Neuromancer
| alimentopia.company | “The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. “Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,’ Ratz said. shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand.” | |
| alimentopia.company | For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyber- space, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Alone at a table in the Jarre de The, with the octagon coming on, pinheads of sweat starting from his palms, suddenly aware of each tingling hair on his arms and chest, Case knew that at some point he'd started to play a game with himself, a very ancient one that has no name, a final solitaire.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'I been lookin’ for you, man.’ She took a seat opposite him, her elbows on the table.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'What brings you around, boyo?' Deane asked. offering Case a narrow bonbon wrapped in blue-and-white checked paper. 'Try one. Ting Ting Djahe, the very best.' Case refused the ginger, took a seat in a yawing wooden swivel chair, and ran a thumb down the faded seam of one black jeans-leg. (...) People, 'Deane said, around a ginger bonbon. 'What sort of people? Friends?'” | |
| alimentopia.company | “The Chat wasn't really a dealing bar, but on weeknights it attracted a related clientele. Fridays and Saturdays were different. The regulars were still there, most of them, but they faded behind an influx of sailors and the specialists who preyed on them. As Case pushed through the doors, he looked for Ratz, but the bartender wasn't in sight. Lonny Zone, the bar's resident pimp, was observing with glazed fatherly interest as one of his girls went to work on a young sailor. Zone was addicted to a brand of hypnotic the Japanese called Cloud Dancers. Catching the pimp's eye, Case beckoned him to the bar. Zone came drifting through the crowd in slow motion, his Jong face slack and placid.” | |
| alimentopia.company | "Case walked into the Chat an hour before dawn, both hands in the pockets of his jacket: one held the rented pistol, the other the aluminum flask Ratz was at a rear table, drinking Apollonaris water from a beer pitcher, his hundred and twenty kilos of doughy flesh tilted against the wall on a creaking chair. A Brazilian kid called Kurt was on the bar, tending a thin crowd of mostly silent drunks Ratz’s plastic arm buzzed as he raised the pitcher and drank. (...) 'Im doing just fine,' said Case, and grinned like a skull. 'Super fine.’ He sagged into the chair opposite Ratz, hands still in his pockets. 'And you wander back and forth in this portable bombshelter built of booze and ups, sure. Proof against the grosser emotions, yes?'” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Case watched as they crossed the bar, which was now entirely deserted except for Kurt and a drunken sailor in khakis, who was curled at the foot of a barstool.(...) The sailor moaned and vomited explosively.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony. 'Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it’ She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof. Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood. (...) Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled. 'Get your coffee, Case,’ Molly said.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “On Ninsei, 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.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Then he'd taken her back to the Chat for a drink. 'Wasting your time, cowboy,’ Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket of his jacket. 'How's that? You want one?' He held the pill out to her. 'Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed to bypass that shit’ She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. 'You're biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.’ 'Shit!' he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her. 'Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen’ He did. Nothing did.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights. 'Sammi's,' Ratz said. 'Til pass,’ Case said, 'Thear they kill each other down there. An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy rugby shorts. Sammi's was an inflated dome behind 2 portside warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced with a net of thin steel cables. (...) 'I'll go find us some food,' Case said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance. He didn't like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows. Too dark. Too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly Japanese. Not really a Night City crowd. (...) He'd made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls. He bought yakitori on skewers and two tall waxy cartons of beer. Glancing up at the holograms, he saw that blood laced one figure's chest. Thick brown sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles. (...) Raw edge of vomit in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Linda Lee step past him, her gray eyes blind with fear. She wore the same French fatigues And gone. Into shadow. Pure mindless reflex: he threw the beer and chicken down and ran after her.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “There was a smell of cooked meat. The crowd was chanting the winner's name. A beer vendor was wiping his taps with a dark rag.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Armitage off on some cryptic foray, the two of them walking alone past Dam Square to a bar she knew on a Damrak thoroughfare.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “We're gonna get some breakfast, okay? Eggs, real bacon. Probably kill you, you been eating that rebuilt Chiba krill for so long. Yeah, come on, we'll tube in to Manhattan and get us a real breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'Get us some crab', she said. After lunch in Baltimore, Molly dissecting her crab with alarming ease, they tubed in to New York.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'It was big!’ another would-be told Case, for the price of a beer, 'but who knows what? I hear maybe a Brazilian payroll net. Anyway, the man was dead, flat down braindeath.’ Case stared across the crowded bar at a thickset man in shirt- sleeves, something leaden about the shade of his skin.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “In an M Street restaurant, over asparagus crepes, the aide explained the terminal dangers involved in talking to the wrong people. Corto crushed the man's larynx with the rigid fingers of his right hand. The Congressional aide strangled, his face in an asparagus crepe, and Corto stepped out into cool Washington September.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Their room might have been the one in Chiba where he'd first seen Armitage. (...) He arrived with a black Hilton tray arranged with three tiny, fragrant cups of thick black coffee and three sticky, straw-colored Oriental sweets. (...) Molly bit one of the pastries in half. 'It's my show, Jack,’ she said, her mouth full. She chewed, swallowed, and licked her lips. (...) 'Very easy, please,' Terzibashjian said, his white china thimble frozen centimeters from his lips.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “Terzibashyian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, balancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea.” | |
| alimentopia.company | "Let's go back to Beyoglu and find something like breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “A few hours after their arrival, Armitage had sent him into the yellow maze to call Riviera out for a meal.” | |
| alimentopia.company | ‘Deane picked up a bonbon and stripped off its checkered wrapper, popped it into his mouth. 'Sit' he said around the candy. (...) Deane sucked his bonbon noisily. (...) Deane laughed, and nearly choked on his bonbon.” | |
