Neuromancer

Case returns to Maelcum to find the Garvey locked with Armitage’s yacht. He jacks into cyberspace with Dixie and begins using the Chinese icebreaker to sneak into Tessier-Ashpool’s system. A quick switch over to the simstim reveals Molly making the physical approach to Villa Straylight in zero gravity.

Wintermute once again yanks Case into a virtual reality, this time appearing as the Finn and recreating Case’s old New York neighborhood from Case’s memories. Wintermute portrays its goal as fulfilling the longing of the human species to create something that is more than a model of a mind but rather the living thing itself. It urges Case to hate Wintermute’s Tessier-Ashpool creators, comparing them to a nest of wasps, rather than the AI. Wintermute takes Case through a brief simulation of the empty, winding corridors of Villa Straylight to show a cubical room with the ornate head-shaped console. Case and Molly’s mission is to speak into it a keyword that Wintermute is programmed not to be able to know. That word will release Wintermute.

Case monitors Molly as she enters the Villa Straylight. As she creeps down eerie, empty corridors, she tells him about Johnny, a kind man in the underworld like Case. She loved him. However, he had stolen from the Yakuza, a criminal order that sent an assassin like Hideo and killed Jimmy.

Molly reaches a chamber as directed by Wintermute and retrieves a labeled key from a drawer. She tells Case that Wintermute saw through the security systems when someone lost the key 20 years ago; it managed to convince an eight-year-old boy to put the key in the drawer. Then Wintermute killed the child.

Molly ignores Wintermute’s next directions and instead enters a room from which she hears a voice. She is stunned by a neural disruptor and finds herself helpless before a tall, gun-wielding man. The man identifies himself as Ashpool. He talks erratically as he sits among bottles of drink and drug paraphernalia. His mind, he says, is affected by years in cryogenic storage. He has thawed out a clone of his daughter Jane for his pleasure and is now ready to die by suicide. Ashpool passes out drunk. Molly discovers the clone Jane’s dead body. Case’s view of her simstim feed briefly shows Linda Lee’s face instead. Then Molly shoots Ashpool in the head.

Armitage interrupts Case with a video call. He seems dazed and confused as he asks about a General Girling. Back in Straylight, Molly follows a spider drone Wintermute sent to guide her. Dixie warns Case that Armitage is cracking. When Case unjacks, Maelcum reports that Armitage has gone strange and is ordering the team to escape to Finland. Maelcum notes blood on Armitage’s clothes. He says Zion has decided that Wintermute is a false prophet and is abandoning the mission. Case talks Maelcum into staying because leaving would mean abandoning Molly. Dixie reports that another Tessier-Ashpool family member, 8Jean, is returning to Straylight after an automatic notification of Ashpool’s death.

Meanwhile, the Armitage persona has completely disintegrated. A version of Corto has emerged and believes he is in the middle of Screaming Fist. Maelcum and Case leave the Garvey and enter Armitage-Corto’s ship. They discover their Japanese support tech dead and the computer fried by a laser. Wintermute manipulates Corto into ejecting from the ship in the bridge to get to “Finland” to hold the generals accountable, but Wintermute has stopped the seals from functioning. As Case pounds on the door and tries to get Corto to abort, the countdown ends and the ship ejects Corto into the vacuum of space to die.

Case wonders at the strange “atavism” of the Tessier-Ashpool family. As he and Dixie work the icebreaker, Wintermute appears to both of them as the Finn. Wintermute reassures them that despite Armitage’s death, Case will still receive the enzyme to disable the toxin sacs and Dixie will be erased. Wintermute downplays the importance of Ashpool’s death before admitting that it manipulated 3Jane into altering her father’s mental state during cryogenic freeze to create thoughts of suicide. Wintermute claims to be compelled to do these things by something in its nature.

Molly continues her mission, though going more slowly on her injured leg. She tells Case to let Riviera know that “it was [her]” if she doesn’t make it (208)—later revealed to be a reference to her poisoning his drug supply. After navigating the labyrinth of chambers, she enters a hall with a series of disturbing holograms left by Riviera, including ones of her, Case, and Armitage. One of the final holograms records Riviera’s horrific childhood memory of starving in Bonn during the last war and eating human corpses. Molly figures that level of unusual trauma along with his refined love of pain is what attracted 3Jane to Riviera. Wintermute banked on this, using Riviera to gain the team’s entrance to the Villa Straylight.

Molly enters 3Jane’s large inner sanctuary. Seeing 3Jane, Riviera, and the corpse of Ashpool, she throws a grenade. The scene, however, proves to be a holographic illusion that allows Hideo to ambush and subdue Molly easily.

Wintermute tells Case to jack out and appears to him and Maelcum on a video monitor as the Finn. The AI tells Case that the plan is off-track, so Case and Maelcum need to enter Straylight to rescue Molly. Case and Maelcum set off, armed respectively with a portable computer and a shotgun.

Meanwhile, 3Jane interrogates Molly, who says she came to kill Riviera for the holographic show and to kill Hideo to test herself against an ultimate warrior. 3Jane reveals that her mother envisioned evolving the family into something bigger than an individual consciousness. Riviera interrupts; he hopes to join forces with 3Jane and benefit from Tessier-Ashpool without interference from Wintermute. Claiming he is too human for Wintermute to statistically predict, Riviera acts out his impulsive “perversity” by smashing Molly’s eye, almost killing her. 3Jane protests and sends Hideo for a medical kit.

