Soothing

[tracker7]

I read Burning Chrome over the last week. The Sprawl stories are the backbone of the collection, and why I bought the book so many years ago. The other stories are good work, too, of course, and a passage from "The Winter Market" stuck in my head this time around. Lise, the brilliant and broken braindance artist, asks the narrator, Casey, if he wants to have sex with her. Lise has some neurological disorder that requires her to use an exoskeleton for mobility, and she can't feel anything. Casey asks her, after her offer, that very question - "Could you feel it, if I did?" Lise responds, "No, but sometimes I like to watch." There is so much bitterness and hatred in that brief exchange. It's so fucked up.