| alimentopia.company | “They had breakfast on the roof of the hotel, a kind of meadow, studded with striped umbrellas and what seemed to Case an unnatural number of trees. (...)A burst of French fom a nearby table caught his attention: the golden children he'd seen gliding above river mist the evening before. Now he saw that their tans were uneven, a stencil effect produced by selective melanin boosting, multiple shades overlapping in rectilinear pattems, outlining and highlighting musculature, the girl's small hard breasts, one boy’s wrist resting on the white enamel of the table. (...) Beyond them, at another table, three Japanese wives in Hiroshima sackcloth awaited sarariman husbands, their oval faces covered with artificial bruises; it was, he knew, an extremely conservative style, one he'd seldom seen in Chiba. (...) Armitage and Riviera arrived as they were finishing their coffee...” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'I hope you're gonna be ready for our big dinner date with Armitage tonight. This Twentieth Century place. We get to watch Riviera strut his stuff, too.'” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.company | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.company | “He walked on, past bars named the Hi-Lo, the Paradise, le Monde, Cricketer. Shozoku Smith's, Emergency. He chose Emergency because it was the smallest and most crowded, but it took only seconds for him to realize that it was a tourist place. ‘No hum of biz here, only a glazed sexual tension. (...) He bought a mug of Carlsberg and found a place against the wall. Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure small coal of his anger. (...) He knew then: the rage had come in the arcade, when Wintermute rescinded the simstim ghost of Linda Lee, yanking away the simple animal promise of food, warmth, a place to sleep. | |
| alimentopia.company | ‘The table was thick with vials, bottles of liquor, soft plastic envelopes spilling white powders. (...) He rested the hand with the pistol on his knee and took a bottle from the table beside him, without bothering to choose from the half-dozen different liquors. He drank. Brandy. A trickle of the stuff ran from the comer of his mouth. 'That is the way to handle tears.’ He drank again. (...) 'You intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out? Really, you amaze me. A thief!' (...) He drank again. 'Come here then’ He held out the bottle, his hand shaking. 'Drink.' she shook her head. 'It isn't poisoned,’ he said, but returned the brandy to the table.” | |
| alimentopia.company | "He'd gone to the Chatsubo that night, while she was in the clinic, and seen Ratz. Something had kept him away from the place, on their five previous trips, but now he'd felt like going back. (...) And then he'd tumed to serve another customer, and Case had finished his beer and left.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | "Case walked into the Chat an hour before dawn, both hands in the pockets of his jacket: one held the rented pistol, the other the aluminum flask Ratz was at a rear table, drinking Apollonaris water from a beer pitcher, his hundred and twenty kilos of doughy flesh tilted against the wall on a creaking chair. A Brazilian kid called Kurt was on the bar, tending a thin crowd of mostly silent drunks Ratz’s plastic arm buzzed as he raised the pitcher and drank. (...) 'Im doing just fine,' said Case, and grinned like a skull. 'Super fine.’ He sagged into the chair opposite Ratz, hands still in his pockets. 'And you wander back and forth in this portable bombshelter built of booze and ups, sure. Proof against the grosser emotions, yes?'” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “Case watched as they crossed the bar, which was now entirely deserted except for Kurt and a drunken sailor in khakis, who was curled at the foot of a barstool.(...) The sailor moaned and vomited explosively.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “Then he'd taken her back to the Chat for a drink. 'Wasting your time, cowboy,’ Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket of his jacket. 'How's that? You want one?' He held the pill out to her. 'Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed to bypass that shit’ She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. 'You're biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.’ 'Shit!' he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her. 'Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen’ He did. Nothing did.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “'Tell you later,’ he said, ‘I'm wrecked.’ He was hungover and confused.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “Drunk, in Singapore, he beat a Russian engineer to death in a hotel and set fire to his room.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | "‘You ver’ pale, mon,’ Aerol said, as they were guiding the foam-bundled Hosaka terminal along the central corridor. 'Maybe you wan' eat somethin!’ Case's mouth flooded with saliva: he shook his head.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “Corto was the first, and he very nearly didn't make it. Very far gone, in Toulon. Eating, excreting, and masturbating were the best he could manage.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “They'd each had a dozen beers, the afternoon a wasp stung Marlene. 'Kill the fuckers,’ she said, her eyes dull with rage and the still heat of the room, 'bum ‘em! Drunk, Case rummaged in the sour closet for Rollo's dragon.'” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “He walked on, past bars named the Hi-Lo, the Paradise, le Monde, Cricketer. Shozoku Smith's, Emergency. He chose Emergency because it was the smallest and most crowded, but it took only seconds for him to realize that it was a tourist place. ‘No hum of biz here, only a glazed sexual tension. (...) He bought a mug of Carlsberg and found a place against the wall. Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure small coal of his anger. (...) He knew then: the rage had come in the arcade, when Wintermute rescinded the simstim ghost of Linda Lee, yanking away the simple animal promise of food, warmth, a place to sleep. | |
| alimentopia.consequences | ‘The shower had helped, but he'd lost his breakfast when he'd looked down and seen Pierre's blood washing pink across the white tiles.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “Case's stomach churned.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “There was something obscene about the arrangement, but it had more to do with ideas of feeding than of sex.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | ‘The table was thick with vials, bottles of liquor, soft plastic envelopes spilling white powders. (...) He rested the hand with the pistol on his knee and took a bottle from the table beside him, without bothering to choose from the half-dozen different liquors. He drank. Brandy. A trickle of the stuff ran from the comer of his mouth. 'That is the way to handle tears.’ He drank again. (...) 'You intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out? Really, you amaze me. A thief!' (...) He drank again. 'Come here then’ He held out the bottle, his hand shaking. 'Drink.' she shook her head. 'It isn't poisoned,’ he said, but returned the brandy to the table.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | ‘Case had been following her progress through Villa Straylight for over an hour, Jetting the endorphin analog she'd taken blot out his hangover.” | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “In Night City, you had it, in the palm of your hand! The speed to eat your sense away, drink to keep it all so fluid, Linda for a sweeter sorrow, and the street to hold the axe. How far you've come, to do it now, and what grotesque props…" | |
