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| Gibson, William: Count Zero
Gibson, William: Count Zero
COUNT ZERO
By William Gibson
I allready had the pleasure to read one of W.
Gibbson‘s books named ‚Virtual Light‘ and really enjoyed it.
That was basically why I bought this book; that and the fact that nearly
everyone I asked about Science Fiction told me that Gibson would be the
‚Big Boss‘ in this genre.
The story is told in the view of 3 (!)
narrators:
TURNER (first name not mentioned): He is a
mercenary who makes the dirty jobs for big companies. He’s a specialist
for extractions (kidnapping important persons or those who are bound by
contracts and bring them to another company).
MARLY KRUSHKOWA: Worked in an galery untill it
went bancrupt and now tries herself as a Art-specialist seeking rare art for
rich persons.
BOBBY (last name not mentioned): A kid from the slums of Barrytown / Los
Angeles. He earns his money stealing data from the so-called MATRIX (Something
like a really, really huge Internet).
TO EXPLAIN THE TIME:
The story takes place in the near future, where life
got far more technical then nowadays: Science has made huge advancements, but
not all were good. The rapid increase in the possibilities to cure humans has
lead to an overpopulation of earth and so space-stations have been build to hold
the huge amound of people excisting. Another side-effect was that only large,
rich companies could afford to buy the latest technology and by this have built
up huge monopoles. The Internet has widened over the whole planet and the use of
biochips (transplants in the head of person) make it possible to directly
connect oneself to the now-called ‚Matrix‘ seeing the data in
virtual reality (like in real life) via a small computers also called
cyberdecks.
The story begins with Turner beeing blown up during a
mission in Marakech. He is healed again, but remains under a strange amnesia
which lasts for three months. He spends traveling around the globe without even
knowing his identity. As he recovers his memories, he is confronted with
Conroy (later on very important!), a head of HOSAKA- A company which is
interested in the extraction of a wellknown researcher called Mitchell, who is
working for MAAS Biolabs. Something with the mission goes wrong and his team is
killed, but Turner can escape with the aeroplane in which Mitchell was supposed
to wait for him. But instead of the scientist Mitchell he finds his daughter
Tina on the backseat of the aeroplane. Dr. Mitchell prefered to give his
daughter the chance to escape and then commited suicide.
Meanwhile Marly Krushkowa is drowning in bonds and
unpayed bills. She had to sell her home and move to a friend. She’s near
desperation, when she receives a letter from Joseph Virek, one of the richest
people in the world (imagine Bill Gates x20!). He wants her to find a strange
black box which seems to be built out of crap, but still somehow makes one dizy
if you would stare at it for too long. He tells her in a Virtual conference (The
persons can talk to each other like in one room though beeing in different parts
of the world) that he would need the more boxes for ‚A special
project‘. He gives her access to his resources and the assistance of his
servant Paco to find the maker of the boxes. When Marly makes herself on the way
to Paris, she meets her old boyfriend Alain. He says he knows of the
box-maker’s whereabout and would tell her what he knows for 6 Million
Dollars. With money beeing no problem for her, Marley accepts and makes herself
on the way to Alain’s apartment to make the deal...
Now, the story jumps to the third main actor in this
book: Bobby. While breaking into a data bank he is caught and heavily injured.
But that’s not all yet: On the way to his contact adress Two-a-Day, he is
robbed by a gang and the cyberdeck he made his run with is stolen. Somehow
depressed and still loosing blood, he returns home, only to be blown up by a
rocket launcher. He’s safed from death by two women, Jessica and Lona-
both working for Two-a-Day. As he reawakes, he comes to meet Two-a-Day’s
bosses: Beauvoir and Lucas. They tell him that the cyberdecks he always received
from Two-a-Day were actually stolen and that he was just used to testdrive them,
so that they could check out wheather they work or not. Now that his deck is
stolen (it contained one of the boxes Marly is looking for), they are in
trouble, because they have to fulfill a contract with another company. A
security video shows that a combat squad from Hosaka was responsible for the run
on Bobby’s apartment and it soon becomes clear that they were actually
looking for the cyberdeck. Suddenly a metallic voice comes from Lucas mouth
talking Vodoo. It tells that they should go to a man called the Finn, who had
sold the deck to them. Lucas explains that the voice came from his
‚legba‘, one of his gods. Still not understanding, but somehow
enlighted to know the truth, Bobby acompanies Beavoir to the
Finn...
