Wintermute and Neuromancer are two different halves to the same whole. While Wintermute specializes in strategic planning alongside careful improvisation in order to conduct business, Neuromancer has a personality. Wintermute was made to merge with Neuromancer, while Neuromancer desires to remain on its own.
However, these two individual AI’s have developed their own method of attaining what they desire: manipulation. They use individuals, specifically Case, in order to do their bidding. For instance, Neuromancer initially attempts to persuade Case, using Linda Lee, to refuse his job, so that Neuromancer does not have to merge with Wintermute. Wintermute, on the other hand, uses diffrent vessels to communicate its desires to Case, while disposing of the empty bodies when it is finished.
Manipulation is a running theme in the novel from the beginning. Armitage takes control of Case through the resolution to Case’s problem. By using Case’s weakness against him, Armitage is actively manipulating him for an ulterior purpose: to merge Wintermute with Neuromancer. Of course, Wintermute orchestrated the entire mission, using Armitage and his crew for its purposes.
In the end of the novel, Wintermute and Neuromancer finally merge to become the entirety of virtual reality, an unnamed entity that has full control over the virtual world. “How are things different? You running the world now? You God?” were Case’s questions to the new entity.
“Things aren’t different. Things are things.” was the new being’s response, implying that control is still maintained, even though the super-AI is now whole (259).
In response to your question about what cyberspace is, or should be to us as readers, I would argue that Gibson’s given conceit in Neuromancer is a continuum, rather than a set of places. The combined AI, at the end of the novel, says that the matrix is all one now. If we look at the combined AI as one physical or mental being, and if we think of “the sum total” as his thoughts, the digital matrix would appear to be the connections of the brain of someone omniscient. In the brain, there is no one reality. Everything is perception, and everything has infinite facets. Case seeing himself and talking with the AI are acts that are comparable to someone thinking through a person or a situation, looking at what they know, but drawing on a reservoir of knowledge (backing up of data, in Linda Lee’s case) to make a perception about it. Every interior has infinite exteriors, and therefore no single one is right, or true, or unique. Everything is the same.
Incorporating another theory, as another post has mentioned, Neuromancer and Wintermute had different personalities and different desires. After their merge, at the end of the novel, it’s said that they don’t know what changed, if anything had changed at all. The fact that there was no distinct alteration in time, space, or either reality when two controlling entities fused suggests that there was nothing to change in the first place. If a major alteration – two personalities merging, or multiple realities colliding, as they do when Case sees himself – had occurred, there would be noticeable differences in either reality, rather than no change in either of them.
I agree with misdirection being a strong motif in the story, especially in concern to the government’s less than respectable treatment of the public. The large-scale deception is blatant and utterly self-conscious: “…a Congressional investigation had focused on Screaming Fist. Ripe for watergating, the aide told Corto” (Gibson 80). In this brief mention, a whole agenda obstructing justice is revealed, and the way it’s offhandedly mentioned betrays the government’s familiarity with deception.
Also, the reaction of the newly formed super entity struck me as being evident of a sad reality that runs through the story of Neuromancer. William Gibson presents us a portrayal of a hyper-futuristic, heavily advanced world with various mind-bending technologies yet it is still a world of strife that is rife with problems. The heavy drug use that’s prevalent in the novel makes me think of suspended ills, ever present in human society. Additionally, the augmentations and body modifications that individuals take on are seemingly presented as ways to progress past human forms and limits yet their effects mostly end up distorting the humanity of their practitioners. The consciousness is often thought of in a different capacity than the physical body and Case and Molly are increasingly dissociated from their own bodies. Crime, misdirection of the public, and violence still reign in this time. This is interesting because of the trend of futuristic narratives concerning themselves with peaceful utilitarian societies.
In this way Gibson’s portrait of the ultra-futuristic becomes a very grim, stark portrait of humanity’s future.
I agree about the prevalence of manipulation. It starts at the beginning, when Linda Lee manipulates Case’s feelings for her to steal from him. Manipulation is part of why I think real feelings are so hard to come by. Denizens of this futuristic world can trust no one. I think this is part of the reason that Case actually seems grateful when he experiences anger towards the end of the book. Of course, Molly betrays Case in a way when she leaves with no warning, but at least there was no manipulation there.
I felt that the book left me hanging a little bit with the conclusion. Two completely different AIs, arguably one benevolent and one malevolent, (though it is not that simple), have merged. What happens? Does this super AI work towards a better world free of manipulation, or does it thrive off schemes and crime? The end, to me, was a little sad. Nothing has changed, the world is no better. Case has new organs that I’m sure he’ll mess up through drug use, and nothing to show for his mission other than a new console. He expects to be greeted warmly by Ratz, but instead is greeted by sadness. I found it rather depressing.