Case enters the Chat, a seedy bar in Japan’s Chiba City filled with talk of drugs, sex workers, and biotech. Case’s backstory emerges in a quick series of flashbacks. He was an American hacker (or cyberspace “console cowboy”) employed by one corporate power to spy on others. When his employer discovered him stealing money from the company, it poisoned him with a Russian mycotoxin that affected his brain, making him unable to enter cyberspace. Case came to Chiba City and its famed illicit-market biotech clinics to find a cure for his condition, but they have failed to help him. He ekes out a poor existence as a middleman for criminal activity. He knows he is acting in increasingly risky and even suicidal ways.

The one apparent bright spot in his life is Linda Lee, a woman the Chat’s bartender, Ratz, calls Case’s girlfriend, though Case denies it. After meeting in an arcade, they have established an ambiguous relationship that involves sex and Case supplying Linda with drugs for her increasing addiction. Case and Linda meet in a teahouse, where Linda warns Case that a local gangster named Wage wants to kill Case.