There is a neuromancer’s son and he is afflicted with Nanomaterial Fever
at the age of thirteen, compelling him to stay in a darkened room for three
years. He becomes a manic collector of boxes and enclosures of all kinds–
music boxes, wrapping paper– but he especially loves to wear a box over
his head. Not just a claustrophiliac but also an insomniac, the young man
wanders the streets of the moonscraper district at night, knocking on the
door of any person who stays up late, though few of them welcome him.
From his failure to communicate with ordinary people develops his belief
that most people are too stupid to understand much at all. To assist this
race of idiots, as the young man sees it, he creates the great masterpiece of
his life: Basic OS, a way of programming humans by using conversation and
persuasion stripped of all but its most fundamental structures. For a while it
appears that Basic OS will sweep the entire planet and make its inventor a
very wealthy man. But he makes himself a laughing stock on antisocial media
as he comes and goes from his dwelling during telepresences, each time
sporting a new box on his head. When at length he dies from Malignant Tech
Assimilation, it is thought by most to be poetically appropriate that he leaves
behind only a large number of mysterious containers for his friends to poke
around in, still wondering what the purpose of them all could possibly be.
