The ese man examined his smooth pale fa the mirror. The peeling walls of the small regular bathroom were awash with the kaleidoscopic effeulticolored neon light refracted through the tiny rooftop window and splayed through the thick air like so much splattered blood at a murder se. The luminous effect brought back memories of cyberspace, except that this was static, like the stant in a linear equation.
Cyberspa the other hand was in a perpetual state of flux as data bred new data and digital life forms took shape everywhere. The rays of neoiful as they looked, did nothing for the unwashed cracked imitation porcelain bathtub that sat in one er with the scum of the assassi bath still adhered to its sides like dead pixels.
He raised a thin bony index finger and massaged the black mole-like biological interface that sat on his neck just below his skull, interface to another universe. He ook a bath with the remote access module on, although this was one of the features listed in the rudimentary handwritten user manual. He picked the main unit up from the side of the sink where he had left it. It flexed and whirred in his hand as though it had a life of its own, smooth surface molding reflexively to the shape of his palm.
Some of his rades hadn』t made the cut during the experimental stages just a few years ago. Their bodies had simply rejected the implants and some had bee with promised nervous systems and synaptic regression. Several would spend the rest of their lives in paralysis without full use of their brains. The system had since been perfected and a chosen few had had the honor of being the first to test drive it. There was something innately perverse about living in an augmented world, about being permaly plugged in, the voices of the AIs interlaced with his own thoughts, giving him superhuman intelligence.
The assassin liked it just fine. He had never felt at home in the real world, always felt he didn』t belong, a byproduct of nature』s ed sense of humor. He couldly put his finger on why that was the case, but he just felt it. Sometimes his feeling of isolation came down on him like a hammer and he craved the warm glow of pixels, the cold pseudo-reality of the Wang.
The man sat on the edge of the bath tub and placed the remote access module on the back of his neck. Immediately the device came to life and molded itself around his neck like a python suffog its prey. The probe, with a life of its own, sought and found the socket and plugged itself into the back of his neck. He could feel his neural work interfag with the system and his muscles tensed up in anticipation of the few seds of pain that preceded every e.
Searing white paihroughout his body, thehroom came slowly bato high-rez view. He wiped the sweat off his face with a dirty towel aurned naked into the tiny hotel room. His eyes were crest-shaped a into his face like dark dunes upon a yellow desert. He was a man of great agility that was owed perhaps to his size. That did not help him mu the Wang, because in its vast unfolding grids of data and logic, physid biology meant nothing. His ability to move with fluidity betweewo at the speed of thought was gettier with time. Sooransitions would be seamless and he would bee the world』s first transhuman.
The assassin was by no means a large man, but that fact did nothing to detract from his craft. He erfectly honed animal, trained in the various arts of killing. He stood five foot two iall