Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

242Demonic Texts and Textual Demonssible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, foraiding this thing to free itself and grow?’ 174Case, it turns out, is “paid” with himself, his transformed and rebornself. Initially, in the Night City, Case is wounded and quickly turning suicidal.For Case, the narrative amounts to a complicated healing processwhereby he is able to recover something of a unity and wholeness. Anothermythical subtext, that of a shamanic initiation, is relevant here. Based on researchby Russian, Finnish and Hungarian anthropologists, Arnold vanGennep outlines this process in The Rites of Passage as follows:1) the future shaman shows neurological symptoms;2) he experiences several spirit possessions (hallucinations, phobias,epilepsy, catalepsy etc.) that develops into the idea of “temporarydeath”;3) he retreats into solitude in the woods or in the tundra and undergoesvarious privations with psychological and neuropathological consequences;4) different spirits in animal or human form start appearing to him andteach him the essence of his vocation;5) or: the shaman dies and his soul travels to the land of the spirits, thegods or the dead, and he acquires the knowledge of this region andlearns how to “subdue the evil spirits and obtain the assistance ofthe good ones;”6) after this, the shaman is reborn and ready to use his abilities. 175Case goes through all of these main phases, effectively transforming theancient formula into the needs of his “techno-shamanism.” His maimednervous system sets him apart at the beginning of narrative; he also experiencestemporary death (“flatline”) when he is contacted in cyberspace by theAIs. This alternative reality is the reverse side of “celestial” cyberspace; duringthe first of these episodes, Case is faced with the simulation of his deadgirlfriend, Linda Lee. Encounter with the dead is important for the wholeoperation: Case is assisted and advised by McCoy Pauley’s construct. Pauleyhimself had flatlined several times while he was still alive, evoking almostsuperstitious fear among other cowboys – this “Lazarus of cyberspace” isplaced in the role of an advisory spirit of an earlier shaman. 176 The final initiationfor Case is the period he spends in the land of the dead, abducted byanother AI than the one (“Wintermute”) that had employed him. Earlier inthe text lovemaking is presented as a way of entering some space, or information,analogous to Matrix. 177 Case confronts Linda again on a simulated174 N, 193. – “Michèle” in this scene is “Turing cops,” from the agency trying to preventthe Artificial Intelligence from reaching superhuman scale. The reference is to Britishmathematician Alan Turing who proposed (in 1950) the classic test to see whether amachine is capable of truly humanlike thought.175van Gennep 1909/1977, 108.176 N, 98.177N, 45.