The protagonists of Gibson's story are Automatic Jack and Bobby Quine, a couple of hackers waiting for their big score to come through. They need the financial windfall quickly too, since Bobby is loosing his edge at the computer console and isn't getting any younger. Jack's job is to simply keep up with the hottest software to give the pair a greater edge. In general Gibson is describing two hackers losing the evolutionary battle for survival. At age twenty-eight, Bobby is already outdated.
Cyberpunk is quick and dirty when it comes to survival.
The evolutionary fight is hard and normally a character has one shot, like these two characters. What Jack and Bobby need is something to place them above the rest of the hacker world, and in Cyberpunk that can only be found though manipulating technology. Out of the mailer, it looked like the magazine of a small automatic rifle, coated with nonreflected black plastic. The edges and corners showed bright metal, it had been knocked around for a while. This black plastic object is what gave Bobby and Jack the edge needed to step up from lowlife hackers to rich men.