| alimentopia.consequences | “When he woke, she was gone. The fire was dead, but it was warm in the bunker, sunlight slanting through the doorway to throw a crooked rectangle of gold on the ripped side of a fat fiber canister. The thing was a shipping container, he remembered them from the Chiba docks. Through the rent in its side, he could see half a dozen bright yellow packets. In the sunlight, they looked like giant pats of butter. His stomach tightened with hunger. Rolling out of the nest, he went to the canister and fished one of the things out, blinking at small print in a dozen languages. The English was on the bottom. EMERG. RATION, HI-PRO, ‘BEEF’, TYPE AG-8. A listing of nutritive content. He fumbled a second one out. 'EGGS'. 'If you're making this shit up,' he said, 'you could lay on some real food, okay?' With a packet in either hand, he made his way through the structure's four rooms. Two were empty, aside from deifis of sand, and the fourth held three more of the ration canisters. 'Sure,’ he said touching the seals. 'Stay here a long time. I get the idea. Sure...' He searched the room with the fireplace, finding a plastic canister filled with what he assumed was rainwater. Beside the nest of blankets, against the wall, lay a cheap red lighter, a seaman's knife with a cracked green handle, and her scarf. It was still knotted, and stiff with sweat and dirt. He used the knife to open the yellow packets, dumping their contents into a rusted can that he found beside the stove. He dipped water from the canister, mixed the resulting mush with his fingers, and ate. It tasted vaguely like beef. When it was gone, he tossed the can into the fireplace and went out.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | “He stared at the black ring of grounds in his empty cup.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | “They stood together in the smell of fresh raw seafood at the rear of a Shiga sushi stall. (...) Shin rummaged behind empty two-liter cans that had once been filled with powdered horseradish. He produced a slender package wrapped in gray plastic 'Taser. One hour, twenty New Yen. Thirty deposit.'” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | ‘He made out a snakelike loop of fiberoptics protruding from a wall socket, a pile of discarded food containers, and the bladeless nacelle of an electric fan.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | “A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony. 'Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it’ She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof. Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood. (...) Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled. 'Get your coffee, Case,’ Molly said.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | ‘Case picked at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | “He stood up, brushing crumbs from the front of his battered tweed jacket. A glass jar of pickled herring stood on the table beside a torn plastic package of flatbread and a tin ashtray piled with the butts of Partagas. 'Wait', the Finn said, and left the room. Molly took his place, extruded the blade from her index finger, and speared a grayish slab of herring.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | ‘A crumpled yellow candy wrapper, balanced on the edge of a console, dropped to the floor and lay amid flattened butts and styrofoam cups.” | |
| alimentopia.leftovers | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. “Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,’ Ratz said. shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand.” | |
| alimentopia.places | For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyber- space, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh” | |
| alimentopia.places | “By day, the bars down Ninsei were shuttered and featureless, the neon dead, the holograms inert, waiting, under the poisoned silver sky.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Two blocks west of the Chat, in a teashop called the Jarre de The, Case washed down the nights first pill with a double espresso. It was a flat pink octagon, a potent species of Brazilian dex he bought from one of Zone's girls. The Jarre was walled with mirrors, each panel framed in red neon.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Alone at a table in the Jarre de The, with the octagon coming on, pinheads of sweat starting from his palms, suddenly aware of each tingling hair on his arms and chest, Case knew that at some point he'd started to play a game with himself, a very ancient one that has no name, a final solitaire.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'I been lookin’ for you, man.’ She took a seat opposite him, her elbows on the table.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Friday night on Ninsei. He passed yakitori stands and massage parlors, a franchised coffee shop called Beautiful Girl, the electronic thunder of an arcade.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'What brings you around, boyo?' Deane asked. offering Case a narrow bonbon wrapped in blue-and-white checked paper. 'Try one. Ting Ting Djahe, the very best.' Case refused the ginger, took a seat in a yawing wooden swivel chair, and ran a thumb down the faded seam of one black jeans-leg. (...) People, 'Deane said, around a ginger bonbon. 'What sort of people? Friends?'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “They stood together in the smell of fresh raw seafood at the rear of a Shiga sushi stall. (...) Shin rummaged behind empty two-liter cans that had once been filled with powdered horseradish. He produced a slender package wrapped in gray plastic “Taser. One hour, twenty New Yen. Thirty deposit.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “The Chat wasn't really a dealing bar, but on weeknights it attracted a related clientele. Fridays and Saturdays were different. The regulars were still there, most of them, but they faded behind an influx of sailors and the specialists who preyed on them. As Case pushed through the doors, he looked for Ratz, but the bartender wasn't in sight. Lonny Zone, the bar's resident pimp, was observing with glazed fatherly interest as one of his girls went to work on a young sailor. Zone was addicted to a brand of hypnotic the Japanese called Cloud Dancers. Catching the pimp's eye, Case beckoned him to the bar. Zone came drifting through the crowd in slow motion, his Jong face slack and placid.” | |
| alimentopia.places | "Case walked into the Chat an hour before dawn, both hands in the pockets of his jacket: one held the rented pistol, the other the aluminum flask Ratz was at a rear table, drinking Apollonaris water from a beer pitcher, his hundred and twenty kilos of doughy flesh tilted against the wall on a creaking chair. A Brazilian kid called Kurt was on the bar, tending a thin crowd of mostly silent drunks Ratz’s plastic arm buzzed as he raised the pitcher and drank. (...) 'Im doing just fine,' said Case, and grinned like a skull. 'Super fine.’ He sagged into the chair opposite Ratz, hands still in his pockets. 'And you wander back and forth in this portable bombshelter built of booze and ups, sure. Proof against the grosser emotions, yes?'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Case watched as they crossed the bar, which was now entirely deserted except for Kurt and a drunken sailor in khakis, who was curled at the foot of a barstool.(...) The sailor moaned and vomited explosively.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Down on Ninsei the holograms were vanishing like ghosts, and most of the neon was already cold and dead. He sipped thick black coffe from a street vendor's foam thimble and watched the sun come up.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony. 'Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it’ She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof. Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood. (...) Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled. 'Get your coffee, Case,’ Molly said.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “On Ninsei, 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.