SPOILER ALERT: This ficlett is concerns the end of "Mona Lisa Overdrive," and will also tie in with Gibson's short story "the Hinterlands." You don't need to be familiar with that story to understand this one, but you'll probably appreciate this more if you are. This entire story may confuse anyone who hasn't read the "Sprawl" trilogy recently, as it deals mainly with details and small loose ends.
William Gibson's universe and characters belong to himself. This is nothing more than a fan's speculation.
If someone asked Angie how she had come to live in this stone mansion with Bobby, she'd have said without missing a beat that she'd always lived here. Weaving a small braid into a front lock of her brown hair, watching the grass gently billow around the iron lawn ornaments, listening to Bobby crack opened a beer, it didn't occur to her to wonder how long she'd been braiding in front of the window, how long the sound of Bobby popping the can opened had lasted, until he spoke.
"I'm starin' to go stir crazy in here."
Angie paused her braiding and glanced over her shoulder to look at him. He was dressed as he had been the day of their last shouting match, black jeans, black corporate-casual shirt, dark disheveled bangs. Their argument, she couldn't remember what it had been about, or how long ago it had happened. Or where it had happened. It hadn't happened here, but where else had they ever lived?
Angie glanced back at the window. "Where are we?"
"Castle of 3Jane's," Bobby voice held a sense of fatigued patience, like he'd already answered this question for her a dozen times already. "Well her mom's. Brought up from Old Lady Tessier's memories."
Angie felt her brow furrow. Tessier…3Jane…those names had meant something to her, both long ago and very recently…
Bobby sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Shit Ange, I keep forgetting you're new here. Takes time to adjust. For the first while you're just sort of dreaming… Look, you remember our wedding? In the Factory? Being flatlined, coming here?"
And it was like a dream, like waking up from one. Or realizing you're dreaming, and remembering what your real life's supposed to be like. It all just flew right back to her. The wedding, her previous life as a superstar, her childhood before the matrix…
Once, forever ago, Angie had been fully human, just a little girl, daughter of super-scientist Christopher Mitchell. Then when she was very small—seven? Nine?—he put something in her head, a web of silver covering her brain like manmade highways carving through a forest. The web brought her strange dreams. When she went to sleep she would visit a strange world made of neon lines and shapes, populated by ghosts who always pursued her, their motives ranging from protective adoration to homicidal malice.
She would learn, later, that this place was no magical realm, but simply the matrix, cyberspace, the computer world that ordinary people jacked into daily to examine data, access entertainment, and hack corporate information. The ghosts were AIs, self-aware programs, with whom her father had made a deal. Over what, she never found out. But his end of the bargain began with the web in Angie's brain, and ended with her "marriage" to Bobby. Between those two events was a short life as an orphaned fugitive, guarded by a mercenary named Turner; a few years of tutoring and training from the "Rastas," Voodoo practitioners who understood the "ghosts" in cyberspace better than any other human, and came the closest to helping Angie understand herself; and then life as Angie Mitchell, the simstim star. Overlapping those last two stages was Bobby, her first and only love. And the Loa, the AIs who spoke to her. Dragging her in and out of cyberspace, to give her mysterious instructions.
Her life in the "real world" had ended when the AIs in the matrix had guided—or lured—her to her "wedding" to Bobby, up in the dark old factory. And that was when cyberspace and the real world had suddenly merged, or overlapped. She saw herself walking down the dark concrete floor of the factory, towards Bobby's body on the stretcher, her human companions standing around her, and it was all overlain with Maman Brigitte (one of the Loa) and Continuity (her faithful computer back home, here represented by a cloud of silver tinsel). Bending over the stretcher to embrace Bobby, and suddenly she was standing next to him, in an empty void, their marriage complete.
And now she was here.
"We're inside the matrix,"
"Not quite." Bobby said. "The Aleph. Remember that little box, by my stretcher?"
She gave a tiny nod. "We're dead."
"In body. Not in here."
Was it possible? Angie had heard of personality constructs, AIs designed to mimic the thoughts and reactions of real people. And sometimes they were made by "flatlining," a copy made during the split second when the subject was experiencing brain death. Except Angie didn't feel like a copy. She felt like the same old Angie, dreaming in cyberspace again. And the more she thought of her old life, the more it all came back to her, almost without any effort. No gaps missing. No, she couldn't be a construct. Their minds had to have been downloaded into the Aleph, somehow. Downloaded, not copied.
Angie's eyes stayed now on the flowing grass, the metal flamingo in the lawn gently bobbing in the breeze. "We stuck in here? In the Aleph?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Bobby turned back to his desk, taking a long gulp from his beer.
"Why'd we even come here?"
"I came to find the shape of cyberspace. Figure out its consciousness. Consol cowboy nirvana. You, the Loa had something planned for you, didn't they?"
