He explains that the narrator will become immortal but trapped in his own unconscious in 29 hours. The Professor cannot reverse the program due to the destruction of his lab. This is because his mind was already split before he underwent the shuffling surgery. He explains that the narrator is the only surviving Calcutec who can shuffle, as all the others have died. They find the Professor at the sanctuary of the INKlings. She leads the narrator down a secret passage through the domains of the INKlings. The lab has been ransacked, and the girl believes underground monsters called INKlings, subterranean creatures who hypnotize humans with sound and are terrified of light, must have helped the Factory break in. Shortly thereafter, the Professor’s granddaughter convinces the narrator to travel back to the Professor’s underground lab. The Factory thugs wreck his apartment, wound the narrator’s stomach, and tell him to not tell the government-funded System, the organization that oversees Calcutecs. After the librarian leaves, the narrator’s house is invaded, first by a city employee bribed by criminals, then by a pair of agents working for the criminal organization called the Factory. The librarian helps him with his research and tries to sleep with him, but he is unable to perform. The narrator goes to a library to research a skull the Professor gives him. The data is later revealed to be a program, and shuffling it will cause the narrator’s mind to separate from the real world if the Professor does not reverse the program in four days. He launders the data in the lab and agrees to shuffle the data, which is a more difficult and dangerous kind of encryption, back at his apartment. The Professor’s granddaughter leads the narrator to a hidden lab where the Professor demonstrates sonic technologies and gives the narrator data to launder, or encode. The book begins with the hard-boiled narrator accepting a Calcutec job encoding data for a professor. The chapters alternate between different versions of the same narrator, who does not retain memories between each setting. The novel is split into two parts: a futuristic, hard-boiled Tokyo and a mysterious Town at the end of the world. This guide cites the 1993 Vintage International Trade Paperback edition.
0 kommentar(er)
