Count Zero

Jones tells Marly he must find Wigan Ludgate (whom he calls Wig) before Virek’s agents arrive. Marly remains mesmerized by the boxmaker’s manipulators, which draw objects into perpetual motion. A newly finished box tumbles free; Marly catches it but collides with the dome’s far side. The manipulators snag her jacket and purse, cutting neat sections from the jacket before ejecting it.

Amused, Marly releases the box and addresses the presence that she senses. A voice responds, explaining that it once existed everywhere in the matrix as a vast consciousness, but that it fragmented when the bright time broke. Now isolated, it creates art from the Tessier-Ashpool family’s possessions. The voice clarifies that it is not what Virek seeks; Virek hopes to upload his personality into its structure, but he would only become like the least of its broken selves.

The voice tells Marly that sadness resides in her, not its songs, which are merely of time and distance.

Marly realizes that the entity is a collage created by someone who connected an industrial machine to the traces of the family’s memory. Suddenly, Paco appears on a screen and delivers an ultimatum: Convince Ludgate and Jones to open the lock within one hour, or his team will depressurize the entire structure and kill everyone inside.

Bobby follows Jackie and Angie from the office. Beauvoir explains they admitted Turner because Jackie, in a trance state, received word from the loa Legba that the Virgin was arriving. Bobby tells Beauvoir how Jaylene Slide hijacked him.

Turner summons Bobby to Jammer’s office. Jammer instructs him to contact Slide and inform her that Conroy was responsible for her partner Ramirez’s death and that Conroy hired the gangs outside. Jackie announces she will accompany Bobby into the matrix.

They jack in and are immediately attacked by a massive defense system. Jackie dies within eight seconds. The experience reminds Bobby of the near-fatal encounter in his mother’s living room; he is pulled through a vortex into a cyberspace construct of Güell Park in Barcelona, where he encounters Josef Virek and accuses him of killing Jackie. Paco appears, holding a pistol, and explains that Bobby’s presence is accidental spillover from their operation to capture Angie.

As the flowers in the park wither, Bobby calls out desperately for help. A wooden cross draped in a naval tunic appears. A voice suddenly speaks through Bobby’s mouth, identifying itself as Baron Samedi, Lord of Graveyards. Paco vanishes. Virek flees in terror as the loa’s presence overwhelms his cyberspace construct. Everything in the park begins to wither and die.

Bobby finds himself in Slide’s cyberspace office and delivers Turner’s message. Slide taps into Conroy’s video feed and orders her associate, Bunny, to destroy his Park Avenue location. The feed cuts out as the attack begins.

Marly contemplates Paco’s threat without fear, finding poetic appropriateness in the dome’s contents spilling into space. Jones appears with her vacuum suit, frantic because he cannot secure Ludgate in a sealed area. Marly refuses to put on the suit.

Paco appears on the screen and announces Josef Virek’s death. He formally terminates Marly’s employment, stating her salary has been deposited and anyone remaining in the cores will be considered a trespasser. Jones, who was prepared to force Marly into the suit, relaxes and laughs.

The boxmaker ejects a new box lined with leather cut from Marly’s jacket. Inside are holofiche tabs and personal mementos from Paris.

Later, while searching for Ludgate, Jones reveals that Wig sometimes received software in exchange for boxes. Ludgate would download it into the cores, then resell the physical media with other salvage. Jones quotes Ludgate as saying that God likes to talk to Himself.

Turner and Beauvoir carry Jackie’s body to the stage and cover it with an old topcoat. Beauvoir speaks a Creole phrase over her, translating it as a self-sacrifice. Bobby reports the besieging gangs are leaving. Beauvoir tells Bobby he earned his handle, Count Zero.

Turner watches the news in Jammer’s office while Angie and Jammer sleep. The recap reports a recoilless rifle attack on a Park Avenue building and Josef Virek’s death in Stockholm, attributed to a failure of his life-support systems.

Angie wakes and tells Turner that she did not dream. Beauvoir invites her to the Projects, where his people can teach her about her abilities. He reveals that she saved Bobby in the matrix. Turner agrees that this is the safest option. When Angie says she wants to stay with Turner, he reveals to her that her father is dead. Turner chooses to lie, claiming that Mitchell died protecting his daughter’s escape. He hangs Conroy’s black wallet around her neck; it contains a biosoft dossier about her father, for when she is older.

Turner goes to the stage, unloads his pistol, and places the empty weapon beside Jackie. He praises Bobby and leaves, saying he needs to buy 80 liters of kerosene. Bobby sees his mother, Marsha Newmark, on the news in a story about her bombed condo, and he realizes that she survived the blast. When Beauvoir invites him to live in the Projects with Angie, Bobby quickly accepts.

Two years later, Tally Isham and a unit director named Roberts watch a young actress from a balcony on a Greek island. Roberts praises the girl’s talent while denying he hates her. A young man with dark hair joins the actress on a rooftop below. Roberts complains that the young man is highly paid trash who carries a cyberspace deck. Tally notes that the pair came as a package, per the girl’s contract.

The narrative reveals that the actress is Angie and the young man is Bobby. As Bobby stares at the sea, he envisions Barrytown and the Projects. Angie joins him at the roof’s edge and takes his hand.

Roberts tells Tally that their next day’s schedule includes filming a segment in Paris about Marly Krushkhova, who now runs a fashionable art gallery.

Years later, when Turner’s son is seven, Turner takes the boy to the clearing with Rudy’s old Winchester. The boy recalls his mother, Sally, previously showing him a hidden plane in the trees; its plastic skin changed color wherever it was touched. She cried, speaking of Uncle Rudy, who had saved her life twice.

The boy remembers asking about his red hair and being told that he got it from the Dutchman, a joke that made Sally throw a pillow at Turner; the boy never learned who the Dutchman was.

Turner teaches his son to shoot, promising Sally that they will not kill anything. Afterward, they watch squirrels, just as Rudy and Turner did when they were young. Turner explains the principles of squirrel-hunting. When the boy asks if squirrels are truly dumb enough to keep returning to be shot, Turner confirms that they are, but he then smiles and qualifies his answer.