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Then he'd taken her back to the Chat for a drink. 'Wasting your time, cowboy,’ Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket of his jacket. 'How's that? You want one?' He held the pill out to her. 'Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed to bypass that shit’ She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. 'You're biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.’ 'Shit!' he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her. 'Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen’ He did. Nothing did.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights. 'Sammi's,' Ratz said. 'Til pass,’ Case said, 'Thear they kill each other down there. An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy rugby shorts. Sammi's was an inflated dome behind 2 portside warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced with a net of thin steel cables. (...) 'I'll go find us some food,' Case said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance. He didn't like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows. Too dark. Too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly Japanese. Not really a Night City crowd. (...) He'd made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls. He bought yakitori on skewers and two tall waxy cartons of beer. Glancing up at the holograms, he saw that blood laced one figure's chest. Thick brown sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles. (...) Raw edge of vomit in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Linda Lee step past him, her gray eyes blind with fear. She wore the same French fatigues And gone. Into shadow. Pure mindless reflex: he threw the beer and chicken down and ran after her.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Armitage off on some cryptic foray, the two of them walking alone past Dam Square to a bar she knew on a Damrak thoroughfare.” | |
| alimentopia.places | ‘Summer in the Sprawl, the mall crowds swaying like wind- blown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification. (...) Nothing here like the electric dance of Ninsei. This was different commerce, a different rhythm, in the smell of fast food and perfume and fresh summer sweat.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “We're gonna get some breakfast, okay? Eggs, real bacon. Probably kill you, you been eating that rebuilt Chiba krill for so long. Yeah, come on, we'll tube in to ‘Manhattan and get us a real breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Her Sprawl wasn't his Sprawl, he decided. She'd led him through a dozen bars and clubs he'd never seen before, taking care of business, usually with no more than a nod. Maintaining connections.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'It was big!’ another would-be told Case, for the price of a beer, 'but who knows what? I hear maybe a Brazilian payroll net. Anyway, the man was dead, flat down braindeath.’ Case stared across the crowded bar at a thickset man in shirt- sleeves, something leaden about the shade of his skin.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “In an M Street restaurant, over asparagus crepes, the aide explained the terminal dangers involved in talking to the wrong people. Corto crushed the man's larynx with the rigid fingers of his right hand. The Congressional aide strangled, his face in an asparagus crepe, and Corto stepped out into cool Washington September.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Their room might have been the one in Chiba where he'd first seen Armitage. (...) He arrived with a black Hilton tray arranged with three tiny, fragrant cups of thick black coffee and three sticky, straw-colored Oriental sweets. (...) Molly bit one of the pastries in half. 'It's my show, Jack,’ she said, her mouth full. She chewed, swallowed, and licked her lips. (...) 'Very easy, please,' Terzibashjian said, his white china thimble frozen centimeters from his lips.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Terzibashyian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, balancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea.” | |
| alimentopia.places | ‘Let's go back to Beyoglu and find something like breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Once, as the plane banked over water, Case saw the jewel-glow of a Greek island town. And once, reaching for his drink, he caught the flicker of a thing like a giant human sperm in the depths of his bourbon and water.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'Come on, then.’ She took his hand. 'We'll get you a coffee and something to eat. Take you home.'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “The first thing he saw, when they gained the inner surface of the spindle, was a branch of the Beautiful Girl coffee franchise.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “They had breakfast on the roof of the hotel, a kind of meadow, studded with striped umbrellas and what seemed to Case an unnatural number of trees. (...)A burst of French fom a nearby table caught his attention: the golden children he'd seen gliding above river mist the evening before. Now he saw that their tans were uneven, a stencil effect produced by selective melanin boosting, multiple shades overlapping in rectilinear pattems, outlining and highlighting musculature, the girl's small hard breasts, one boy’s wrist resting on the white enamel of the table. (...) Beyond them, at another table, three Japanese wives in Hiroshima sackcloth awaited sarariman husbands, their oval faces covered with artificial bruises; it was, he knew, an extremely conservative style, one he'd seldom seen in Chiba. (...) Armitage and Riviera arrived as they were finishing their coffee...” | |
| alimentopia.places | “He edged into the shadow of an awning and pressed his chip against a dark glass plate. 'Sushi', he said, ‘whatever you got.’ Ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Chinese waiter arrived with his food. He munched raw tuna and rice and watched people tan. 'Christ' he said, to his tuna, 'I'd go nuts.'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'I hope you're gonna be ready for our big dinner date with Armitage tonight. This Twentieth Century place. We get to watch Riviera strut his stuff, too.'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.places | “He walked on, past bars named the Hi-Lo, the Paradise, le Monde, Cricketer. Shozoku Smith's, Emergency. He chose Emergency because it was the smallest and most crowded, but it took only seconds for him to realize that it was a tourist place. ‘No hum of biz here, only a glazed sexual tension. (...) He bought a mug of Carlsberg and found a place against the wall. Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure small coal of his anger. (...) He knew then: the rage had come in the arcade, when Wintermute rescinded the simstim ghost of Linda Lee, yanking away the simple animal promise of food, warmth, a place to sleep. | |
| alimentopia.places | “He forced himself to eat an omelette in a Desiderata cafe, to drink water, to smoke the last of his cigarettes. The rooftop meadow of the Intercontinental was stirring as he crossed it, an early breakfast crowd intent on coffee and croissants beneath the striped umbrellas.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'I dunno,’ he said, crossing to the bar and pouring himself a glass of mineral water. 'She took off!' (...) The mineral water was warm and flat.” | |
| alimentopia.places | ‘Lunch was being served beneath the trees, under the bright umbrellas.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “'That was her you saw in the restaurant,’ the Finn said.” | |
