Neuromancer: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Molly and Case easily pass though customs into Freeside. Freeside is a giant tube, and sunlight shines from the center, an illusion of the “recorded blue of a Cannes sky.” He knows intellectually that past the sky, on the ceiling, are more buildings and lakes, but “it made no sense to his body.”

Molly and Case check into the Intercontinental hotel. From his balcony, Case watches three French teenagers hang-glide. Molly comes up beside him, mentioning that “we were gonna come here once,” but when Case asks “we who?” she shuts down, and goes to bed.

Case struggles to sleep, mulling over his encounter with Wintermute, and Linda’s death. He thinks of Deane’s ginger candies, and realizes Deane ordered Linda’s death, probably manipulated by Wintermute, who had confessed he “took advantage of existing situations.” He considers Deane could have acted alone, but also considers how Wintermute remade Corto into Armitage. He is a strong and subtle manipulator.

Case finally falls asleep and dreams of a summer when he was fifteen, living with a girl named Marlene. Wasps built a nest on their windowsill, and Case tried to kill them with a flamethrower, which only knocked the nest into an alley floor below, irritating but not killing the wasps. Case goes downstairs, and is horrified to see the “alien” “birth factory” of unborn and juvenile wasps inside the split open hull of their colony. He uses his flamethrower to burn it to a crisp. Waking up in his hotel, Case realizes the wasp nest in his dream bore the T-A logo of Tessier-Ashpool.

Molly covers Case in bronzer to help him blend in with other tanned Freeside tourists. It doesn’t look real, but she explains, “it looks like you care enough to fake it. Over breakfast, Case tells Molly about his near-death experience with Wintermute. He explains it felt totally real, gesturing to the world around him he explains “real as this […] maybe more.”

Riviera and Armitage arrive. Riviera asks Molly for more “medicine,” which she threatens to withhold. Armitage tells her she must give it to him, as Armitage has an important “audition” later in the day. Molly’s assignment for the day is to work out in the low gravity at one end of Freeside, while Case is going to buy a vacuum-sealed space suit and return to Maelcum’s ship.

Back on the Marcus Garvey, Maelcum gives Case a steel cassette that a man delivered to him earlier in the day. Case recognizes it as a virus program, but he doesn’t know much about it. He plugs it into the Hosaka, who informs him it’s called Kuang Grade Mark Eleven, and is a Chinese “penetration program” capable of penetrating “existing military systems and artificial intelligences.” The Hosaka also informs him that, several steps up the ladder, Tessier-Ashpool owns the virus.

Case jacks in to talk to Dixie. He lays out what he knows—that Wintermute and the Rio AI connect through Straylight somehow, and Wintermute is “burning itself,” all while trying to get on Case’s good side. Dixie explains that with an AI, there’s a “real motive problem,” Still, Dixie suspects Case is cutting through limitations placed on Wintermute, giving it autonomy. Case considers this, and slots in the virus anyway so Dixie can learn about it.

Case returns to his hotel. He wants to get high, and wanders up to the hotel roof, where he meets Cath, a local who has been swimming in the pool. Case introduces himself as Lupus. She wonders if he’s a gangster, but he tells her he’s a drug addict. He wants stimulants, but only ones his body can process. She says she has some: betaphenethylamine.

Back in her hotel room, Cath’s partner Bruce gives Case a derm. Despite his modified liver and pancreas, it works. Case returns to his hotel room extremely high. Molly chastises him, and warns him that if the drug can get past his modifications, the comedown will be brutal. Case doesn’t mind. Instead he undresses and climbs into bed with Molly.