Part one of the Bridge trilogy. I bought it because I wanted to read Idoru, the 2nd part, because of a reference in a talk to ‘nodal points’ as coming from that book. Virtual light is triggering your optical nerve and brain with visuals directly without photons. The Bridge is the Golden Gate, since encrusted with people’s habitats. Gibson uses the word Thomasson to describe it. The US has splintered. In this setting a bike courier steals an object from what turns out to also be a courier, who is killed for losing it. A rentacop is brought in to find the bike courier but follows his conscience. A Japanese anthropologist who is on the bridge to observe (and hunt Thomassons), and references to a big earth quake in Tokyo which got rebuild by nanotech form the bridge to part two.