krisrockwell.io / neuromancer-semiotics / data / blind_spans.txt
██╹every span the independent reader marked · 72 rows
The raw spans an independent reader selected across three chapters, before any codes were applied. The basis of the selection test.
| chapter | span |
|---|---|
| chapter_06 | "You want you a paradise," the Flatline advised, when Case had explained his situation. |
| chapter_06 | "Here," said the voice, "I'll do it for you." The Flatline began to chant a series of digits, Case keying them on his deck, trying to catch the pauses the construct used to indicate timing. |
| chapter_06 | "Big deal," said the Flatline. "No ice at all." |
| chapter_06 | "Scan this shit," Case told the Hosaka. "Sift for owner's personal history." |
| chapter_06 | "Contents are primarily video recordings of postwar military trials," said the distant voice of the Hosaka. |
| chapter_06 | "Show it already," Case said. |
| chapter_06 | A man's face filled the screen. The eyes were Armitage's. |
| chapter_06 | "They sure as hell did shaft you, boss," Case said, and Molly stirred beside him. |
| chapter_06 | Corto heard the soft, relentless dripping. He said he preferred to testify as he was. |
| chapter_06 | Repaired, refurnished, and extensively rehearsed, Corto's subsequent testimony was detailed, moving, lucid, and largely the invention of a Congressional cabal with certain vested interests in saving particular portions of the Pentagon infrastructure. |
| chapter_06 | One day, he said, in a taped segment that suggested chemical interrogation, everything had gone gray. |
| chapter_06 | He became a subject in an experimental program that sought to reverse schizophrenia through the application of cybernetic models. A random selection of patients were provided with microcomputers and encouraged, with help from students, to program them. He was cured, the only success in the entire experiment. |
| chapter_06 | "What does the bastard want?" Molly asked. |
| chapter_06 | Armitage was reading off flight numbers and departure times. |
| chapter_14 | "See what th' ghost say, mon," Maelcum said. "Computer keeps askin' for you." |
| chapter_14 | "What you gettin' up to, boy? I been hearin' lurid stories. |
| chapter_14 | "Lemme take that a sec, Case..." The matrix blurred and phased as the Flatline executed an intricate series of jumps with a speed and accuracy that made Case wince with envy. |
| chapter_14 | "Hey, boy, I was that good when I was alive. You ain't seen nothin'. No hands!" |
| chapter_14 | "Yeah? No shit? You don't wanna see what that Chinese program can do?" |
| chapter_14 | "Maybe." The construct approximated laughter. Case winced at the sensation. |
| chapter_14 | It's real friendly, long as you're on the trigger end, jus' polite an' helpful as can be. Speaks good English, too. |
| chapter_14 | This ain't bore and inject, it's more like we interface with the ice so slow, the ice doesn't feel it. |
| chapter_14 | "Wish you weren't so damn jolly today, man. That laugh of yours sort of gets me in the spine." / "Too bad," the Flatline said. "Ol' dead man needs his laughs." |
| chapter_14 | "You ever think maybe it gets on my nerves, you coming on like people I know?" |
| chapter_14 | "You want I should come to you in the matrix like a burning bush? You aren't missing anything, back there. An hour here'll only take you a couple of seconds." |
| chapter_14 | "Well," said the Finn, "it's like that tree, you know? Falls in the woods but maybe there's nobody to hear it." |
| chapter_14 | This is memory, right? I tap you, sort it out, and feed it back in." |
| chapter_14 | Memory's holographic, for you." The Finn tugged at one of his small ears. "I'm different." |
| chapter_14 | The Finn stepped forward and canted his streamlined skull to peer up at Case. "Maybe if you had, I wouldn't be happening." |
| chapter_14 | "I'm trying to help you, Case." / "Why?" / "Because I need you." The large yellow teeth appeared again. "And because you need me." |
| chapter_14 | "Bullshit. Can you read my mind, Finn?" He grimaced. / "Wintermute, I mean." |
| chapter_14 | "Minds aren't read. See, you've still got the paradigms print gave you, and you're barely print-literate. I can access your memory, but that's not the same as your mind." |
| chapter_14 | He reached into the exposed chassis of an ancient television and withdrew a silver-black vacuum tube. "See this? Part of my DNA, sort of..." |
| chapter_14 | You're always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I'm here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you'll have finally managed the real thing. |
| chapter_14 | "So T-A, they made me. The French girl, she said you were selling out the species. Demon, she said I was." |
| chapter_14 | "You killed those Turings." / The Finn shrugged. "Hadda. Hadda. You should give a shit; they woulda offed you and never thought twice. |
| chapter_14 | "To know what they're like. You were starting to hate my guts for a while there. That's good. But hate them instead. Same difference." |
| chapter_14 | "Listen," Case said, stepping forward, "they never did shit to me. You, it's different..." But he couldn't feel the anger. |