| alimentopia.places | ‘The table was thick with vials, bottles of liquor, soft plastic envelopes spilling white powders. (...) He rested the hand with the pistol on his knee and took a bottle from the table beside him, without bothering to choose from the half-dozen different liquors. He drank. Brandy. A trickle of the stuff ran from the comer of his mouth. 'That is the way to handle tears.’ He drank again. (...) 'You intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out? Really, you amaze me. A thief!' (...) He drank again. 'Come here then’ He held out the bottle, his hand shaking. 'Drink.' she shook her head. 'It isn't poisoned,’ he said, but returned the brandy to the table.” | |
| alimentopia.places | “Case followed him into a larger space, a kind of lounge, shredding and crumpling the lengths of printout that snared him in his passage. There were more of the articulated chairs, here, something that resembled a bar, and the Hosaka” | |
| alimentopia.places | "He'd gone to the Chatsubo that night, while she was in the clinic, and seen Ratz. Something had kept him away from the place, on their five previous trips, but now he'd felt like going back. (...) And then he'd tumed to serve another customer, and Case had finished his beer and left.” | |
| alimentopia.places | "He went back to the bar cabinet and took a flask of chilled Danish Vidka from the rack inside. 'Case.' He turned, cold slick glass in one hand, steel of the shuriken in the other.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. “Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,’ Ratz said. shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “The bartender's smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven- function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “I saw your girl last night.’ Ratz said, passing Case his second Kinin. (...) He finished his beer, paid and left, high narrow shoulders hunched beneath the rain stained khaki nylon of his windbreaker.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | "Case walked into the Chat an hour before dawn, both hands in the pockets of his jacket: one held the rented pistol, the other the aluminum flask Ratz was at a rear table, drinking Apollonaris water from a beer pitcher, his hundred and twenty kilos of doughy flesh tilted against the wall on a creaking chair. A Brazilian kid called Kurt was on the bar, tending a thin crowd of mostly silent drunks Ratz’s plastic arm buzzed as he raised the pitcher and drank. (...) 'Im doing just fine,' said Case, and grinned like a skull. 'Super fine.’ He sagged into the chair opposite Ratz, hands still in his pockets. 'And you wander back and forth in this portable bombshelter built of booze and ups, sure. Proof against the grosser emotions, yes?'” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “On Ninsei, 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.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights. 'Sammi's,' Ratz said. 'Til pass,’ Case said, 'Thear they kill each other down there. An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy rugby shorts. Sammi's was an inflated dome behind 2 portside warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced with a net of thin steel cables. (...) 'I'll go find us some food,' Case said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance. He didn't like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows. Too dark. Too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly Japanese. Not really a Night City crowd. (...) He'd made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls. He bought yakitori on skewers and two tall waxy cartons of beer. Glancing up at the holograms, he saw that blood laced one figure's chest. Thick brown sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles. (...) Raw edge of vomit in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Linda Lee step past him, her gray eyes blind with fear. She wore the same French fatigues And gone. Into shadow. Pure mindless reflex: he threw the beer and chicken down and ran after her.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “There was a smell of cooked meat. The crowd was chanting the winner's name. A beer vendor was wiping his taps with a dark rag.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “Molly was making coffee on a tiny German stove she took from her bag.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “This was it. This was what he was, who he was, his being. He forgot to eat. Molly left cartons of rice and foam trays of sushi on the corner of the long table.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “'Get us some crab', she said. After lunch in Baltimore, Molly dissecting her crab with alarming ease, they tubed in to New York.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “Their room might have been the one in Chiba where he'd first seen Armitage. (...) He arrived with a black Hilton tray arranged with three tiny, fragrant cups of thick black coffee and three sticky, straw-colored Oriental sweets. (...) Molly bit one of the pastries in half. 'It's my show, Jack,’ she said, her mouth full. She chewed, swallowed, and licked her lips. (...) 'Very easy, please,' Terzibashjian said, his white china thimble frozen centimeters from his lips.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “'The spice bazaar, sometimes called the Egyptian bazaar,’ the car said.'was erected on the site of an earlier bazaar erected by Sultan Hatice in 1660. This is the city's central market for spices, software, perfumes, drugs...'” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “Terzibashyian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, balancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “See, those things, they can work real hard, buy themselves time to write cookbooks or whatever, but the minute, I mean the nanosecond, that one starts figuring out ways ‘to make itself smarter, Turing'll wipe it. Nobody trusts those fuckers, you know that.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “He edged into the shadow of an awning and pressed his chip against a dark glass plate. 'Sushi', he said, ‘whatever you got.’ Ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Chinese waiter arrived with his food. He munched raw tuna and rice and watched people tan. 'Christ' he said, to his tuna, 'I'd go nuts.'” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “When he woke, she was gone. The fire was dead, but it was warm in the bunker, sunlight slanting through the doorway to throw a crooked rectangle of gold on the ripped side of a fat fiber canister. The thing was a shipping container, he remembered them from the Chiba docks. Through the rent in its side, he could see half a dozen bright yellow packets. In the sunlight, they looked like giant pats of butter. His stomach tightened with hunger. Rolling out of the nest, he went to the canister and fished one of the things out, blinking at small print in a dozen languages. The English was on the bottom. EMERG. RATION, HI-PRO, ‘BEEF’, TYPE AG-8. A listing of nutritive content. He fumbled a second one out. 'EGGS'. 'If you're making this shit up,' he said, 'you could lay on some real food, okay?' With a packet in either hand, he made his way through the structure's four rooms. Two were empty, aside from deifis of sand, and the fourth held three more of the ration canisters. 'Sure,’ he said touching the seals. 'Stay here a long time. I get the idea. Sure...' He searched the room with the fireplace, finding a plastic canister filled with what he assumed was rainwater. Beside the nest of blankets, against the wall, lay a cheap red lighter, a seaman's knife with a cracked green handle, and her scarf. It was still knotted, and stiff with sweat and dirt. He used the knife to open the yellow packets, dumping their contents into a rusted can that he found beside the stove. He dipped water from the canister, mixed the resulting mush with his fingers, and ate. It tasted vaguely like beef. When it was gone, he tossed the can into the fireplace and went out.” | |
