William Gibson

Chevette rides as a courier, banging her paper laminate-framed bike through the streets of a future 'Frisco - she lives for it. On an impulse, she's risked everything; stolen a pair of sunglasses from some jerk. No ordinary shades, either: loaded with super-sensitive data, they could decide the destiny of the entire city. Rydell is working for Mr Warbaby, who has been hired to recover the glasses. But Rydell is none too sure that he likes his new employment opportunity; with SFPD Homicide involved, an abandoned bridge populated by freaks and misfits, and some weirdness involving the Republic of Desire and a 'Death Star', it's turning out to be a very strange and dangerous scene indeed ...> William Gibson, author of the classic Neuromancer and creator of cyberpunk, here turns his hyper-acute imagination on the near future - to supercharged, nerve-shredding effect.

Virtual Light

里森

The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic.

But here the mirrored ziggurats down Lázaro Cárdenas flow with the luminous flesh of giants, shunting out the night’s barrage of dreams to the waiting avenidas—business as usual, world without end.

a Japanese vodka, Come Back Salmon, its name more irritating than its lingering aftertaste.

His gaze strays to NHK Weather. A low-pressure front is crossing Kansas. Next to it, an eerily calm Islamic downlink ceaselessly reiterates the name of God in a fractal-based calligraphy.

The cameras under the rear bumper were his favorites; they made parking really easy; you could see exactly where you were backing up.

Then Sgt. Valdez went post-traumatic in stone bugfuck fashion, walking into a downtown tavern and clipping both kneecaps off a known pedophile—this amazingly repulsive character, nickname of Jellybeans, who had absolutely no connection with the Pooky Bear murders.

Their uniforms were black and they were wearing the same kind of black high-top SWAT-trainers that Rydell had worn on patrol in Knoxville, the ones with the Kevlar insoles in case somebody snuck up and tried to shoot you in the bottom of the foot.

There was a fridge-magnet on the thermos that said I’M NOT OKAY, YOU’RE NOT OKAY—BUT, HEY, THAT’S OKAY.

And maybe, in that instant of weird clarity, with Gunhead’s crumpled front end still trying to climb the shredded remains of a pair of big leather sofas, and with the memory of Kenneth Turvey’s death finally real before him, Rydell had come to the conclusion that that high crazy thing, that rush of Going For It, was maybe something that wasn’t always quite entirely to be trusted.

But when the elevator doors opened, this Japanese girl fell out. Or near enough, Chevette grabbing her beneath both arms and propping her against the edge of the door. ‘Where party?’ ‘What folks gonna ask you,’ Chevette said.

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