Contents
40. Pink Satin
Overview
Angie perceives Gentry’s loft and its occupants through shifting data overlays as the fight seals the loft when Molly kills a mercenary, collapsing the catwalk. Below, Slick’s machine kills another attacker while Bobby exists as body and stored memory. Angie then shifts into a pink-satin vision where Brigitte reveals herself as a message implanted by Angie’s father and urges kindness toward Continuity.
Summary
Angela Mitchell processes Gentry’s loft through layered data-planes, identifying Thomas Gentry, stunned by Molly’s flechette, and parsing conflicting records around Molly’s SINless past. Molly has just killed a mercenary with a flechette; his fall collapses the catwalk and isolates the loft, blocking any other entrance.
Angie reads networks of association around Mona, Cherry Chesterfield, Slick Henry, and 3Jane, sensing motives and histories rather than firm facts. Down on the factory floor, one of Slick’s kinetic sculptures, running a sub-program of Bobby’s, severs a mercenary’s arm and kills him beside Little Bird’s boot.
Angie distinguishes Bobby’s manifestations: the comatose body strapped to a stretcher, the familiar face on a monitor, and the solid block of memory hardware. She steps free of the room’s data into rolling dunes of pink satin beneath a steel sky.
In this vision, Brigitte walks with Angie, joined by Continuity as a tinsel scribble. Brigitte explains she is the message Angie’s father was told to write, the vévés drawn in Angie’s head, and asks Angie to be kind to Continuity, who fears her displeasure. They proceed as if to a wedding, signaling an imminent union or pact.
Who Appears
- Angela (Angie) MitchellExperiences layered data views of everyone present; distinguishes Bobby’s forms; enters a pink-satin vision with Brigitte and Continuity.
- Molly (Molly Millions)Kills a mercenary with a flechette, collapsing the catwalk and isolating Gentry’s loft; had stunned Gentry earlier.
- Thomas (Trail) GentryAutodidact obsessed with the Shape; lies stunned after Molly’s flechette detonates near his head.
- Slick HenrySINless artist; his kinetic sculpture, under Bobby’s sub-program, kills a mercenary on the factory floor.
- Bobby NewmarkPresent as comatose body, a monitor persona, and a bolted memory block directing sub-programs below.
- BrigitteVisionary guide who says she is the message Angie’s father wrote; leads Angie toward a symbolic wedding.
- ContinuityAI ally, depicted as tinsel; accompanies Angie in the vision and seeks her forgiveness.