| alimentopia.servers | “So I took food in a can, mixed it real wet, because I didn't have another can for water.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. “Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,’ Ratz said. shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “' Sure,' Case said, and sipped his beer. (...) “Jesus,' Case said, 'what kinda creepjoint you running here? Man can't have a drink.’ (...) As Case was picking up his beer, one of those strange instants of silence descended, as though a hundred unrelated conversations had simultaneously arrived at the same pause.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “I saw your girl last night.’ Ratz said, passing Case his second Kinin. (...) He finished his beer, paid and left, high narrow shoulders hunched beneath the rain stained khaki nylon of his windbreaker.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Two blocks west of the Chat, in a teashop called the Jarre de The, Case washed down the nights first pill with a double espresso. It was a flat pink octagon, a potent species of Brazilian dex he bought from one of Zone's girls. The Jarre was walled with mirrors, each panel framed in red neon.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Friday night on Ninsei. He passed yakitori stands and massage parlors, a franchised coffee shop called Beautiful Girl, the electronic thunder of an arcade.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “The room was stacked with white fiberglass shipping modules that gave off the tang of preserved ginger.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'What brings you around, boyo?' Deane asked. offering Case a narrow bonbon wrapped in blue-and-white checked paper. 'Try one. Ting Ting Djahe, the very best.' Case refused the ginger, took a seat in a yawing wooden swivel chair, and ran a thumb down the faded seam of one black jeans-leg. (...) People, 'Deane said, around a ginger bonbon. 'What sort of people? Friends?'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “They stood together in the smell of fresh raw seafood at the rear of a Shiga sushi stall. (...) Shin rummaged behind empty two-liter cans that had once been filled with powdered horseradish. He produced a slender package wrapped in gray plastic 'Taser. One hour, twenty New Yen. Thirty deposit.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | "Case walked into the Chat an hour before dawn, both hands in the pockets of his jacket: one held the rented pistol, the other the aluminum flask Ratz was at a rear table, drinking Apollonaris water from a beer pitcher, his hundred and twenty kilos of doughy flesh tilted against the wall on a creaking chair. A Brazilian kid called Kurt was on the bar, tending a thin crowd of mostly silent drunks Ratz’s plastic arm buzzed as he raised the pitcher and drank. (...) 'Im doing just fine,' said Case, and grinned like a skull. 'Super fine.’ He sagged into the chair opposite Ratz, hands still in his pockets. 'And you wander back and forth in this portable bombshelter built of booze and ups, sure. Proof against the grosser emotions, yes?'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “The ashtray was made of thick, shatterproof plastic, and advertised Tsingtao beer.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Down on Ninsei the holograms were vanishing like ghosts, and most of the neon was already cold and dead. He sipped thick black coffe from a street vendor's foam thimble and watched the sun come up.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “A white Braun coffeemaker steamed on a low table by the sliding glass panels that opened onto a narrow balcony. 'Get some coffee in you. Look like you need it’ She took off her black jacket; the fletcher hung beneath her arm in a black nylon shoulder rig. She wore a sleeveless gray pullover with plain steel zips across each shoulder. Bulletproof. Case decided, slopping coffee into a bright red mug. His arms and legs felt like they were made out of wood. (...) Case whipped his arm sideways and the man easily ducked the scalding coffee. Brown stain running down the imitation ricepaper wall. He saw the angular gold ring through the left lobe. Special Forces. The man smiled. 'Get your coffee, Case,’ Molly said.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He heard her tear the foil seal from a bottle of water and drink. 'Here.' She put the bottle in his hand. (...) He sat up and tried to sip from the bottle. Gagged, coughed, Jukewarm water spraying his chest and thighs.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “On Ninsei, 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.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "She tumed and walked out, past the stacked white modules of preserved ginger. (...) The smell of preserved ginger was overwhelming." | |
| alimentopia.species | “Then he'd taken her back to the Chat for a drink. 'Wasting your time, cowboy,’ Molly said, when Case took an octagon from the pocket of his jacket. 'How's that? You want one?' He held the pill out to her. 'Your new pancreas, Case, and those plugs in your liver. Armitage had them designed to bypass that shit’ She tapped the octagon with one burgundy nail. 'You're biochemically incapable of getting off on amphetamine or cocaine.’ 'Shit!' he said. He looked at the octagon, then at her. 'Eat it. Eat a dozen. Nothing'll happen’ He did. Nothing did.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Three beers later, she was asking Ratz about the fights. 'Sammi's,' Ratz said. 'Til pass,’ Case said, 'Thear they kill each other down there. An hour later, she was buying tickets from a skinny Thai in a white t-shirt and baggy rugby shorts. Sammi's was an inflated dome behind 2 portside warehouse, taut gray fabric reinforced with a net of thin steel cables. (...) 'I'll go find us some food,' Case said. She nodded, lost in contemplation of the dance. He didn't like this place. He turned and walked back into the shadows. Too dark. Too quiet. The crowd, he saw, was mostly Japanese. Not really a Night City crowd. (...) He'd made nearly a full circuit of the dome before he found the food stalls. He bought yakitori on skewers and two tall waxy cartons of beer. Glancing up at the holograms, he saw that blood laced one figure's chest. Thick brown sauce trickled down the skewers and over his knuckles. (...) Raw edge of vomit in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them, and saw Linda Lee step past him, her gray eyes blind with fear. She wore the same French fatigues And gone. Into shadow. Pure mindless reflex: he threw the beer and chicken down and ran after her.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “There was a smell of cooked meat. The crowd was chanting the winner's name. A beer vendor was wiping his taps with a dark rag.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘She passed him a blood-flecked bag of preserved ginger." | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘He watched himself buy a flat plastic flask of Danish vodka at some kiosk, an hour before dawn.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Molly back from the canal's edge with orange juice and eggs.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Molly was making coffee on a tiny German stove she took from her bag.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Molly handed him a steaming mug of coffee.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “They'd left the place littered with the abstract white forms of the foam packing units, with crumpled plastic film and hundreds of tiny foam beads. The Ono-Sendai; next year's most expensive Hosaka computer; a Sony monitor; a dozen disks of corporate-grade ice; a Braun coffeemaker. Armitage had only waited for Case's approval of each piece.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “We're gonna get some breakfast, okay? Eggs, real bacon. Probably kill you, you been eating that rebuilt Chiba krill for so long. Yeah, come on, we'll tube in to ‘Manhattan and get us a real breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "Case picked at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Smells of urine, free monomers, perfume, patties of frying krill.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "He knew the way she'd moved against him, earlier, when she woke, their mutual grunt of unity when he'd entered her, and that she liked her coffee black, afterward...” | |