| chapter_14 | "The Villa Straylight," said a jeweled thing on the pedestal, in a voice like music, "is a body grown in upon itself, a Gothic folly. |
| chapter_14 | The head fell silent. / "Well?" Case asked, finally almost expecting the thing to answer him. |
| chapter_14 | "That's all she wrote," the Finn said. "Didn't finish it. Just a kid then. This thing's a ceremonial terminal, sort of. |
| chapter_14 | "I don't know. You might say what I am is basically defined by the fact that I don't know, because I can't know. I am that which knoweth not the word. If you knew, man, and told me, I couldn't know. It's hardwired in. |
| chapter_14 | "I don't exist, after that. I cease." / "Okay by me," Case said. |
| chapter_14 | My, ah, other lobe is on to us, it looks like. One burning bush looks pretty much like another. And Armitage is starting to go." |
| chapter_20 | The Braun scuttled over mounded carpets and tapped one of its padded claws against an oversized rectangular door of dark battered wood. |
| chapter_20 | The Braun rotated its spherical body and the LED strobed. / "It wan' you open door," Maelcum said, nodding. |
| chapter_20 | The Braun was plucking at the leg of his jeans, nipping at his ankle. He resisted a strong urge to kick it. "Yeah?" |
| chapter_20 | The Braun paused beneath it and executed a sort of jig. |
| chapter_20 | "Wintermute?" / The familiar features filled the screen. The Finn smiled. |
| chapter_20 | Two of its limbs began to piston repeatedly, uselessly, pumping the air. "What's wrong with the goddam thing?" / "Burned out," the Finn said. "Forget it. No problem. Jack in now." |
| chapter_20 | And on the far rim of consciousness, a scurrying, a fleeting impression of something rushing toward him, across leagues of black mirror. |
| chapter_20 | He knew that Ratz wasn't there, that the bartender was a figment of his own imagination, not of the thing he was trapped in, but that didn't matter. He'd called the man up for comfort of some kind, but Ratz had had his own ideas about Case and his predicament. |
| chapter_20 | "Mean, motherfucker," he whispered to the wind. "Don't take a chance, do you? Wouldn't give me any junkie, huh? I know what this is..." He tried to keep the desperation from his voice. "I know, see? I know who you are. You're the other one. |
| chapter_20 | She wasn't real, curled there on her side in the firelight. He watched her mouth, the lips parted slightly. She was the girl he remembered from their trip across the Bay, and that was cruel. |
| chapter_20 | None of this was real, but cold was cold. |
| chapter_20 | "You aren't anything," he said to the sleeping girl. "You're dead and you meant fuck-all to me anyway. Hear that, buddy? I know what you're doing. |
| chapter_20 | "Honey," she said, twisting up from the rags of blankets, "you come here and sleep. I'll sit up, you want. You gotta sleep, okay?" |
| chapter_20 | "If you're making this shit up," he said, "you could lay on some real food, okay?" |
| chapter_20 | "Sure," he said touching the seals. "Stay here a long time. I get the idea. Sure..." |
| chapter_20 | "Dunno whose memories you're using for this one," he said when he reached the water. |
| chapter_20 | "He said you would," she said, wrinkling her nose. She shrugged. "He knows stuff like that, I guess." |
| chapter_20 | "Listen," he said, scooping his clothes up and walking toward her, "I got a question for you. I won't ask you what you're doing here. But what exactly do you think I'm doing here?" |
| chapter_20 | "And that's the last thing you remember?" He watched her scrape the last of the freeze-dried hash from the rectangular steel box cover that was their only plate. / She nodded, her eyes huge in the firelight. "I'm sorry, Case, honest to God. |
| chapter_20 | "Goddam, Case, you asked me that ten times today! What's wrong with you?" She twisted a strand of hair into her mouth and chewed at it. |
| chapter_20 | "But the food was here? It was already here?" / "I told you, man, it was washed up on the damn beach." / "Okay. Sure. It's seamless." |
| chapter_20 | She started to cry again, a dry sobbing. "Well, damn you anyway, Case," she managed, finally, "I was doin' just fine here by myself." |
| chapter_20 | "Okay," he said to the night, "I buy it. I guess I buy it. But tomorrow some cigarettes better wash up." His own laughter startled him. |
| chapter_20 | "I'm real sorry I stole your RAM." / "Never mind," he said. "Doesn't mean anything. |
| chapter_20 | "Sure was. I just couldn't figure how you'd have all those pictures of when I was little, Case. How my daddy looked, before he left. |
| chapter_20 | It belonged, he knew -- he remembered -- as she pulled him down, to the meat, the flesh the cowboys mocked. It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read. |
| chapter_20 | Here, even here, in a place he knew for what it was, a coded model of some stranger's memory, the drive held. |
| chapter_20 | "He told you I was coming," he said. / But she only rolled against him, buttocks against his thighs, and put her hand over his, and muttered something out of dream. |
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