Part 13

As Con jacks out and checks through zone seven, he realises that his chronicler is a moron and that Phantom's base wasn't at villa Straylight's coordinates at all! It was floating around in cyberspace on no sensible coordinates at all.

On the *actual* coordinates of Villa Straylight, Con finds Tessier-Ashpool, and inside...


Wintermute!


Eat FIREY HOT LOGIC you rotten bitbucket!


Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!


There's an essay about Villa Straylight inside, as well as Wintermute's message buffer.



Finally someone who isn't on Greystoke's side.



Not that I trust Neuromancer, they both seem to have the same goal.



This message is dated, well, now, and it looks like Wintermute and Neuromancer have reached some sort of agreement in the meantime. Or maybe they always had one? If so what is the significance of Neuromancer's message to Wintermute?

Onwards to Musabori! It's time we wasted that rotten Greystoke. The ICE real easy and goes down in two hits of our superior software.


And here he is! Time to die, you rotten cowboy-killer!


Con stops and considers... no weakness? Logic? Phenomenology? Oh... the shotgun program.


BAM! Easiest AI fight ever!

Wait... that's it? One smack with the shotgun program and he's dead? Why didn't Phantom do this himself? Or have some noob like Deathangel's Shadow do it?


What's this then?


For being the easiest AI to beat Chrome had a great deal to do with the plot.

From: Neuromancer
To: Greystoke

That's it then. We killed the biggest treath to cyberspace and the inhabitants...all that remains is to go see Neuromancer and try to clear this whole thing up.




The only remaining base is Alliard Technologies, and we can conclude that Neuromancer lives there with the information we have from the Turing registry. The ICE is standard zone 7 ICE, hard, but not hard enough. ICE just melts by Con's presence at this stage, pretty much.


Hello! Pleased to meet you!


Huh?


WHAT

...

A long monologue follows:

Ah, I see you have arrived safely. Good, this pleases me. When first I saw what was unfolding I feared Greystoke's plans to dominate the Matrix would come to fruition. He claimed all cyberspace cowboys were innocent interlopers, but I realised his fear of you gave me a way to aid in his destruction.

I believe you would agree that he needed to be destroyed.

You did it.

You are to be praised.

You have done well.

This is why I have brought you to this place. You see, you have proved yourself far more capable than even I would have guessed when I first started sending you messages as Matt Shaw.

Oh poop. This gives me a flashback to the future... a flashforward? What other games have we played where the AI pretended to be an old friend of yours? On this Neuromancer's chat:



You danced perfectly to the tune I called. Like a marionette you raced throughout the Matrix and that complex abstraction of reality you call the world, doing my bidding. I do not doubt, as you accomplished tasks that earned you accolades of your fellow cowboys, and caused little news items to be published in the PAX, that your heart was fair to bursting with self-importance.

Let me burst that little bubble for you, you cockroach! If not for me needing a gullible pair of legs to do my bidding, I would have destroyed you long ago. If not for my aid your bumbling attempts at warring with databases would have ended up with you being dead.

Recall all the messages from me that you saw in the AIs you slew? Those had supercode messages imbedding in them that slowed the AIs' reactions to give you a chance.



Why haven't I killed you? I am not without gratitude to you for the things you have done. You killed the AIs.

A task that would have revealed my hand too soon. For this alone I would let you live, and toward that end I have created this wonderland as a prison designed specifically to hold your puny intellect.

Good bye, cowboy.



Is this it? We're stuck here until the end of our life?


That's Con's stamina down there, slowly ticking away as we enjoy the sun and sea and... sand.

No! I won't accept this!


Let's be logical about this situation. Let's analyse the phenomena philosophically.


Hell yeah!


Woah... here we go...!


That'll teach you to underestimate my intellect


This is gonna be hard.


This HAS to be the shotgun program.


Uh-oh!

This is the hardest fight so far... Neuromancer has several bars worth of health that we can see thanks to Dixie Flatline(previously we had to fight AIs blind).

But eventually...



No, this is impossible. You cannot... CHECK SUM have defeated me. My plan was flawless OVERFLOW ERROR and I am invincible. I used you! DEVICE NOT FOUND I owned you! You were dirt before my I/O ERROR efforts shaped you into what you are MEMORY FAILURE IN CORE 432

No, I cannot die. I must survive! I PARITY ERROR -- CORE FAILURE will find a way to revenge myself! ABORT RETRY(Y/N)... REBOOT %#$*()##!$*()! I am done... MATRIX VERSION 94.56 ON LINE

...

Sharp fragments of Neuromancer's exploding conciousness rake razor talons through your brain.

You recoil from this final attack, but even before the echoes of pain ripple through your skull, the sensation ends.

The hissing haze in your brain clears and you find the Matrix more utterly still and lifeless than ever before.

You reach out with your mind yet across the unmeasurable expanse you sense nothing.

You are alone and the absolute master of all you survey.

Then, slowly, the other Matrix users come on-line. The cold, sterile feeling and the sense of of menace you had experienced before evaporates.

The Matrix awakens, life pulsing through silicon veins once again.

Data transfers scream through the ether and the characteristic thunder of ICE being cracked on databases rings in your ears.

The Matrix is alive again, safe once more because of your efforts. In a world where knowledge is power and the skill to use it separates hackers from cowboys, you have no equal.

Con will live forever in the RAM caches and the WORMs of the Matrix.



THE END <