Mona Lisa Overdrive
Chapters - William Gibson
Chapter 1: The Smoke
Kumiko Yanaka, the thirteen-year-old daughter of a powerful Tokyo Yakuza oyabun, flies to London on the eve of her birthday, sent away by her father during a dangerous internal power struggle. On the plane she activates a Maas-Neotek biochip unit that conjures Colin, a translucent ghost-boy who serves as her guide. She is met at Heathrow by Petal, an enormous, gentle minder who drives her through the snow to Swain's interconnected townhouses in Notting Hill, where she is installed in a mirrored garret with a vast black marble tub.
POV: Kumiko Yanaka·On page: Colin, Petal·Mentioned: Roger Swain
Chapter 2: Kid Afrika
Kid Afrika arrives at Dog Solitude in his matte-black Dodge hover, driven by Cherry, to call in a favour from Slick Henry, who owes him for saving his life in Atlantic City. The Kid has a comatose man on a stretcher in the back of the hover, hooked up to medical equipment and some kind of cyberspace rig. Despite his misgivings and concern about his housemate Gentry's reaction, Slick agrees to shelter the unconscious man and Cherry for two weeks. Kid Afrika leaves drugs as a bribe for Gentry.
POV: Slick Henry·On page: Kid Afrika, Cherry Chesterfield, Little Bird, Bobby Newmark·Mentioned: Gentry
Chapter 3: Malibu
Angie Mitchell, recovering from addiction treatment at a clinic in Jamaica, has checked herself out early and retreated alone to her beach house in Malibu, under constant Sense/Net surveillance. On a morning walk she is visited by Mamman Brigitte, one of the loa, who warns her that enemies plot against her and that her father's veves have been altered by poison. Returning to the house, she finds a packet of the designer drug in a jacket pocket and a derm charger in the medicine cabinet, but forces herself to flush the drug away.
POV: Angie Mitchell·On page: Mamman Brigitte·Mentioned: Hilton Swift, Bobby Newmark
Chapter 4: Squat
Mona, a sixteen-year-old SINless prostitute living in a squalid Florida squat with her pimp Eddy, dreams of escape. Eddy announces he has met a talent scout from London named Prior who wants an actress and a handler, promising a private jet to New York. That night Mona tells Eddy the ritual fabricated story he demands, and clings to the hope that this time his promises of a better life might actually be real.
Chapter 5: Portobello
Kumiko's first morning in London, she meets Sally Shears - a tense, angry woman with surgically inset mirrored glasses - and Swain at breakfast. Sally takes Kumiko out to Portobello Road, where her barely suppressed rage manifests in her furious stride through the market crowds. In a pub called the Rose and Crown, Sally enlists a limping data thief named Tick to secretly investigate Swain's communications, then reveals to Kumiko that Swain is being manipulated by unknown forces and that Kumiko's father sent her to London because of a Yakuza war.
POV: Kumiko Yanaka·On page: Molly Millions, Roger Swain, Petal, Tick, Colin
Chapter 6: Morning Light
Slick Henry spends an uncomfortable night on Factory's ground floor while Cherry tends to the comatose man upstairs. Over coffee the next morning, Cherry reveals that Kid Afrika rescued her from a dangerous situation at a roadhouse and hired her as a med-tech. She explains that the unconscious man is paying the Kid for this arrangement - to be kept hidden and maintained in his comatose state - and that something scared the Kid into moving him from Cleveland to Dog Solitude. She refers to the gray box above the stretcher as the 'LF.'
POV: Slick Henry·On page: Cherry Chesterfield, Little Bird, Bobby Newmark·Mentioned: Kid Afrika
Chapter 7: No There, There
Alone in Malibu, Angie disposes of Bobby's abandoned belongings and discovers a cheap Ono-Sendai cyberspace deck in a drawer. She briefly jacks in, experiencing the matrix for the first time without the loa's mediation. Hilton Swift calls on executive override, revealing that Sense/Net monitors her activities and logged her matrix access. Angie asks about Bobby's whereabouts and Swift claims they lost track of him. She calls Continuity and requests the old Tally Isham recordings from Freeside, finding the Tessier-Ashpool label on a wine bottle that matches a mysterious sigil from her dreams.
