At the computer interface, the spirit migrates from the body to a world of total representation, total simulation. When Case has been exiled from the matrix, he feels as if he is imprisoned in his only flesh,and that his physical manifestation is a mere shadow of what he truly is.

Heim maintains that Gibson raises a profound ontological question by suggesting that the Neuromancer master-computer simulates the body and personality of Case's beloved. What are the implications of a computer that attempts to simulate an embodied personality and provoke the sexual encounter? Heim wonders, "Perhaps because the cyberspace system, which depends on the physical space of bodies for its initial impetus, now seeks to undermine the separate existence of human bodies that make it dependent and secondary. The ultimate revenge of the information system comes when the system absorbs the very identity of the human personality, absorbing the opacity of the body, grinding the meat into information, and deriding erotic life by reducing it to a transparent play of puppets. In an ontological turnabout, the computer counterfeits the silent and private body from which mental life originated. The machinate mind disdainfully mocks the meat (Heim, 66)."