Summary
The three Turing cops take Case into custody. As they are questioning him, a microlight—a type of gardening robot—kills all three officers. Wintermute had hacked into the police station in order to reprogram the robots and force them to kill the officers. Case gets back on Marcus Garvey, the spaceship where Maelcum is, and decides to go back into cyberspace after talking with Dixie Flatline. Case sets the Chinese virus he purchased earlier into the computer. In the matrix, Wintermute takes on the form of the Finn. In the matrix, Wintermute shows Case an “essay” that Lady 3Jane Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool, the CEO of Tessier-Ashpool, created when she was twelve; the essay is a Gothic villa with infinite chambers, stairwells, and structures, named “Straylight.” Wintermute tells Case that Lady 3Jane had been at the cabaret with him during Riviera’s show, and also that to get into Straylight—which houses the AI—and kill the AI, Case will need to find a password that only Lady 3Jane knows.
Case wakes up, still in cyberspace. He had been brain-dead for five seconds while in the matrix. He encounters Molly’s consciousness. She tells him about Johnny, a boy she used to know. Together, Molly and Johnny had extorted gangsters, sometimes killing or blackmailing them. They made lots of money off of the Yakuza, but soon after, the Yakuza killed Johnny. Molly found him dead. Molly is simultaneously telling Case about how she explored Wintermute’s consciousness, recounting how Wintermute told her that he had tried to get into Straylight earlier to discover the Tessier-Ashpool family’s secrets, but had failed to do so.
Molly continues exploring Straylight, virtually accompanied by Case. She encounters an old man who tells her that his name is John Ashpool—3Jane’s father. He tells her he plans on committing suicide. She asks him whether he knows Wintermute, but Ashpool is drunk and high, unable to answer her coherently. As Ashpool passes out, Molly reaches into the bed he’s in and discovers the body of a dead girl in a pool of blood. Case sees the dead girl’s face transform into Linda Lee; at that moment, he realizes that it is Wintermute creating a projection. Molly shoots Ashpool.
Armitage arrives and starts to question Case about what form Wintermute takes when he sees him in the matrix, and whether he sees him as “General Girling.” Case goes back to Molly’s consciousness. While with Molly, Flatline sends him a message explaining that General Girling was the man who trained and involved Corto in the Pentagon’s “Operation Screaming Fist,” which may indicate that Case is in danger, since Corto’s sanity might be cracking.
Case wakes up on Marcus Garvey, where Maelcum informs him that Armitage has redirected the ship towards Finland after showing up to the ship with blood all over his shirt. Flatline informs Case that the reason the Tessier-Ashpool family isn’t all in Straylight is that most of them are in cryogenic sleep. A law firm in London manages much of their day-to-day business. However, this also means that they know John Ashpool is dead. A message comes in from Armitage, who has reverted back to Colonel Corto and is reliving the memory of his plane being shot down, which is why he is directing them toward the Finnish border. Case realizes that Armitage was the only one who knew how to deactivate the poison placed in his spinal cord.
Armitage/Corto descends further into a mental break, gripped with hysteria. Wintermute ejects him from Marcus Garvey and Case watches him fall to his death in Freeside. Case rejoins Molly in Straylight. As they journey, Case contemplates the nature of Ashpool’s corporate power—a power that differs from the kind Case had grown accustomed to. Ashpool, he realizes, is like a clan, something old and mysterious, like “soiled humanity” in its wealth and cruelty.
Wintermute appears as the Finn again and admits to killing Corto. Case interrogates him about the poison sacs in his spine; Wintermute tells him that he’ll get his “payoff” if they can complete the mission and reunite Wintermute with Neuromancer. Case returns to Molly and watches her enter a series of holograms left behind by Riviera, all of whom look like caricatures of Molly, Armitage, and Case—much like the one he originally cast of Molly in the cabaret. Molly’s leg is injured, but she chooses to continue on anyway. The holograms mark the entrance to 3Jane’s world, where Molly must continue their mission. As Molly walks into it, she raises her palm and kisses it, in turn kissing Case through their simstim link.
Analysis
Although Wintermute was never framed as a benevolent force, once it kills Corto, it becomes clear that the AI’s only goal is to merge with Neuromancer and become a superintelligence. It is prepared to kill anyone who stands in its way, and as Corto’s grip on reality fades away, so does Armitage/Corto’s usefulness to Wintermute’s mission. As Wintermute explains to Case before Molly enters Straylight, it sees itself as part of something “bigger.” However, even as Wintermute professes a belief in its fate as a part of something “bigger,” the AI remains unable to articulate what that “something bigger” is. What Flatline foreshadowed earlier, in telling Case about AI’s inability to pinpoint a source of motivation, becomes evident as the AI struggles to verbalize precisely what its end goal is.
The encounter with John Ashpool gives Case his first real glimpse at the Ashpool family—one that reorients his understanding of what evil and power look like. For Case, power had always been manifested by corporate domination, as visible in the many stores that occupy the Sprawl’s commercial highways. But after he sees Ashpool and the Tessier-Ashpool’s many Gothic, involuted sculptures in Villa Straylight, Case comes to understand that power can also manifest itself in something far more disturbing. For Case, Ashpool and the Tessier-Ashpool family represent a total corruption of human instinct.
John Ashpool represents a total decay of human life and ability; drunk, high, and mentally handicapped by years of cryogenic sleep, he can barely articulate himself. The portrait of the influential family’s patriarch grows all the more disturbing when Molly discovers that he has been sleeping with a dead girl upon which his daughter’s—3Jane’s—face has been projected. Building upon the novel’s exploration of a morally corrupt future, Ashpool’s compromised state reinforces the dystopian, cynical perspective that the novel takes in its depiction of a dystopia corrupted by technology, greed, and manipulation.
As Molly ventures through Straylight accompanied by Case, she reveals a backstory that mirrors his own. Much like him and Linda Lee, Molly, too, lost a lover to the seedy crime that runs through every city. After Johnny was killed by the Yakuza, it was Molly who found his dead body—a parallel to Case, who found Linda’s body at his feet after she was killed in the arcade. The novel provides us with two examples, Case and Molly, of people who have lost their lives and love to crime within this dystopian world, and who later fell even deeper into crime themselves as a way of escaping or repressing their emotional pain. For the majority of the novel, both Case and Molly remain emotionally restrained. However, when faced with the threat of the AI, they begin to experience flashbacks. Similarly, as the AI loses its grip on Armitage, Corto experiences flashbacks so severe that the AI deems him unsafe to be on the ship and kills him.
As the novel draws closer to its conclusion, it becomes clear that almost all the characters, be they projections, ROMs, AI, or people, share a similar sensation of loss or absence in relation to their perceived purpose in life. Wintermute searches for something bigger; Case, for a way back into cyberspace, or drugs that can mimic the high he feels when in the matrix; Molly, for money to modify her body and forget the traumatic memories of her past; Riviera, for more money to buy drugs. None of these characters feel a sense of moral connection or even identity. Instead, their individuality has been effaced by stimulation via technology or drugs.
