Neuromancer - Gibson William - Страница 58

He found a girl who called herself Michael.

And one October night, punching himself past the scarlet tiers of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority, he saw three figures, tiny, impossible, who stood at the very edge of one of the vast steps of data. Small as they were, he could make out the boy's grin, his pink gums, the glitter of the long gray eyes that had been Riviera's. Linda still wore his jacket; she waved, as he passed. But the third figure, close behind her, arm across her shoulders, was himself.

Somewhere, very close, the laugh that wasn't laughter.

He never saw Molly again.

Vancouver

July 1983

MY THANKS to Bruce Sterling, to Lewis Shiner, to John Shirley, Helden. And to Tom Maddox, the inventor of ICE. And to the others, who know why.

1.Cities growing into other cities, where no center is recognizible.

2.Cheap miniaturised hotel rooms in Japan.

3.Soft synthetic filling material.

4.Heart of Night City, Tokyo.

5.Nerve toxin.

6.Huge, self-contained cities enclosed in a single building with a built environment, imagined by Paolo Soleri; neologism from ecologie & architecture.

7.Dexedrine, a form of amphetamine.

8.Drug.

9.Chinese cigarettes.

10.Player/Recordes of the whole sensorium of a person. Similiar to technology in Huxley's 'Brave New World' and Philip K. Dick's novels. In the Sprawl series future it is as popular as television is today, there is all kinds of different programs, people get addicted from simstim. It can also be broadcasted live through a broadcast rig.

11.Flechette pistol, arrow spitting pistol with paralysing or poisoning function.

12.Original term for Japan's family-corporations before WWII, which are now known as 'keiretsu'. In the Sprawl world the term describes multinational corporations.

13.Dome structure developed by Buckminster Fuller, a philosopher, mathematician, engineer, historian and poet, in the 1940ies and 50ies which is recognized to be the most energy-efficient building system.

14.Skin interfaces for cyberspace consoles.

15.A small chip which can be inserted into a socket behind the ear and allows certain skills, for example flying a plane, fluency in languages etc.

16.International police which monitors the intelligence levels of AIs. Named after Alan Turing, a pioneer theoretician of machine intelligence, who said that a computer being able to conversate with a human for a certain time would be intelligent.

17.Eletromagnetic pulse weapons that send a strong electromagnetic burst which destroys the circuits in electronical equipment and renders it useless.

18.Wiz/whiz Drug, crystal form.