In a future Singapore, CyberLink is used for communication (sometimes virtual reality), monetary transaction and records of all citizens. Headhunter Dash is commissioned to find Edward Chan. Why are so many interested in him?
In the near future in the Asian city-state Sintawan, everyone's identity is recorded in the vast CyberLink. The only way around this is using illegal simulated identity implants (sims). A young bounty hunter who makes her living tracking sims, finds herself the unlikely ally of a police detective who suspects the CyberLink is being perverted for an insidious and deadly purpose.—Jon Reeves <[email protected]> from press release
In the early 21st Century, society is connected through the Cyberlink. All communication and monetary transactions occur within its sphere. The Cyberlink records the identities of all legalized citizens. Simplants provide criminal with alternative identities. Ident police and private headhunters track them down. In Entropolis, the efficient bounty hunter Dash MacKenzie is hired by the big corporation boss Joseph Lau and his henchman Davinder Sandhu to hunt down his former employee Edward Chan. Edward has vanished after submitting to the state-of-art procedure neuromorphing. While seeking Edward out, Dash stumbles with Ident Detective Victor Huang and he warns her that someone might want to kill Edward, but she does not pay attention to him. Dash finds Edward but he is assassinated before telling her why he is hunted down. However his mistress Sylvia escapes from the killer. Soon Dash finds a clip and her biotech guru Julius Kui stumbles with the truth and finds why Edward was murdered. Dash brings Victor to meet Julius and he shows Megacorp transactions in Sintawan to them. He explains that these five companies make up the total infrastructure and have total control over Cyberlink. They form a powerful consortium and play a game based on the ancient Chinese game Wei Chi. Sintawan is the playing field where they wage corporate war in accordance with the strategies of the five companies, manipulating the course of the society and everyone living here. Therefore the place is an illusion and nothing is what it seems and there is no distinction between the game and reality. Then Dash finds that they are all avatars. What will they do?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
