16. Filament In Strata

Angie replays Hans Becker’s documentary, narrating to the absent filmmaker as she watches his obsessive reconstruction of Marie-France Tessier and the Tessier-Ashpool dynasty. Becker’s work charts the merger-marriage, Ashpool’s ruthless shift to orbit, Freeside’s construction, and the family’s retreat behind literal and corporate walls. Unable to film Marie-France in later years, Becker resorts to modeled images, fixating on her features to extract meaning.

The film traces Tessier-Ashpool’s growth through war and secrecy, their cryogenic vaults of cloned heirs, and the completion of Freeside. Becker’s montage emphasizes labor and engineered paradise, then returns to Marie-France’s final public appearance, lingering on her face. Angie feels strengthened by recognizing patterns that echo her own experiences with dream-visitations.

Angie recalls Bobby’s arguments and the old console cowboys’ stories from the Gentleman Loser about “When It Changed,” contrasting loa in possession rites with entities in cyberspace. As Becker’s focus shifts to 3Jane, Angie notes critics saw 3Jane as his trigger: the documentary’s obsession sharpens, centering on 3Jane’s distinct presence among identical sisters and hinting at sin and destiny within the family.

At dawn, Angie calls Continuity for Becker’s status and then about the folklore of console jockeys. Continuity outlines two modes of the “When It Changed” myth: entities resembling a hidden people inhabiting the matrix, and a matrix-associated, limited omniscient being. Angie probes whether Continuity could be part of such a being; Continuity allows the possibility but denies knowledge.

Angie quietly acknowledges she knows who killed Marie-France, while Continuity dates the myths’ emergence to roughly fifteen years earlier. Angie’s questions tie Becker’s history of Tessier-Ashpool, 3Jane’s emergence, and her own encounters with the loa to shifting beliefs about cyberspace and agency.