No: the computer tries to duplicate the sound wave of the kid's voice; vibrating the piano's wires by hitting its keys really fast. There is no playback at all of the kid's voice, it's just the piano. Highly creepy.

I was thinking Bioshock, but yeah, same deal. I want clean sound clips of this.

So I'm not the only one who thought of Neuromancer. But I think it would sound like that fancy mechanical terminal head the Tessier-Ashpool family owned.

[goes to shave girlbeard.]

I thought Wintermute spoke through that head? Am I misremembering?

I Haven't read the book in nearly twenty years and my brain mangles stuff, sometimes.

For some reason AM came to mind.. but Wintermute or especially the terminal head would be more appropriate.

I just re-read it recently for the hell of it. Wintermute tends to show up as a VR construct drawn from the memories of the main character, speaking in the voice of a person that guy knew. The head does get used near the very end of the story, though.

I want them to do one of these with a full pipe organ, and James Earl Jones supplying the vocal sample.

I seem to remember someone telling Case about the unusual mechanical head with its complex system of pipes, Shortly thereafter, Case gets a call on a public phone. The voice sounds reedy and wispy, like it's being spoken through woodwinds. The source of the voice tells Case its name is Wintermute. That's why I was thinking Wintermute used the head to communicate.

Is all that really in there or did my brain get things garbled again?

I dug out my copy-- it says "It was a chip voice." But before that it says "Faint harmonics, tiny inaudible voices rattling across some orbital link, and then a sound like wind." That might just be the modem connecting or whatever equivalent Gibson was thinking of, though.

If they ever did a movie, I really wanna see that talking head.