timothy-leary-chaos-cyber-culture

the shit out of everybody.TL Molly says, "You Uke to jack m. IVegotta tussle." That's a beautiful two-liner.WG: 1 was originally gonna call this bookJacked In. The people at Ace said it soundedtoo much like "jacked off," but that wasmy first thought for a title. Molly's tougherthan Case because Case is the vievipointcharacter, and 1 wanted an enigmatic character,so she's more shut off from me. It'sthe symbolism of the sunglasses. He nevereven fmds out what colour her eyes are.TL And making love, she says. . .WG: "No fmgerprints." Yeah, she's a toughone for me to do, because that's some kindof image from . . .my She's a bushido figure.When she says she's street samurai,she means itquite literally. She has thiscode. And itmay grow out of a sort ofpathological personahty, but it still is hercode.TL What was that segment where shewas like in hypnosis; so she didnt knowwhat was going on?BRUMMBAERWG: Oh, they use a sort of sensory cut-out,implied that the crowd that Case hungout with is a drug crowd.WG: Yeah. This seems to be a world whereeveryix)dy is pretty much stoned most ofthe time.TL: That first chapter . . . whew!WG: Ihad to go over and over that I musthave rewritten it a hundred and fifty times.TL Fll bet. It's like a symphony or afugue. This is the fifth fine m the book:"It's Uke my body developed this massivedrug deficiency. It was a Sprawl voiceand a Sprawl joke." (Laughs) Of course,his life was jacking in.WG: Oh yeah. He just lives for . . .TL Cyberspace.WG: Yeah. For cyberspace.TL Would you describe cyberspace as thematrix of all the hallucmations?WG: Yeah, it's a consensual hallucinationthat these people have created. It's like,with this equipment, you can agree to sharethe same hallucinations. In effect, they'recreating a world. It's not really a place, it'snot really space. It's notional space.TL See, we Uve m that space. We that arehooked up to Neuromancer are living uithat consensual hallucmation.WG: 1 didn't think women would go for theMolly character very much. I've really beensurprised at the number of women whohave come up to me and said, "Molly'sgreaL 1 really got off on her." 1 thinkbeatsAmerica is ready for a female lead whoso that she isn't conscious when this stuff ishappening, but her motor system was beingrun by a program. So, in effect, she becamekind of a living sex-shop doll.Programmed.The people who write the program are inBerlin. She says, "They have some nastyshit there."Actually, this starts in BurningChrome. That's where it comes from. Oneof the key things in that story is when thisguy realizes that his girlfriend is working inone of these places in order to buy herselfan improved pair of artificial eyes. 1described it a little more clearly in thatstory. The prostitutes aren't conscious.They don't remember. In Burning Chrome,the guy says the orgasms are like little silverfiares right out at the edge of space, andthat's the . . .TL That's the guy's orgasm, not hers.She's not even feeUngit.SECTION II. CYIERKETICS CONVERSATION WITH WIILIAM CIISON 25