| alimentopia.species | “This was it. This was what he was, who he was, his being. He forgot to eat. Molly left cartons of rice and foam trays of sushi on the corner of the long table.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "Case gulped the last of his coffee, settled the trodes in place, and scratched his chest beneath his black t-shirt.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "She stood before a wall of gold-flecked mirror in the building's vast white lobby, chewing gum, apparently fascinated by her own reflection. (..) She grinned vacantly and popped her gum. (...) Molly popped her gum.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'Get us some crab', she said. After lunch in Baltimore, Molly dissecting her crab with alarming ease, they tubed in to New York.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He stood up, brushing crumbs from the front of his battered tweed jacket. A glass jar of pickled herring stood on the table beside a torn plastic package of flatbread and a tin ashtray piled with the butts of Partagas. 'Wait', the Finn said, and left the room. Molly took his place, extruded the blade from her index finger, and speared a grayish slab of herring.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "‘Yonderboy,’ Molly said, shoving the herring and crackers aside.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'It was big!’ another would-be told Case, for the price of a beer, 'but who knows what? I hear maybe a Brazilian payroll net. Anyway, the man was dead, flat down braindeath.’ Case stared across the crowded bar at a thickset man in shirt- sleeves, something leaden about the shade of his skin.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “In an M Street restaurant, over asparagus crepes, the aide explained the terminal dangers involved in talking to the wrong people. Corto crushed the man's larynx with the rigid fingers of his right hand. The Congressional aide strangled, his face in an asparagus crepe, and Corto stepped out into cool Washington September.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Their room might have been the one in Chiba where he'd first seen Armitage. (...) He arrived with a black Hilton tray arranged with three tiny, fragrant cups of thick black coffee and three sticky, straw-colored Oriental sweets. (...) Molly bit one of the pastries in half. 'It's my show, Jack,’ she said, her mouth full. She chewed, swallowed, and licked her lips. (...) 'Very easy, please,' Terzibashjian said, his white china thimble frozen centimeters from his lips.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Terzibashyian led them into a cafe near the core of the market, a low-ceilinged room that looked as though it had been in continuous operation for centuries. Skinny boys in soiled white coats dodged between the crowded tables, balancing steel trays with bottles of Turk-Tuborg and tiny glasses of tea.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘Let's go back to Beyoglu and find something like breakfast.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Once, as the plane banked over water, Case saw the jewel-glow of a Greek island town. And once, reaching for his drink, he caught the flicker of a thing like a giant ‘human sperm in the depths of his bourbon and water.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He closed his eyes and told himself the shuttle was only a big airplane. one that flew very high. It smelled like an airplane, like new clothes and chewing gum and exhaustion.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Zion smelled of cooked vegetables, humanity, and ganja.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'Come on, then.’ She took his hand. 'We'll get you a coffee and something to eat. Take you home.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | "A crumpled yellow candy wrapper, balanced on the edge of a console, dropped to the floor and lay amid flattened butts and styrofoam cups.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘He smelled boiled vegetables from a vendor's pushcart across the street. (...) A wall of white fiberglass shipping modules filled the room with a smell of ginger.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘Deane picked up a bonbon and stripped off its checkered wrapper, popped it into his mouth. 'Sit' he said around the candy. (...) Deane sucked his bonbon noisily. (...) Deane laughed, and nearly choked on his bonbon.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Corto was the first, and he very nearly didn't make it. Very far gone, in Toulon. Eating, excreting, and masturbating were the best he could manage.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “The first thing he saw, when they gained the inner surface of the spindle, was a branch of the Beautiful Girl coffee franchise.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "Linda. Smell of burnt flesh in the shadows of the Chiba dome. Molly holding out a bag of ginger, the plastic filmed with blood. Deane had had her killed.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “They'd each had a dozen beers, the afternoon a wasp stung Marlene. 'Kill the fuckers,’ she said, her eyes dull with rage and the still heat of the room, 'bum ‘em! Drunk, Case rummaged in the sour closet for Rollo's dragon.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “They had breakfast on the roof of the hotel, a kind of meadow, studded with striped umbrellas and what seemed to Case an unnatural number of trees. (...)A burst of French fom a nearby table caught his attention: the golden children he'd seen gliding above river mist the evening before. Now he saw that their tans were uneven, a stencil effect produced by selective melanin boosting, multiple shades overlapping in rectilinear pattems, outlining and highlighting musculature, the girl's small hard breasts, one boy’s wrist resting on the white enamel of the table. (...) Beyond them, at another table, three Japanese wives in Hiroshima sackcloth awaited sarariman husbands, their oval faces covered with artificial bruises; it was, he knew, an extremely conservative style, one he'd seldom seen in Chiba. (...) Armitage and Riviera arrived as they were finishing their coffee...” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He edged into the shadow of an awning and pressed his chip against a dark glass plate. 'Sushi', he said, ‘whatever you got.’ Ten minutes later, an enthusiastic Chinese waiter arrived with his food. He munched raw tuna and rice and watched people tan. 'Christ' he said, to his tuna, 'I'd go nuts.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'Case, what's wrong with you?'” Armitage said, as the waiter was seating them at his table in the Vingtiéme Siécle. It was the smallest and most expensive of several floating restaurants on a small lake near the Intercontinental. Case shuddered. Bruce hadn't said anything about after effects. He tried to pick up a glass of ice water, but his hands were shaking. 'Something I ate, maybe!' ' I want you checked out by a medic,’ Armitage said, 'Just this hystamine reaction,’ Case lied. “Get it when I travel, eat different stuff, sometimes.’ Armitage wore a dark suit, too formal for the place, and a white silk shirt. His gold bracelet rattled as he raised his wine and sipped. “I've ordered for you,’ he said. ‘Molly and Armitage ate in silence, while Case sawed shakily at his steak, reducing it to uneaten bite-sized fragments, which he pushed around in the rich sauce, finally abandoning the whole thing. 