"A girl with teeth like Dog's hit the Floor on all fours. Her breasts were tattooed with indigo
spirals. Then she was across the Floor, laughing, grappling with a boy who was drinking dark
liquid from a liter flask. Lo Tek fashion ran to scars and tattoos. And teeth. The electricity they
were tapping to light the Killing Floor seemed to be an exception to their overall aesthetic,
made in the name of... rirtual, sport, art? I didn't know, but I could see that the Floor was
something special. I had the look of having been assembled over generations.
I held the useless shotgun under my jacket. Its hardness and heft were comforting, even
thought I had no more shells. And it came to me that I had no idea at all of what was really
happening, or of what was supposed to happen. And that was the nature of my game,
because I'd spent most of my life as a blind receptacle to be filled with other people;s
knowledge and then drained, spouting synthetic languages I'd never understand. A very
technical boy. Sure.
And then I noticed just how quiet the Lo Teks had become. He was there, at the edge of the
light, taking in the Killing Floor and the gallery of silent Lo Teks with a tourist's calm. And as
our eyes met for the first time with mutual recognition, a memory clicked into place for me, of
Paris, and the long Mercedes electrics gliding through the rain to Notre Dame; mobile
greenhouses, Japanese faces behind the glass, and a hundred Nikons rising in blind
phototropism, flowers of steel and crystel. Behind his eyes, as they found me, those same
shutters whirring.
I looked for Molly Millions, but she was gone. The Lo Teks parted to let him step up on to the
bench. He bowed, smiling, and stepped smoothly out of his sandals, leaving them side by
side, perfectly aligned, and then he stepped down on to the Killing Floor. He came for me,
across that shifting trampoline of scrap, as easily as any tourist padding across synthetic pile
in any featureless hotel.
Molly hit the Floor, moving. "
- William Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic
