Case punched to within four grid points of the cube. Its blank face, towering above him now, began to seethe with faint internal shadows, as though a thousand dancers whirled behind a vast sheet of frosted glass. “Knows we’re here,” the Flatline observed. Case punched again, once; they jumped forward by a single grid point. A stippled gray circle formed on the face of the cube. “Dixie….” “Back off, fast.” The gray area bulged smoothly, became a sphere, and de- tached itself from the cube. Case felt the edge of the deck sting his palm as he slapped MAX REVERSE. The matrix blurred backward; they plunged down a twilit shaft of Swiss banks. He looked up. The sphere was darker now, gaining on him. Falling. “Jack out,” the Flatline said. The dark came down like a hammer.
Cold steel odor and ice caressed his spine. And faces peering in from a neon forest, sailors and hustlers and whores, under a poisoned silver sky…. “Look, Case, you tell me what the fuck is going on with you, you wig or something?” A steady pulse of pain, midway down his spine–
Rain woke him, a slow drizzle, his feet tangled in coils of discarded fiberoptics. The arcade’s sea of sound washed over him, receded, returned. Rolling over, he sat up and held his head. Light from a service hatch at the rear of the arcade showed him broken lengths of damp chipboard and the dripping chassis of a gutted game console. Streamlined Japanese was stenciled across the side of the console in faded pinks and yellows. He glanced up and saw a sooty plastic window, a faint glow of fluorescents. His back hurt, his spine. He got to his feet, brushed wet hair out of his eyes. Something had happened…. He searched his pockets for money, found nothing, and shivered. Where was his jacket? He tried to find it, looked behind the console, but gave up. On Ninsei, he took the measure of the crowd. Friday. It had to be a Friday. Linda was probably in the arcade. Might have money, or at least cigarettes…. Coughing, wringing rain from the front of his shirt, he edged through the crowd to the arcade’s entrance. Holograms twisted and shuddered to the roaring of the games, ghosts overlapping in the crowded haze of the place, a smell of sweat and bored tension. A sailor in a white t-shirt nuked Bonn on a Tank War console, an azure flash. She was playing Wizard’s Castle, lost in it, her gray eyes rimmed with smudged black paintstick. She looked up as he put his arm around her, smiled. “Hey. How you doin’? Look wet.” He kissed her. “You made me blow my game,” she said. “Look there ass hole. Seventh level dungeon and the god dam vampires got me.” She passed him a cigarette. “You look pretty strung, man. Where you been?” “I don’t know.” “You high, Case? Drinkin’ again? Eatin’ Zone’s dex?” “Maybe . . . how long since you seen me?” “Hey, it’s a put-on, right?” She peered at him. “Right?” “No. Some kind of blackout. I . . . I woke up in the alley.” “Maybe somebody decked you, baby. Got your roll intact?” He shook his head. “There you go. You need a place to sleep, Case?” “I guess so.” “Come on, then.” She took his hand. “We’ll get you a coffee and something to eat. Take you home. It’s good to see you, man.” She squeezed his hand. He smiled. Something cracked. Something shifted at the core of things. The arcade froze, vibrated–
She was gone. The weight of memory came down, an entire body of knowledge driven into his head like a microsoft into a socket. Gone. He smelled burning meat. The sailor in the white t-shirt was gone. The arcade was empty, silent. Case turned slowly, his shoulders hunched, teeth bared, his hands bunched into involuntary fists. Empty. A crumpled yellow candy wrapper, balanced on the edge of a console, dropped to the floor and lay amid flattened butts and styrofoam cups. “I had a cigarette,” Case said, looking down at his white- knuckled fist. “I had a cigarette and a girl and a place to sleep. Do you hear me, you son of a bitch? You hear me?” Echoes moved through the hollow of the arcade, fading down corridors of consoles. He stepped out into the street. The rain had stopped. Ninsei was deserted. Holograms flickered, neon danced. He smelled boiled veg- etables from a vendor’s pushcart across the street. An unopened pack of Yeheyuans lay at his feet, beside a book of matches. JULIUS DEANE IMPORT EXPORT. Case staled at the printed logo and its Japanese translation. “Okay,” he said, picking up the matches and opening the pack of cigarettes. “I hear you.”