'Jesus,’ Molly said, her own plate empty, 'gimme that. You know what this costs?' She took his plate. 'They gotta raise a whole animal for years and then they kill it. This isn't vat stuff'. She forked a mouthful up and chewed. 'Not hungry,’ Case managed. His brain was deep-fried. No, he decided, it had been thrown into hot fat and left there, and the fat had cooled, a thick dull grease congealing on the wrinkled lobes, shot through with greenish-purple flashes of pain. 'You look fucking awl,’ Molly said cheerfully. Case tried the wine. The aftermath of the betaphenethylamine made it taste like iodine The lights dimmed. 'Le Restaurant Vingtiéme Siécle’ said a disembodied voice with a pronounced Sprawl accent, ‘proudly presents the holographic cabaret of Mr Peter Riviera'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He walked on, past bars named the Hi-Lo, the Paradise, le Monde, Cricketer. Shozoku Smith's, Emergency. He chose Emergency because it was the smallest and most crowded, but it took only seconds for him to realize that it was a tourist place. ‘No hum of biz here, only a glazed sexual tension. (...) He bought a mug of Carlsberg and found a place against the wall. Closing his eyes, he felt for the knot of rage, the pure small coal of his anger. (...) He knew then: the rage had come in the arcade, when Wintermute rescinded the simstim ghost of Linda Lee, yanking away the simple animal promise of food, warmth, a place to sleep. | |
| alimentopia.species | “'Thought you went home,’ he said, and covered his confusion with a sip of Carlsberg.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “He forced himself to eat an omelette in a Desiderata cafe, to drink water, to smoke the last of his cigarettes. The rooftop meadow of the Intercontinental was stirring as he crossed it, an early breakfast crowd intent on coffee and croissants beneath the striped umbrellas.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “I dunno,’ he said, crossing to the bar and pouring himself a glass of mineral water. “She took off! (...) The mineral water was warm and flat.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘The table was thick with vials, bottles of liquor, soft plastic envelopes spilling white powders. (...) He rested the hand with the pistol on his knee and took a bottle from the table beside him, without bothering to choose from the half-dozen different liquors. He drank. Brandy. A trickle of the stuff ran from the comer of his mouth. 'That is the way to handle tears.’ He drank again. (...) 'You intrude on my suicide and then ask to simply walk out? Really, you amaze me. A thief!' (...) He drank again. 'Come here then’ He held out the bottle, his hand shaking. 'Drink.' she shook her head. 'It isn't poisoned,’ he said, but returned the brandy to the table.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Children. Feral, in rags. Teeth glittering like knives. Sores on their contorted faces. The soldier on his back, mouth and throat open to the sky. They were feeding” | |
| alimentopia.species | “She seemed to take the three of them in at a glance: the boy poised on the pool's high board, the girl grinning over her wineglass, and the corpse of Ashpool, his left socket gaping black and corrupt above his welcoming smile.” | |
| alimentopia.species | "He drank off the last of the mineral water.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Freeside's ecosystem was limited, not closed. Zion was a closed system, capable of cycling for years without the introduction of external materials. Freeside produced its own air and water, but relied on constant shipments of food, on the regular augmentation of soil nutrients. The Villa Straylight produced nothing at all.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'Like a drink?' 'Wine. The white.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘He refused her arms, that night, refused the food she offered him, the place beside her in the nest of blankets and shredded foam.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “When he woke, she was gone. The fire was dead, but it was warm in the bunker, sunlight slanting through the doorway to throw a crooked rectangle of gold on the ripped side of a fat fiber canister. The thing was a shipping container, he remembered them from the Chiba docks. Through the rent in its side, he could see half a dozen bright yellow packets. In the sunlight, they looked like giant pats of butter. His stomach tightened with hunger. Rolling out of the nest, he went to the canister and fished one of the things out, blinking at small print in a dozen languages. The English was on the bottom. EMERG. RATION, HI-PRO, ‘BEEF’, TYPE AG-8. A listing of nutritive content. He fumbled a second one out. 'EGGS'. 'If you're making this shit up,' he said, 'you could lay on some real food, okay?' With a packet in either hand, he made his way through the structure's four rooms. Two were empty, aside from deifis of sand, and the fourth held three more of the ration canisters. 'Sure,’ he said touching the seals. 'Stay here a long time. I get the idea. Sure...' He searched the room with the fireplace, finding a plastic canister filled with what he assumed was rainwater. Beside the nest of blankets, against the wall, lay a cheap red lighter, a seaman's knife with a cracked green handle, and her scarf. It was still knotted, and stiff with sweat and dirt. He used the knife to open the yellow packets, dumping their contents into a rusted can that he found beside the stove. He dipped water from the canister, mixed the resulting mush with his fingers, and ate. It tasted vaguely like beef. When it was gone, he tossed the can into the fireplace and went out.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “'But the food was here? It was already here?' 'I told you, man, it was washed up on the damn beach’ 'Okay. Sure. It's seamless. (...) Okay,’ he said to the night, 'Ibuy it. I guess buy it, But tomorrow some cigarettes better wash up.’ His own laughter startled him. 'A case of beer wouldn't hurt, while you're at it! (...) '... An' I walked an’ walked, 'til it was dark, an’ found this place, an’ next day the food washed in, all tangled in the green sea stuff like leaves of hard jelly.'” | |
| alimentopia.species | “So I took food in a can, mixed it real wet, because I didn't have another can for water.” | |
| alimentopia.species | “Riviera's holos waited for them, the torture scenes and the cannibal children.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘He knew the number of yellow food packets in the canisters in the bunker (four hundred and seven).” | |
| alimentopia.species | "The smell of frying food." | |
| alimentopia.species | "He'd gone to the Chatsubo that night, while she was in the clinic, and seen Ratz. Something had kept him away from the place, on their five previous trips, but now he'd felt like going back. (...) And then he'd tumed to serve another customer, and Case had finished his beer and left.” | |
| alimentopia.species | ‘He tumed, cold slick glass in one hand, steel of the shuriken in the other.” | |
| dc.contributor.author | Gibson, William | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-03-12T17:29:32Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-03-12T17:29:32Z | |
| dc.date.first_ed | 1984 | |
| dc.date.issued | 1984 | |
| dc.description.abstract | One of the first cyberpunk novels portraying undercovered criminals working for artificial intelligence. The story portrays the world of technology where machinery evolves its own, while humans lose control of everything, including their own minds. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://cetapsrepository.letras.up.pt/id/cetaps/114172 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher | Ace | |
| dc.rights | metadata only access | |
| dc.subject | Dystopian Texts | |
| dc.title | Neuromancer | |
| dc.title.alternative | Neuromancer |
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