POV: Angie Mitchell·On page: Hilton Swift, Continuity, Porphyre·Mentioned: Bobby Newmark, Robin Lanier
Chapter 8: Texas Radio
Mona wakes in the Florida squat and follows her careful dressing ritual to avoid contact with the filthy floor. She ventures out to buy new clothes with the money from Prior's advance, eating wonton at a market stall where she notices a suited man with a beard watching her. She studies an Angie Mitchell poster with longing, unconsciously mimicking the star's expression. When she returns, Eddy and Prior are waiting; Prior watches her pack with unsettling intensity, and they fly north on a private jet.
POV: Mona Lisa·On page: Eddy, Prior·Mentioned: Angie Mitchell, Tally Isham
Chapter 9: Underground
Kumiko and Sally ride the Underground, where Kumiko sees the emaciated Jack Draculas for the first time. Sally leads her through a series of elaborate counter-surveillance manoeuvres involving multiple trains, taxis, and a dash through Harrods, before they settle in a tiny Covent Garden cafe. Sally explains the Yakuza hierarchy - oyabun-kobun, giri, kuromaku - and reveals that Kumiko's father is one of the most powerful men in Tokyo. Back at Swain's, Kumiko retrieves the Maas-Neotek unit from its hiding place and listens to Colin's recordings of Swain plotting with Sally and Petal.
POV: Kumiko Yanaka·On page: Molly Millions, Colin, Roger Swain, Petal
Chapter 10: The Shape
Slick Henry works on the Judge's buzzsaw hand while thinking about his housemate Gentry and his obsessive quest for the Shape of cyberspace. He reflects on the Judge's construction and its meaning - he built it because he'd been sentenced to induced Korsakov's for car theft, losing years of memory in five-minute intervals. When Gentry returns from Boston, Slick bribes him with Kid Afrika's bag of drugs to accept the strangers. But Gentry, high on a derm, insists on meeting the guests and becomes fascinated by the gray box above the sleeper's head.
POV: Slick Henry·On page: Gentry, Cherry Chesterfield, Bobby Newmark·Mentioned: Kid Afrika
Chapter 11: Down on the Drag
Prior brings Mona to a hotel in the northern Sprawl, installs her in a room with Angie Mitchell stims, and tells her to stay put. She sneaks out into the evening crowds, exhilarated by the city's energy and wiz-fuelled confidence. She encounters hostile prostitutes at a fountain and narrowly escapes a pimp, then the wiz turns on her and the city becomes ugly and threatening. The chapter ends with her crash-sick against a lamppost, flashing back to childhood on the old man's catfish farm in Cleveland.
POV: Mona Lisa·Mentioned: Prior, Eddy, Angie Mitchell
Chapter 12: Antarctica Starts Here
Angie's production crew arrives at the Malibu house to prepare for her return to work. After Piper Hill calibrates her sensorium with the Usher test, Angie asks Continuity about the Freeside torus and learns it was owned by Tessier-Ashpool S.A. Director David Pope tells her about Lady Jane, the last Tessier-Ashpool heir, who killed her father, sold everything, and had her section of Freeside towed to a new orbit. Disturbed, Angie watches the Becker documentary Antarctica Starts Here that night, confronting images of Marie-France Tessier, John Ashpool, and the family's sinister history.
POV: Angie Mitchell·On page: Piper Hill, Porphyre, Continuity, David Pope·Mentioned: 3Jane
Chapter 13: Catwalk
Gentry, still high on drugs, insists on hauling the comatose man's stretcher across the dangerous catwalk to his loft so he can tap into the gray box's data feed. Despite Cherry's warnings that interrupting the input could kill the patient, Gentry splices jumper cables into the connections. He then powers up his holo projection table to display what the sleeper is experiencing, but the moment he does, something attacks - a gray, ape-shaped security program lunges from the display. Gentry screams and collapses.
