulse.

Molly tried to assassinate Ladcy 3 Jane and her ninja, Hideo. Molly is hurt.

Jane says Wintermute underestmated her. 219.

Who is Peter Riviera?

They tell Molly that they know she is looking for the password for Wintermute and they are not going to tell her.

Peter is the one who killed Armitage.

Peter is a hologram. Decadent confident for Lady 3 Jane created bvy Wintermute. Body guard. Dope addict.

Is Hideo a construct too?

3 Jane fixes Molly. She says that Peter wants to kill Molly.

Her father killed her mother, whom she says was a visionary and wanted to chnage the diurection of the TA corporation. She killed her father because of that and froze him.

3 Jane says that Wintermute seems to have been a construct her mother left in the computer – THIS IS LIKE THE WOMAN IN JOHNY MNEMONIC.

p. 249. He's back in Chiba with the woman, Linda Lee, that he had seen get killed in the beginning of the novel.

It is as if nothing that we have just seen happened.

Linda tells him about a boy on the beach in Rio.

Case finds him and talks to him. He is the other half of Wintermute. Says his name is Neuromancer. the lane to the land of the dead.

The lover of nerves. Information. Data.

The ice is breaking up. SO THIS HAS ALL BEEN IN VR. CASE HAS BEEN FLYING AROUND IN VR.

Hideo is a ninja.

Case tells 3 Jane that Wintermute and Neuomancer are going to go at each other.

He tells her about Marie France as a girl before she married Ashpool. This is the mind of her 3 Jane's mother.

Riviera tries to shoot Case. Blinds Hideo by accident. He chases after Peter. Molly and Case take 3 Jane and are going to access then core -- this is all in VR.

They're going to release Wintermute.

p. 269: Wintermute and Neuromancer were two parts of the same mind that had been one and then were separated. They were made by Marie-France. Releasing Wintermute brought about peace. Wintemute brings down the TA world. And makes it more humane.

Everything turns out for Case. Molly leaves.

+++++++++++++++++

The computer AI uses humans as well as constructs to bring about actions in the real world than then affect it.

This is not a hero – in the normal sense – case gets paid – world is better – but that's not why Case acts.

There is no moral universe any more.