During class this week, there was a lot of discussion about Case, with his "Cowboy" job description and lack of personal choice, and about Molly and her street-samurai status and prostitute beginnings. After finishing Neuromancer, I find one of the most interesting characters to be Armitage, or Col. Corto, especially so soon after reading Starship Troopers. In a way, this man's military background combined with his uncontrolled "life" and death creates an inverse perspective, perhaps even an ironic parody, of the military lifestyle.
When the reader first meets Armitage in the novel, the first detail is of a "broad chest, hairless and muscular", "blue eyes so pale they made Case think of bleach", and "an angular gold ring through the [ear] lobe."(Gibson 27-28) Immediately, it is made clear that Armitage is a powerful man, equally capable of taking care of himself in a fight as in a business transaction. The earring is immediately made clear as representation of military Special Forces, which in Case's world also means the most advanced technology. This man has countless resources at his disposal, and seems to have more control over his life than any character in the plot so far. This is not a man who is paid and led along a path; this man is the one who commands, who controls and manipulates those around him into doing his will. This is only reinforced by the miracle deal he offers Case, and the subsequent revelation of the previously undeclared catch that binds Case to him. Armitage seems to hold all of the cards, all of the time. However, later it is revealed that the entire Screaming Fist operation that Armitage participated (and extraordinarily survived) was not to test the effectiveness of the new hacking technology, but to test the effectiveness of the enemy's EMP weapons on unprepared troops. They had been expected to die. While the character Johnny from Starship Troopers might say it was a sacrifice for the nation, here in the much more individualized, discriminatory world of Case's and Armitage's, it emerges as a largely arbitrary act commanded by higher level officers and carried out by the unknowing foot soldiers. The only reason Col. Corto (a.k.a. Armitage) survived the slaughter of the Screaming Fist operation and his ensuing coma was through the will of a powerful A.I. by the name of Wintermute. The Armitage that Case and Molly have known to this point is only an engineered construct from the remnants of Cortos consciousness. Clearly, Corto has actually had no control over his life from this time onward. Corto later relives this operation after his constructed consciousness breaks down, reveals that he knows he was betrayed by his Commanders, and is consequently betrayed and destroyed by his engineer Wintermute.
From the point Corto is assigned to this mission, he has no further discretion in his own life. Even Case, who is under the control of his addictions, contractors, and habits, is able to decide where he wants to be or what he wants to do. Armitage does what he is programmed to do, period, and has even been conditioned to think that these are his own decisions. He is the ultimate epitome of the cyberpunk culture; while Case and Molly seem to drift numbly through their lives from job too job in a meaningless landscape, Armitage Is actually incapable of feeling any real emotion, and has lost any recognition of the land around him past what Wintermute has programmed him to know.