Case punched his deck and the matrix unfolded around him like an origami crane made of light. The Sprawl was a long strange way home over the Pacific. He was twenty-four. For Case, who lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh.

The cyberspace matrix was a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh. The Sprawl was a long, strange way home over the Pacific. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.