{"product_id":"virtual-light-isbn-9780553566062","title":"Virtual Light","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller \u003c\/b\u003e• \u003cb\u003e2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California\u003c\/b\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe millennium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working  for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a  bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively  snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But  these are no ordinary shades. What you can see  through these high-tech specs can make you rich—or  get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the  run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of  DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high.  And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash. . . . \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eVirtual Light\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Both exhilarating and terrifying . . . Although considered the master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson is also one fine suspense writer.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A stunner . . . A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Convincing . . . frightening . . . \u003ci\u003eVirtual Light\u003c\/i\u003e is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In the emerging pop culture of the information age, Gibson is the brightest star.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe San Diego Union-Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Both exhilarating and terrifying . . . Although considered the master of 'cyberpunk' science fiction, William Gibson is also one fine suspense writer.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePeople\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A stunner . . . A terrifically stylish burst of kick-butt imagination.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Convincing . . . frightening . . . \u003ci\u003eVirtual Light\u003c\/i\u003e is written with a sense of craft, a sense of humor and a sense of the ultimate seriousness of the problems it explores.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In the emerging pop culture of the information age, Gibson is the brightest star.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe San Diego Union-Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eWilliam Gibson\u003c\/b\u003e is credited with having coined the term \"cyberspace\" and having envisioned both the Internet and virtual reality before either existed. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eNeuromancer\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eCount Zero\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMona Lisa Overdrive\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBurning Chrome\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eVirtual Light\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eIdoru\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAll Tomorrow's Parties\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePattern Recognition\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSpook Country\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eZero History\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eDistrust That Particular Flavor\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Peripheral\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife.The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic. He watches a gunship traverse the city’s middle distance like a hunting wasp, death slung beneath its thorax in a smooth black pod.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Hours earlier, missiles have fallen in a northern suburb; seventy-three dead, the kill as yet unclaimed. But here the mirrored ziggurats down Lázaro Cárdenas flow with the luminous flesh of giants, shunting out the night’s barrage of dreams to the waiting avenidas—business as usual, world without end.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The air beyond the window touches each source of light with a faint hepatic corona, a tint of jaundice edging imperceptibly into brownish translucence. Fine dry flakes of fecal snow, billowing in from the sewage flats, have lodged in the lens of night.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Closing his eyes, he centers himself in the background hiss of climate-control. He imagines himself in Tokyo, this room in some new wing of the old Imperial. He sees himself in the streets of Chiyoda-ku, beneath the sighing trains. Red paper lanterns line a narrow lane.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He opens his eyes.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Mexico City is still there.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The eight empty bottles, plastic miniatures, are carefully aligned with the edge of the coffee table: a Japanese vodka, Come Back Salmon, its name more irritating than its lingering aftertaste.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e On the screen above the console, the ptichka await him, all in a creamy frieze. When he takes up the remote, their high sharp cheekbones twist in the space behind his eyes. Their young men, invariably entering from behind, wear black leather gloves. Slavic faces, calling up unwanted fragments of a childhood: the reek of a black canal, steel racketing steel beneath a swaying train, the high old ceilings of an apartment overlooking a frozen park.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Twenty-eight peripheral images frame the Russians in their earnest coupling; he glimpses figures carried from the smoke-blackened car-deck of an Asian ferry.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He opens another of the little bottles.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Now the ptichka, their heads bobbing like well-oiled machines, swallow their arrogant, self-absorbed boyfriends. The camera angles recall the ardor of Soviet industrial cinema.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e His gaze strays to NHK Weather. A low-pressure front is crossing Kansas. Next to it, an eerily calm Islamic downlink ceaselessly reiterates the name of God in a fractal-based calligraphy.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He drinks the vodka.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He watches television.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And every passing face is masked, mouths and nostrils concealed behind filters. Some, honoring the Day of the Dead, resemble the silver-beaded jaws of grinning sugar-skulls. Whatever form they take, their manufacturers all make the same dubious, obliquely comforting claims about viroids.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He’s thought to escape the sameness, perhaps discover something of beauty or passing interest, but here there are only masked faces, his fear, the lights.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e An ancient American car comes creeping through the turn, out of Avenida Chapultepec, gouts of carbon pulsing from beneath a dangling bumper. A dusty rind of cola-colored resin and shattered mirror seals its every surface; only the windshield is exposed, and this is black and glossy, opaque as a blob of ink, reminding him of the gunship’s lethal pod. He feels the fear begin to accrete, seamlessly, senselessly, with absolute conviction, around this carnival ghost, the Cadillac, this oil-burning relic in its spectral robe of smudged mosaic silver. Why is it allowed to add its filth to the already impossible air? Who sits inside, behind the black windshield?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Trembling, he watches the thing pass.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “That car …” He finds himself leaning forward, compulsively addressing the broad brown neck of the driver, whose massive earlobes somehow recall reproduction pottery offered on the hotel’s shopping channel.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “El coche,” says the driver, who wears no mask, and turning, now seems to notice the courier for the first time. The courier sees the mirrored Cadillac flare, once, and briefly, with the reflected ruby of a nightclub’s laser, then gone.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The driver is staring at him.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He tells the driver to return to the hotel.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He comes awake from a dream of metal voices, down the vaulted concourses of some European airport, distant figures glimpsed in mute rituals of departure.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Darkness. The hiss of climate-control.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The touch of cotton sheets. His telephone beneath the pillow. Sounds of traffic, muted by the gas-filled windows. All tension, his panic, are gone. He remembers the atrium bar. Music. Faces.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He becomes aware of an inner balance, a rare equilibrium. It is all he knows of peace.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And, yes, the glasses are here, tucked beside his telephone. He draws them out, opening the ear pieces with a guilty pleasure that has somehow endured since Prague.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Very nearly a decade he has loved her, though he doesn’t think of it in those terms. But he has never bought another piece of software and the black plastic frames have started to lose their sheen. The label on the cassette is unreadable now, sueded white with his touch in the night. So many rooms like this one.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He has long since come to prefer her in silence. He no longer inserts the yellowing audio beads. He has learned to provide his own, whispering to her as he fast-forwards through the clumsy titles and up the moonlit ragged hillscape of a place that is neither Hollywood nor Rio, but some soft-focus digital approximation of both.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She is waiting for him, always, in the white house up the canyon road. The candles. The wine. The jet-beaded dress against the matte perfection of her skin, such whiteness, the black beads drawn smooth and cool as a snake’s belly up her tensed thigh.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Far away, beneath cotton sheets, his hands move.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Later, drifting toward sleep of a different texture, the phone beneath his pillow chimes softly and only once.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Yes?”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Confirming your reservation to San Francisco,” someone says, either a woman or a machine. He touches a key, recording the flight number, says goodnight, and closes his eyes on the tenuous light sifting from the dark borders of the drapes.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Her white arms enfold him. Her blondness eternal.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He sleeps.\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"Spectra","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301394534629,"sku":"NP9780553566062","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553566062.jpg?v=1767743478","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/virtual-light-isbn-9780553566062","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}