How It All Goes Down
- Molly retrieves the key and opens the door.
- In the matrix, the Kuang virus is ready to go.
- Case and Dixie crack into the AI. The defense systems kick in, and Dixie sacrifices himself to allow Case the time to dive into the system.
- At the core of the data, he reunites with Neuromancer. Neuromancer tells Case that he was wrong. Linda may be data but she is alive and living a true life in the computer program.
- Neuromancer saw her death coming through the "pattern you sometimes imagined you could detect in the dance of the street" (23.58). So he brought her into himself in the hopes of enticing Case to stay there as well.
- But he failed. Now, he doesn't know what will happen when he and Wintermute merge.
- Case jacks out. 3Jane won't give up the password. Case tells her he doesn't know what will happen if she gives up the password, but he knows things will change. She accepts those terms and gives him the word.
- In the matrix, Case evades the AI's defenses with a grace likened to Hideo's. Guess he's a cyberninja now. He inserts the password, "three notes, high and pure. A true name" (23.98). The world recedes away from him.
- When he comes to Aerol is strapping him into g-web aboard the Babylon Rocker. He can hear the Zion dub music playing.