Count Zero (Sprawl, #2)

by William Gibson

What he had experienced was a Maas security dossier compiled by a sentient computer, nothing more.

The majority approached the Gothick ideal: tall, lean, muscular, but touched by a certain gaunt restlessness, young athletes in the early stages of consumption. The graveyard pallor was mandatory, and Gothick hair was by definition black.

“The French,” he said, with great conviction, “know nothing about coffee.”

And Bobby was working on a new theory of personal deportment; he didn’t quite have the whole thing yet, but part of it involved the idea that people who were genuinely dangerous might not need to exhibit the fact at all, and that the ability to conceal a threat made them even more dangerous. This ran directly opposite to the rule around Big Playground, where kids who had no real clout whatever went to great pains to advertise their chrome-studded rabidity. Which probably did them some good, at least in terms of the local action. But Lucas was very clearly nothing to do with local action.

“Okay,” Bobby said, getting the hang of it, “then what’s the matrix? If she’s a deck, and Danbala’s a program, what’s cyberspace?” “The world,” Lucas said.

Most phone programs were equipped with cosmetic video subprograms written to bring the video image of the owner into greater accordance with the more widespread paradigms of personal beauty, erasing blemishes and subtly molding facial outlines to meet idealized statistical norms.