Idoru (Bridge, #2)

by William Gibson

The tattoo looked like something from another planet, a sign or message burned in from the depths of space, left there for mankind to interpret.

Chia’s “now” was digital, effortlessly elastic, instant recall supported by global systems she’d never have to bother comprehending.

She knew that, somehow, just as she knew that “Stuck Pixel,” barely even a song, just Lo noodling around on some pawnshop guitar, must have been playing somewhere when her mother, who’d spoken very little English at that point, chose Chia’s name from something cycling past on the Shopping Channel, the phonetic caress of those syllables striking her there in Postnatal Recovery as some optimally gentle combination of sounds Italian and English; her baby, red-haired even then, subsequently christened Chia Pet McKenzie (somewhat, Chia later gathered, to the amazement of her absent Canadian father).

The rich and the famous, Kathy had once said, were seldom that way by accident. It was possible to be one or the other, but very seldom, accidentally, to be both.

“It felt like something snapped. A rubber band. It felt like gravity.” “That’s what it feels like,” Blackwell said, “when you decide.”

“If we could ever once stop talking about the music, and the industry, and all the politics of that, I think I’d probably tell you that it’s easier to desire and pursue the attention of tens of millions of total strangers than it is to accept the love and loyalty of the people closest to us.”

The smiling Lucky Dragon, blowing smoke from its nostrils, was centered just below the hotel’s silver-embossed logo, something Laney thought of as the Droopy Evil Elf Hat. Whatever it was supposed to be, the hotel’s decorators were very fond of it. It formed a repeating motif in the lobby, and Laney was glad that it didn’t seem to have reached the guest rooms yet.

‘City of darkness.’ Between the walls of the world.”

Despite the patch of micropore on her swollen lip, the jeans and nylon bomber jacket made her look wide-awake and competent, two things Laney felt he might never be again.