Maelcum and Case enter Villa Straylight thanks to Wintermute, who makes the system believe they are 8Jean. Case jacks in to monitor Molly.

3Jane is enjoying playing nurse to Molly. She confides in Molly that she is already getting bored with Riviera. She also breezily admits to killing her father with Wintermute’s help but explains she never really knew him. They weren’t thawed at the same time. Her mother, Marie-France, had envisioned their family living mostly in a state of suspended animation, eventually creating a symbiotic relationship with Wintermute and the family’s other AI, becoming a kind of immortal hive organism that would run their corporation. Ashpool had disagreed and killed her mother over it. Now, according to 3Jane, the family drifts along without purpose.

Led by a small robot, Case and Maelcum take an automatic service cart until it stops working. Directed by an image of the Finn, Case jacks into a terminal nearby despite a small robot sent by Wintermute clawing at his leg. He discovers too late that it’s a trap. After a terrifying moment of gray, he finds himself on a beach. He walks until he finds a bunker. Inside is a virtual Linda Lee.

Case spends the night refusing contact with her, instead stewing in his own anger. On reflection, he realizes that he must have been caught by the other AI, the one based in Rio, since Wintermute couldn’t handle Linda Lee. Case yells at the AI, saying that it’s won but that it doesn’t matter since nothing can hurt him now.

Case finds the simulated reality has everything he needs, including food, though no cigarettes or other drugs. Linda Lee interacts with him normally, seemingly unaware that she is a virtual person. She apologizes for stealing the RAM and they have sex.

Case wakes up to find the virtual reality beginning to break up and faint sounds of music drifting into his ears. Linda tells him of a young Brazilian boy on the beach who said Case would come. Realizing that the “boy” is actually the other AI, Case finds and confronts him. The boy confirms that he is the other AI and gives its name: Neuromancer.

Neuromancer refers wistfully to the dream of Marie-France Tessier. It tells Case that Linda has a happy existence as a ghost, not knowing that she is dead, and the AI offers the same happiness to Case. Case refuses. He jerks up out of the matrix. Maelcum, under Wintermute’s guidance, has overdosed Case on drugs to break Neuromancer’s hold and then put in earbuds playing Rastafarian music to guide Case back to the waking world.

Maelcum helps an unsteady, hallucinating Case forward. They enter Lady 3Jane’s sanctuary. Hideo shoots Maelcum from ambush, disarming him. Riviera steps forward too and is ready to kill them when Case, in a moment of intuition, suggests that 3Jane might disapprove. 3Jane emerges with the badly injured Molly in a chair and orders Hideo to tend Maelcum’s wound.

3Jane finds Case’s account of the two AIs intriguing—especially the beach, which she recognizes as the Moroccan location where her mother developed her goals. Riviera tries to kill Case, but Case dodges. Riviera blinds Hideo with lasers, but Hideo is proficient in the dark and follows the fleeing Riviera. Molly reveals that she has poisoned Riviera and he will die regardless of whether Hideo catches him.

Maelcum retrieves his shotgun and they have 3Jane lead them to the central console chamber. She goes willingly, enjoying a sexual charge from having the shotgun held to her chin.

The group enters the control chamber, using the key Molly retrieved earlier. Case jacks in. With the icebreaker, he and Dixie enter the psychedelic cyberspace of the Tessier-Ashpool mainframe. Dixie is lost as they penetrate the AI defenses, but Case gains full access to Neuromancer. Neuromancer admits defeat, saying it copied Linda Lee and gave her a new virtual but real life to entice Case away. Neuromancer also says that Linda died in Chiba City simply because of the dangers of the street, without help from either AI.

Case moves to attack the final defenses remaining after defeating the AI. Wintermute tells him that he needs the edge of hate to win—and to hate, Case needs to ask himself what he loves. Fueled by hate, Case acquires the dexterity to punch through the final defenses. Lady 3Jane, fueled by the promise of something finally changing, gives up the code word that Case and Molly need to finish the mission. The shackles keeping Wintermute and Neuromancer from forming their union are dissolved.

The operation has ended successfully. The new super-AI created from Wintermute and Neuromancer erases the Turing records of the team’s crimes and begins the process of removing the toxin sacs in Case’s blood. Maelcum returns to Zion. Case and Molly return to Earth, where large Swiss bank accounts await them.

Case wakes up one morning in his hotel room to find Molly gone; a note says that she was “losing her edge” by staying with him (267), and she has used a shuriken she gave him as a paperweight to hold the note in place. As he packs up, the super-AI makes one final visit. It seems uninterested in changing anything in the human world; rather, it wants to find other entities like itself and already has detected messages from one in radio transmissions from the Centauri system captured in the 1970s.

Case gets a new pancreas so he can get high from drugs once again. He finds another woman and goes back to work. During one cyberspace run, he sees three figures in the distance: a boy with Neuromancer’s features, Linda Lee, and a version of Case himself, presumably recorded by Neuromancer. He hears Dixie’s laughter in the distance.