Turner uses the plane to fly to his brother in Mexico
to escape from Maas Biolabs and the police. There, he lets his brother check
Tina to find out wheather she has got a datastore or something like it in her
head, but the only thing they discover is a net of wires. Then suddenly a
metallic voice comes from Tina’s mouth . It tells him to go to Los Angeles
to meet ‚the count‘ (Bobby). With nothing more than this trace of
what actually happened to him, Turner takes Tina with him and together, they
make their way to Los Angeles. But it should not be this easy: As they want to
ask for the way a helicopter from Hosaka appears and tries to kidnapp Tina, but
it gets caught in a telephone wire and crashes. Turner is now left alone; with
his own company under the control of Conroy chasing him he continues to
L.A.
Meanwhile Mary discovers that her exfriend was
murdered, but knowing that he always wrote down everything, she finds some
coordinates lieing in space. Shocked by the death of her former lover, she wants
to quit the job, but she is stopped by Paco. He threatens to kill her if she
would not finish her job. With no other choices left, Marly has to continue the
job. She hires a freighter and makes herself on the way to these coordinates,
who belong to a left research lab in the orbit of earth
Bobby arrives at Finn’s and discovers 3 dead
Killers who were sent by Hosaka. They had tried to kill Finn, but he could
defend himself. He, an old, crazy man, tells them that he received the cyberdeck
from a man called ‚the Wig‘. He tells that the Wig turned up a few
months ago and talked of strange boxes and that they would have the voice of god
in them, then he would have disappeared and was not seen since then. He also
tells them that he would have talked of space and some kind of station, but that
is all they are able to find out about him. Lucas brings Bobby to Jammer’s
a nightclub which lies high above the sprawl, where Bobby should hide untill the
situation is cleared . But as usual all turns for the bad: Maas has somehow
found out about the hideout and has hired the local gangs to surround the club.
Meanwhile Beauvoir is killed by the same rocket launcher which was shot at Bobby
before. In an attempt to call help, Bobby connects himself to the Matrix
together with Jessica (Two-a-day’s first assistant), but they are stopped
by a hacker calling himself ‚Neon‘. The hacker explains that she was
a member of the operation Turner was in and that she is now looking for him to
seek revenge. She also says that he was on the way to Bobby’s current
position. The communication is suddenly interrupted by two figures in the shape
of Voodoo masks. With the metallic voice which was heard before they tell him
that the whole thing was actually planned by a man called Conroy who
wanted to get the cyberdeck and Mitchell who had discovered the secret of the
boxes. Just as Bobby and Jessica want to disconnect, Jessica is killed by an
electric shock sent from one of Maas‘ hackers. Virek himself sudenly
appears and tells Bobby to bring him ‚the Legba’s Horse‘ ,but
Bobby does not understand who or what this should be.
Mary arrives at the space-station and meets The Wig
and his friend Jones, who fled to this left station in order to escape the
police. He leads her to the place where the boxes are made. The maker of the
boxes is a strange machine calling himself ‚count zero interrupt‘.
It builds the boxes from crap and machine-parts. Another metallic voice is heard
out of the nothing and explains that the boxes are actually nothing more than
bio-chips with a huge power if used correctly. Seperated, the boxes have only a
limited effect, but if connected, the person controlling them would be capable
of influencing the Matrix and thereby the world. It also reveals that there was
an accident on this station which sucked the spirits of the station-members into
the Matrix where they now float around a bunch of alive data. The voice tells
that there were 5 people on the station, one of them beeing Virek. He hopes to
gain the power of a god by controlling all the boxes and so return to life
again. The leader of the team of scientists had tried to stop him, but was
downloaded into the head of the ‚Legba’s Horse‘, Tina
Mitchell. Further talking is interrupted by a message from Paco, Virek’s
servant, threatening to suck the air out of the station if he would not get the
robot.
Meanwhile, the tension in the club is at it’s
peak: The gangs are near storming the club and Bobby is still trapped in the
Matrix by Virek. The situation seems hopeless as Turner arrives together with
Tina, now fully posessed by the metallic voice. She connects herself to the
Matrix and frees Bobby. Then she commits suicide by deleting herself and all the
other spirits in the matrix with a code stopping the programm. Virek and the
other spirits excist no more. Free again, Bobby and Turner explain Neon what
really happened on the mission: Conroy had tried to kidnapp Mitchell thinking
that he would gain all the power if he knew the secret of the boxes. To erase
all evidence, Conroy sold his own team to Maas. The Hacker swears to kill Conroy
and disappears.
Beeing without a boss Paco retreats from the station
and Mary, Jones and the Wig are safed.
The next day, a bomb explodes killing Conroy. The
Legba are finally dead.
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