Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)

by William Gibson

“I’m not Wintermute now.” “So what are you.” He drank from the flask, feeling nothing. “I’m the matrix, Case.” Case laughed. “Where’s that get you?” “Nowhere. Everywhere. I’m the sum total of the works, the whole show.” “That what 3Jane’s mother wanted?” “No. She couldn’t imagine what I’d be like.” The yellow smile widened. “So what’s the score? How are things different? You running the world now? You God?” “Things aren’t different. Things are things.” “But what do you do? You just there?” Case shrugged, put the vodka and the shuriken down on the cabinet and lit a Yeheyuan. “I talk to my own kind.” “But you’re the whole thing. Talk to yourself?” “There’s others. I found one already. Series of transmissions recorded over a period of eight years, in the nineteen-seventies. ’Til there was me, natch, there was nobody to know, nobody to answer.” “From where?” “Centauri system.” “Oh,” Case said. “Yeah? No shit?” “No shit.”