Yes. The Loa always had something planned for her. "Well where are they?" She was getting frustrated. "What do they want from me, what am I supposed to do?" She glared desperately at her lover. "Bobby? What do I do?"
He shook his head, pouring over papers on an elegant roll-top desk. "Figure something out."
This sounded like the start to another one of their old arguments. She didn't want that. She wanted to leave their problems behind in the "real" world.
Angie decided to explore the house. Not that she needed to; she knew it by heart, every stair case, every room and balcony. Maybe because she'd lived here for an eternity already, or maybe because the knowledge just came right to her, like how she'd just know things when she entered cyberspace, sometimes. She eventually gave up on the house, and went outside. Traveled down the long ornamented lawn, to the tall pine forest, and walked as far as she could, never once changing direction, until somehow she found herself back at the house. She tried that countless more times, changing her direction with each try, before giving up. It was a loop. The "background" surrounding the house was just an illusion.
And then she was climbing a tight spiral staircase, many stories up in the house, not sure if she'd wandered back inside and just forgotten, or if she'd somehow just appeared there. Angie wasn't typically a person who was easily frustrated—she'd been desensitized to just about everything—but this was getting to her. Before the panic could set in, she closed her eyes and forced herself to think, think of a solution. What could she always rely on? She recalled the AI that had served her in life, not a "ghost" but an ordinary domestic AI. Her home computer.
"Continuity." She raised her voice. "Continuity, you were able to attend my wedding. I know you can attend to me now, wherever you are."
And there he was, a few steps above her. Looking as he had at the wedding, a lightning storm of silver.
"Continuity," she ordered, "I want to leave this place, I want to go outside the Aleph. The matrix, Continuity. Take me to the matrix. Can you do that? You're a computer, you can broadcast. Download a program from one computer to another. Download me into the matrix."
He just continued his lightning dance, and for a moment she thought he was ignoring her. Then she noticed he was getting closer, or maybe she was being drawn closer to him, and then the tinsel light was all around her, blinding out her vision of the house. Cold, freezing, couldn't breathe. Underwater. Angie floundered, clawing, not knowing which direction was up. Tasted salt…
And washed up onto cold damp sand. Sound of waves crashing. Pushing herself up, wet sand caking her face and hair, she found herself on a silver beach. Waves lapped at her feet. Ahead of her lay a feint cityscape, obscured by fog. Jagged cliffs in front of that. Off in the distance was a tiny glow. A campfire.
She pushed herself up, brushed sand off her clothes. She was barefoot, wearing a pale blue dress Bobby had once bought her. One-sleeved, loose flowing fabric, like a Greek oracle or princess might wear. He'd got it for her as a sort of humorous compliment, about her constant role in the spotlight, as Christopher Mitchell's daughter, a simstim star, and the target of the Loa. Her brown hair was still short from Prophyre's last haircut, and still held the half-finished braid she'd begun earlier.
Walking briskly through the sand towards the fire, she heard Bobby's voice call, "Hey, wait up!"
He was treading out of the waves, still in those black clothes. "Continuity showed up, told me you'd come here. Well didn't tell me exactly, but…"
"He's become very tight-lipped since our wedding," Angie noted.
As they neared the fire, laughter traveled across the beach, feminine and young. The girl sitting in the sand reminded Angie of Mona, the young prostitute who'd replaced her as the simstim star. Where was Mona now, she wondered? And then instantly knew (somehow): enjoying her new life of luxury, watched over and protected by Prophyre, safe. This girl was like Mona, but older, thinner. Dark messy hair pulled up in a silk cloth. Clothes like an athlete's, but ripped and worn. A man was with her, mid-twenties. White T-shirt, jeans. Something about his demeanor made Angie think he was one of Bobby's crowd, a consol cowboy. The couple looked up from their card game with mild interest as Angie and Bobby approached.
"What can we do ya for?" the man sounded irritated to be disturbed.
Angie suddenly felt like an intruder, like a child who'd gone wandering around the neighborhood to explore and, without thinking, climbed through the window of some adult couple's mansion.
Bobby answered for both of them. "Tell us where we are."
"Beach," the man said. "From Lady Marie-France Tessier-Ashpool's memory." He seemed like he wanted to get back to his card game. "Anything else?"
Bobby's irritation matched the other cowboy's. "Who are you?"
Quickly Angie cut in, "I'm Angie Mitchell, and this is my husband Bobby Newmark. We're, uh, new around here."
"No shit." The man shifted in the sand, not looking at them. "Case."
The girl smiled at them. "Linda. Linda Lee."
Silence. Then,
"Bullsiht."
Angie whipped around to glare at Bobby, as shocked as she was angry by his rudeness.
Case looked up at Bobby under his eyebrows. "'Scuse me?"
"You're not Case, can't be. Case is still alive. Lives on the East Coast, married with kids."
