Neuromancer: Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Back in the matrix, Dixie tells Case he was brain-dead for five seconds. Unconcerned, Case switches to Molly’s simstim. Wintermute has accessed the digital display in her glasses, and displays Case’s name, letting her know he’s riding along. As she crawls through the tunnels inside of Villa Straylight, she tells him a story about a man named Johnny.

Johnny was Molly’s boyfriend; he worked as a “stash,” hiding data inside of his mind for a fee. Eventually, he started blackmailing clients with traces of their stored data. Molly worked as his bodyguard. The Yakuza (gangsters) were after him, and although Molly killed their first assassin, the second came when she wasn’t home, managing to sneak through her security defenses. After returning to find her lover dead, Molly explains she “never much found anybody I gave a damn about, after that.” Molly’s speech makes Case uncomfortable; he realizes that except in the cubicle, the night before, she’s never revealed any personal details.

Molly has made her way through the inside of the Villa Straylight, arriving at an old wooden door. She picks the lock. Case realizes Wintermute has been manipulating so much around Freeside—drones, door locks, tv screens, but analog technology requires a “human agent.”

Now in the small closet-like room, Wintermute gives Molly instructions in her visual display—directing her to a drawer in a cabinet in which a key is hidden. Molly speaks to Case through the simstim—explaining Wintermute told her he had watched someone lose the key twenty years ago, and then convinced a child to move it to this room, before killing him, so no one could find it.

Case flips to the matrix, watching Kuang grow. Case tells Dixie he was right—Wintermute is kept under control by a manual override, the robotic head from the Finn’s story, who needs to hear a code word. Dixie warns Case to stop referring to Wintermute as “he,” and instead as “it.” Case jacks out for a moment, assuring Maelcum he’s fine, before jacking into Molly’s simstim. He watches her ignore Wintermute’s instructions, and take the wrong fork in a hallway.

Molly hears a voice, and approaches, accidentally stepping into a neural disruptor’s field, which causes her to collapse to the ground. The room’s inhabitant notices her. He takes her fletcher and guides her inside. The man introduces himself as Ashpool. He tells Molly that she’s interrupted his suicide.

Ashpool explains that he’s been asleep for the past thirty years, having strange dreams for much of that time, although he was told he would not dream at all. Now, the computer system at Villa Straylight has woken him up, informing him the “artificial intelligences are mad.” However, he hasn’t made any effort to address the AIs. Instead, he thawed “a Jane” (a clone who is legally his daughter) to have sex with. As he explains this to Molly, he falls asleep.

Molly takes her gun back, exploring the room. She discovers Ashpool killed the Jane in his bed. Molly looks at the woman’s face; through the simstim, Case sees the face transform into Linda Lee and back. He realizes Molly cannot see this, as it happened only on the simstim. Molly crosses the room to Ashpool, and shoots him in the eye with a toxin dart, killing him.