POV: Slick Henry·On page: Gentry, Cherry Chesterfield, Bobby Newmark
Chapter 14: Toys
Petal shows Kumiko the entertainment equipment in Swain's billiard room, including a Battle of Britain hologram and sporting recordings. While exploring a Victorian cabinet, Kumiko discovers darts, a pornographic magazine, and a Walther air pistol, which she examines with curiosity. Over tea, Petal firmly refuses to let her go out alone, citing her father's instructions. She spends the afternoon watching snow fall in the garden, thinking of her mother.
POV: Kumiko Yanaka·On page: Petal·Mentioned: Molly Millions
Chapter 15: The Silver Walks
Mona, crashing from wiz, finds a bar and meets a friendly art-crowd guy named Michael who takes her back to his loft. He has simstim recording gear and records their encounter, leaving Mona feeling used. In the early morning she makes tea in his kitchen, only to find Prior standing there with a plastic gun, having tracked her down. He takes her back to the hotel and reveals that Eddy has been 'compensated' and sent to Macau - but seeing Eddy's prized gator-clone suitcases on a baggage cart, Mona knows he is dead.
POV: Mona Lisa·On page: Prior·Mentioned: Eddy, Angie Mitchell
Chapter 16: Filament in Strata
Angie watches the Becker documentary about Tessier-Ashpool for the second time, absorbing the family's history: Marie-France Tessier's entrepreneurial brilliance, John Ashpool's cold ambition, the building of Freeside, the cloning of their children, and the mysterious death of Marie-France. She becomes fixated on 3Jane, the clone-daughter who is Becker's obsessive focus, recognising her from the invading memories in her dreams. Angie calls Continuity to ask about cowboy folklore, learning about When It Changed - the mythical moment when the matrix became something more. She learns the event occurred approximately fifteen years ago.
POV: Angie Mitchell·On page: Continuity·Mentioned: 3Jane, Bobby Newmark
Chapter 17: Jump City
Sally wakes Kumiko in the middle of the night and they flee Swain's house, taking the lift past a reluctant Petal who holds a gun but ultimately lets them go. Tick is waiting in a car outside. They drive to an airport and board a supersonic flight to the Sprawl. Kumiko wakes during the descent and Sally tells her they are going to Manhattan. In America, Kumiko's preconceptions of the Sprawl from simstim are shattered by the reality of the place - its smells, its crowds, its decay.
POV: Kumiko Yanaka·On page: Molly Millions, Petal, Tick
Chapter 18: Jail Time
Slick Henry experiences a Korsakov's flashback triggered by the stress of the gray security program's attack. Cherry recognises the symptoms - his short-term memory loops in five-minute intervals - and administers a heavy tranquiliser. He wakes in bed with her and she explains what happened: she bandaged Gentry's head wound and drugged him to sleep. Meanwhile, Gentry has already recovered enough to attempt a retinal scan of the comatose man. Gentry declares the gray box is not an 'LF' but an aleph - a solid lump of biochip with virtually infinite storage capacity.
POV: Slick Henry·On page: Cherry Chesterfield, Gentry, Bobby Newmark
Chapter 19: Under the Knife
Prior brings Mona to Baltimore, to a clinic disguised as a dentist's office run by a cosmetic surgeon named Gerald. Gerald examines her, noting her close resemblance to a target and her stimulant use. Prior reveals that Eddy is gone and that Mona now works for them. In the hotel, Mona watches Angie on vid and meets Michael in a bar, but the wiz turns sour. Gerald sedates her with a spray and begins surgical work to transform her face, teeth, eyes, and body to more closely match Angie Mitchell.
Chapter 20: Hilton Swift
Hilton Swift arrives unannounced at Malibu by helicopter. Angie studies him, wondering about his sexuality and his role as Sense/Net's key decision-maker. She asks about Bobby; Swift admits Net security tracked him to Mexico City where he became a neuroelectronic addict and then vanished. When Angie presses further, Mamman Brigitte briefly touches her mind, warning her to be silent. Swift departs and Angie watches him walk the beach, looking as lost as she feels.
POV: Angie Mitchell·On page: Hilton Swift, Continuity, Mamman Brigitte·Mentioned: Bobby Newmark