The "Case" before them looked like his intelligence had been insulted. "I know."
"So someone made a construct of Case?" Angie tried to keep her tone one of polite curiosity. "What for?"
"Fuck if I know," Case's construct shrugged. "Ask Neuromancer."
"Who?"
Case sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. Linda answered for him.
"Neuromancer was an AI, brought us here. Flatlined us. Me, right before I was killed in the arcade. Case while he was under, working with him. He brought me for Case, so Case'd 'hate something.' And then after I'd served my purpose, I guess he felt like I deserved a reward, so he brought Case here for me. Anyway that's how I figure it."
None of this made any sense to Angie. But she had long since gotten used to receiving her answers in riddles. As a girl she'd thought they were doing it on purpose, as some kind of test to her intelligence, but later deiced that they didn't realize they were doing it. Talking to an AI was like talking to a person who was half asleep. And did Angie talk to people that way, now that she, too, was an AI?
"This have anything to do with when It Changed?" Bobby asked.
"When what changed?" Case grumbled.
"The matrix."
"Well shit yeah, Neuromancer is what changed, he became the matrix."
"You helped him do it." Bobby said flatly.
"Yeah. What about it?"
"You been playing cards on the beach last fifteen years?"
Case stared at Bobby. "What if I have?"
Bobby jabbed his hands into the pockets of his black jeans, sighed through his lips. "Okay, guess you're not up to date on current events. The matrix ain't one whole entity anymore. Split off into dozens, hundreds, maybe millions of AIs. We don't know why."
"We know," Linda said, like it was nothing. "That's why we came back here."
"I'm completely lost," Angie said quietly.
Linda explained, "After we were flatlined, Case and me, we lived on the beach, but we went to other parts of cyberspace too. Waved to the real Case once, when he was sliding past the Easter Seaboard Fission Authority. But after all those others started poppin' up in cyberspace, the Loa, and 3Jane, and all these different programs fighting for control over the matrix, we just wanted to keep out of it."
"So," Bobby's rage was reaching a boil. "I been spending all these years—cowboys all around the globe have been working for fifteen years—trying to figure out how It Changed, and you're tellin' me that the guy did it's been here, this whole time, dicking around on a beach?"
"And being married with kids in the Sprawl," Case was shuffling his deck. "You people so desperate for information, why didn't someone go ask him?"
"No one knew his name, I just found it out recently." Bobby's voice was falling, cooling off.
"Well, now you know." Case threw a card onto the sand. "Piss off."
Angie remembered her dreams. "The street woman was with you, when It Changed. The girl with mirrors for eyes."
Awkward silence. Like she'd brought up a forgotten ex to a married couple.
"How's Molly," Case asked, still dealing out cards, trying to sound like he didn't really care.
"She made a deal with the Loa," Angie answered. "Helped me meet up with Bobby in here, and in return got her slate clean. No more bad records of her anywhere. Free to start again."
And what about us? Do we get to start again, Angie wondered, or do we just sit and play cards on the beach or braid our hair in a mansion for the rest of eternity?
"Fifteen years," Angie whispered. "Didn't you two go insane?"
Linda pursed her lips, shook her head. "Didn' feel that long." She added, "You'll get used to it."
This did little to encourage Angie.
And something else that had been eating her, since Case had introduced himself…
"If you're here in the matrix, and Case is still alive on the outside, then you're not really Case. And I'm," the words caught in her throat, where a lump was forming.
"No." Bobby said quickly. "No. You're not some copy of Angie Mitchell, you're Angie. I know it. Remember, when we went to cyberspace together, all those times? This feels exactly like that. We're inside cyberspace. C'mon did you even remember any transition? I went to sleep alive, slipped into the matrix, and my body died while I was away. I didn't. I'm Bobby, you're Angie. You," he gestured to Case, "They must'a done something different with you."
"What's it even matter," Case grumbled.
"It matters to the real Angie!" Angie exclaimed, tears forming. "If she thought she was on her way to her 'wedding,' a new stage in her life, and instead she just…"
Case was looking at her with a sudden sympathy, like he'd just kicked a kitten. Linda watched him, like, why don't you say something? Case finally set down his cards, and began rummaging through their supplies next to the fireplace. He produced a food container, and flicked the lid up. "Have some Crab Rangoon."
It was such a pathetic attempt to comfort. So pathetic and so perfect. Angie wiped her eyes with her first two fingers. God, she loved Crab Rangoon.
A/N: If anyone's memory is scratchy, one of the last paragraphs of "Neuromancer" describes Case seeing Linda and himself in cyberspace, after the adventure was over. Which makes for a pretty huge irony in the sequels, all these characters struggling to figure out what happened in "Neuromancer," when a construct of Case was sitting in the matrix that whole time. (Unless said construct somehow got destroyed soon after its creation.)