The Chinese man examined his smooth pale face in the mirror. The peeling walls of the small rectangular bathroom were awash with the kaleidoscopic effect of multicolored neon light refracted through the tiny rooftop window and splayed through the thick air like so much splattered blood at a murder scene. The luminous effect brought back memories of cyberspace, except that this was static, like the constant in a linear equation.

Cyberspace on 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 neon, beautiful as they looked, did nothing for the unwashed cracked imitation porcelain bathtub that sat in one corner with the scum of the assassins recent 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 never took 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 comrades hadn’t made the cut during the experimental stages just a few years ago. Their bodies had simply rejected the implants and some had been left with compromised 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 permanently 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 warped sense of humor. He couldn’t exactly 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 suffocating 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 network interfacing with the system and his muscles tensed up in anticipation of the few seconds of pain that preceded every connection.

Searing white pain felt throughout his body, then the bathroom came slowly back into high-rez view. He wiped the sweat off his face with a dirty towel and returned naked into the tiny hotel room. His eyes were crescent-shaped and set 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 much on the Wang, because in its vast unfolding grids of data and logic, physics and biology meant nothing. His ability to move with fluidity between the two at the speed of thought was getting better with time. Soon the transitions would be seamless and he would become 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 was a perfectly honed animal, trained in the various arts of killing. He stood five foot two inches tall, slim with finely toned muscles that had been perfected all those years in the Peoples Liberation Army and then fine-tuned in the silicon oceans of the prototype. That was now behind him. He had since been given permanent leave to work more directly for his people and his country through the formidable interface of the major-general.

Before his insertion into the Wang, he had spent many years toiling and laboring under the scorching heat of the Gobi desert. Most of that time had been spent guarding thousands of kilometers of undisputed desert border, an expanse of land that no one wanted to claim title to. The PLA camp had been as far removed from human life as physically possible. The only connection to civilization had been the railway track which came in from the south and ended abruptly in the desert. And the rover bots that dotted the desert landscape. He had learnt to develop a deep affinity for them and they, sensing his devotion, had responded in kind, clustering around him at the end of the day for their daily wipe down.

He warped back in memory space to the blasting heat and the strange creatures that had made their home beneath the desert sand.

The experiments were now firmly behind him, the only reminder was the open wet socket located at the base of his skull that with a simple pop and a sharp twinge, as the minute cable made itself at home, jacked him permanently into the Wang. From the open window of his cramped downtown hotel room the sound of the traffic gave him an intense buzz like he never knew before.

How different this was from being locked in the Wang for months on end, his body pierced with drips and the long snaking intravenous tubes that kept him nourished while he rode the waves of China’s unfolding matrix, securing territory in the emerging digital space for the country he loved so much. Not long before he jacked in again. Not long before he was writing digital calligraphy for the soul. But first, there was that small matter to take care of.