This blogpost is about the dolphin in Johnny Mnemonic and how what it says about addiction in cyberpunk and modern society. The master blog post about Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson is here.

It’s Cyberpunk, So We Need A Hacker

Remember the red swastika? That’s the password Ralfi put on to encrypt the data in Johnny Mnemonic’s head. Johnny Mnemonic is a data courier who is carrying some encrypted data in his head that he wants to download. So he meets up with Ralfi to get the password and get paid. But A corporate assassin kills Ralfi as he leaves the meeting.

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So, Johnny needs to hack the password because Ralfi is dead and he is the only one who knew the password. Having just met Molly Millions (incredible name that’s worth paying attention to), she suggests a hacker. The hacker’s name is Jones. Jones is a dolphin.

Jones The Dolphin

Jones is a dolphin who was trained by the Navy to be used militarily. He’s retired now and lives in a small cage in Nighttown, the section of town that is inhabited by the few remaining holdouts on technology called the Lo Teks.

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He’s a cyborg. He has “crusty plates” attached to each side of his body and his natural grace is lost under the artificial armor.

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Here’s how Gibson describes Jones when we first meet him: “He was more than a dolphin, but from another Dolphin’s point of view he might have seemed like something less.”

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That is exactly what a natural human seeing Johnny would say. They’re both cyborgs weighed down by their technology. And just like Jones is in a cage, so is Johnny. He’s in the cage of the rat race. Going from one job to another, fighting for that next paycheck. And needing cyber enhancements to stay competitive.

Jones The Dolphin Is Hooked On Heroin

While in the military, Jones gets hooked on heroin. Molly Millions notes that “How else you get ’em working for you?” So to get Jones to hack Ralfi’s password, they dangle a heroin syringe in front of him. Jones dutifully hacks the password and gets rewarded with a syringe full of heroin.

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The password turns out to be a red swastika. This fits given that Ralfi is a huge fan of Aryan Race Rock as discussed here.

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After getting the password, the corporate assassin shows up and there’s a climatic final showdown between him and Molly Millions. Molly dispatches the corporate assassin and with the password hacked Johnny is able to blackmail the corporation that sent the assassin.

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After that Molly and Johnny team up and work together. The money starts to roll in and everything is right in the world.

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Jonny realizes that he could pay someone to get the cyber implant out of his head and finally live with his own memories and instead of other people’s memories. But he refuses to do it. He says he’ll do it sometime, like the heroin addict who’s always planning to get sober but never does.

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Johnny can’t give it up. He’s addicted to the tech just like Jones is addicted to the heroin. They both want to get the next hit.

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Think about how they both got addicted. For Jones it was the military, and for Johnny it is the economy. The economics of the borderless world force Johnny to compete in the globalized economy. And to compete in that economy requires taking every edge you can get.

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So he’s forced to get the cyber implants to compete and once he has them, he becomes addicted. The borderless world of cyberpunk has made Johnny no different than the Dolphin rolling around his fish tank waiting for his next fix.

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Check out my cyberpunk story called THE LAST BLONDE over at www.blackflagliterature.com