William Gibson. Neuromancer

He woke and found her stretched beside him in the dark. His neck was brittle, made of twigs. There was a steady pulse of pain midway down his spine. Images formed and reformed: a flickering montage of the Sprawl’s towers and ragged Fuller domes, dim figures moving toward him in the shade beneath a bridge or overpass…. “Case? It’s Wednesday, Case.” She moved, rolling over, reaching across him. A breast brushed his upper arm. He heard her tear the foil seal from a bottle of water and drink. “Here.” She put the bottle in his hand. “I can see in the dark, Case. Micro channel image-amps in my glasses.” “My back hurts.” “That’s where they replaced your fluid. Changed your blood too. Blood ’cause you got a new pancreas thrown into the deal. And some new tissue patched into your liver. The nerve stuff I dunno. Lot of injections. They didn’t have to open anything up for the main show.” She settled back beside him. “It’s 2:43:12 AM, Case. Got a readout chipped into my optic nerve.” He sat up and tried to sip from the bottle. Gagged, coughed, lukewarm water spraying his chest and thighs. “I gotta punch deck, ‘ he heard himself say. He was groping for his clothes. “I gotta know….” She laughed. Small strong hands gripped his upper arms. “Sorry, hotshot. Eight day wait. Your nervous system would fall out on the floor if you jacked in now. Doctor’s orders. Besides, they figure it worked. Check you in a day or so.” He lay down again. “Where are we?” “Home. Cheap Hotel.” “Where’s Armitage?” “Hilton, selling beads to the natives or something. We’re out of here soon, man. Amsterdam, Paris, then back to the Sprawl.” She touched his shoulder. “Roll over. I give a good massage.” He lay on his stomach, arms stretched forward, tips of his fingers against the walls of the coffin. She settled over the small of his back, kneeling on the temper foam, the leather jeans cool against his skin. Her fingers brushed his neck. “How come you’re not at the Hilton?” She answered him by reaching back, between his thighs and gently encircling his scrotum with thumb and forefinger. She rocked there for a minute in the dark, erect above him, her other hand on his neck. The leather of her jeans creaked softly with the movement. Case shifted, feeling himself harden against the temper foam. His head throbbed, but the brittleness in his neck seemed to retreat. He raised himself on one elbow, rolled, sank back against the foam, pulling her down, licking her breasts, small hard nipples sliding wet across his cheek. He found the zip on the leather jeans and tugged it down. “It’s okay,” she said, “I can see.” Sound of the jeans peeling down. She struggled beside him until she could kick them away. She threw a leg across him and he touched her face. Unexpected hardness of the implanted lenses. “Don’t,” she said, “fingerprints.”

Now she straddled him again, took his hand, and closed it over her, his thumb along the cleft of her buttocks, his fingers spread across the labia. As she began to lower herself, the images came pulsing back, the faces, fragments of neon arriving and receding. She slid down around him and his back arched convulsively. She rode him that way, impaling herself, slipping down on him again and again, until they both had come, his orgasm flaring blue in a timeless space, a vastness like the matrix, where the faces were shredded and blown away down hurricane corridors, and her inner thighs were strong and wet against his hips.

On Nisei, a thinner, weekday version of the crowd went through the motions of the dance. Waves of sound rolled from the arcades and pachinko parlors. Case glanced into the Chat and saw Zone watching over his girls in the warm, beer-smelling twilight. Ratz was tending bar. “You seen Wage, Ratz?” “Not tonight.” Ratz made a point of raising an eyebrow at Molly. “You see him, tell him I got his money.” “Luck changing, my artiste?” “Too soon to tell.”

“Well, I gotta see this guy,” Case said, watching his reflection in her glasses. “I got biz to cancel out of.” “Armitage won’t like it, I let you out of my sight.” She stood beneath Deane’s melting clock, hands on her hips. “The guy won’t talk to me if you’re there. Deane I don’t give two shits about. He takes care of himself. But I got people who’ll just go under if I walk out of Chiba cold. It’s my people, you know?” Her mouth hardened. She shook her head.

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