It Looks Perfectly Real
The city of Omonoia did not exist on any map, which was the first thing Harry Willis had been told upon his arrival. It was a sprawling, chrome-slicked metropolis where the sky was always a bruised, sunset violet and the air smelled faintly of ozone and expensive perfume. Harry sat in the corner booth of The Aperture, a café that looked out over the main thoroughfare. Across from him sat a woman named Aubrey. She was currently holding a porcelain teacup that seemed to shimmer with a faint, iridescent oil slick. "Drink it," Aubrey said, her voice devoid of inflection. "It helps with the calibration." Harry looked down at the cup. He saw tea—steaming, amber-colored, fragrant. But then he blinked, shifting his focus, and for the briefest fraction of a second, the liquid in the cup pulsed. It wasn't liquid at all; it was a rhythmic, bio-luminescent mass of nodes and fibers, twitching in time with his own heartbeat. He blinked again. It was tea. Just Earl Gre...
