2021 "The Sprawl" Sheng / Raw Puerh Tea

You're a cyberspace console cowboy and The Sprawl is a long strange way home over the Pacific now. As you slot the bingcha your Hosaka tells you it's Kuang Grade Mark Eleven; an optimized, deep penetration, military icebreaker from China. It's user-friendly and even speaks English. You ready your brew vessel and settle into a hover over your target. The icebreaker strobes and shifts in front of you. Translucent planes of color shuffle like a trick deck. The grid fills with hypnotically intricate traceries of rainbow, lattices as fine as snow crystal on a winter window. "Well, you got time to kill, kid," the Flatline said. "Ol' Kuang's slow but steady." The density of information overwhelms the fabric of your matrix, triggering lucid imagery. Kaleidoscopic angles of sun dried leaf, clean and floral and fresh. The neon aroma of night pulls you along; a growing segment of that mass organism. A drifting chip of consciousness under the vibrant, young, sheng. Consensual hallucination. The le