How It All Goes Down
- At the Vingtième Siècle restaurant, Case meets Armitage and Molly, while feeling a bit of the hangover blues (and that's an understatement).
- Riviera performs on stage. It's a one-man show mixing holographic art, sex, and a little bit of the old ultraviolence. A summary could never do it justice (definitely go back and read it), but the gist of it is that Riviera makes love to/is murdered by a holographic puppet of Molly. Molly is not pleased.
- The scene causes Case's stomach to wring out like a washcloth, and he rushes out of the building to blow chunks.
- When Case returns, the show's over, and Molly's missing. Case asks Armitage where she went, but Armitage only says she left before breaking his wine glass in his hand. He doesn't seem to notice.
- Case tries to push the matter, but Armitage only tells him he won't see her again and orders Case to get some sleep.
- Case notices a girl leaning on the balustrade and looking at the stage.
- At the hotel room, Case gets Dixie to look for Molly's information in the matrix. The construct finds her under the name Rose Kolodny but needs a few minutes to get a fix on her location.
- Wintermute contacts Case through the room's television, this time as Loony Zone. Wintermute warns Case that he's throwing up all sorts of red flags in the system by searching for Molly.
- Case says he'll call off the search if Wintermute will tell him where Molly is. Wintermute refuses and taunts Case about how he lost Linda, too. Case punches the TV, which doesn't do a whole lot of good but you've got to admire the gumption.
- Case gets Molly's location and asks Bruce and Cath to help find the place. Turns out it's a bordello of sorts where the prostitutes have their minds blanked out so they don't remember any acts they perform while on duty.
- He finds Molly inside, and the two have a heart to heart. Molly tells Case she got her start in a place like this as a way to pay for her modifications. She had a blank out chip in her head to prevent her from remembering, but the memories still came to her in dreams.
- During one modification surgery, the doctors must have disturbed the chip because she came to while she and a Senator were killing a young woman. She killed the Senator herself and went into hiding for a while.
- Molly admits Riviera's performance hit a nerve with her, saying Wintermute must want her to hate the man real bad.
- She also says Riviera's going to die, and when Molly says something like that, you tend to believe her.
- He tells her about his own experience with Wintermute trying to get him to hate something. Case suggests maybe he's supposed to hate Wintermute. Molly suggests that maybe he's meant to hate himself.
- Case has Cath and Bruce drop him off at the bars.