Services | Projects | Websites |The Canada We Want
From Chapter 13: With Both Hands
"You've probably seen one of these before," Beauvoir said, as the man he called Lucas put the projection tank down on the table, having methodically cleared a space for it.
"In school," Bobby said.
"You go to school, man?" Two-a-Day snapped. "Why the f--- didn't you stay there?" He'd been chainsmoking since he came back with Lucas, and seemed in worse shape than he'd been in before.
"Shut-up, Two-a-Day," Beauvoir said. "Little education might do you some good."
"They use one to teach us our way around in the matrix, how to access stuff from the print library, like that ..."
"Well, then," Lucas said, straightening up and brushing nonexistent dust from his big pink palms, "did you ever use it for that, to access print books?" He'd removed his immaculate black suit coat; his spotless white shirt was traversed by a pair of slender maroon suspenders, and he'd loosened the knot of his plain black tie.
"I don't read too well," Bobby said. "I mean, I can, but it's work. But yeah, I did. I looked at some real old books on the matrix and stuff."
"I thought you had," Lucas said, jacking some kind of small deck into the console that formed the base of the tank. Count Zero. " Count zero interrupt. Old programmer talk." He passed the deck to Beauvoir, who began to tap commands into it.
Complex geometric forms began to click into place in the tank, aligned with the nearly invisible planes of a three-dimensional grid. Beauvoir was sketching in the cyberspace coordinates for Barrytown, Bobby saw. "We'll call you this blue pyramid, Bobby. There you are." A blue pyramid began to pulse softly at the very center of the tank. "Now we'll show you what Two-a-Day's cowboys saw, the ones who were watching you. From now on, you're seeing a recording." An interrupted line of blue light extruded from the pyramid, following a grid line. Bobby watched, seeing himself alone in his mother's living room, the Ono-Sendai on his lap, the curtains drawn, his fingers moving across the deck.
From Count Zero, by William Gibson. Highly recommended.