Upon the Mirror Sea

Upon the Mirror Sea is a complete science fiction novel by @phaseborn about psychedelics, surveillance, and first contact with ourselves. You can read the entire thing for free here.

The Ripples, made of surveillance footage, pulsing gelatinously through in the Mirror Sea – were they alive? This was the question Secretary Xia's inner circle fixated on. Yes had an unhinged, rising gleam to it; no reached for causality and free will and always ended on a minor seventh, a sucking of teeth. They'd become obsessed with the behavior and well-being of these things on the other side of the lens, and no one more than the big man himself.

The closer you got to the center, the more likely you were to find someone who considered the Ripples the city's true inhabitants. It was the final piece that Xia Zitian's opponents needed to rip Shanghai away from him, away from China, creating the Yangtze Delta Orthogonal Zone. They promised to tear the billion cameras down. Even as they did, they couldn't tear their eyes from the feeds.

But I shouldn't be thinking about the Mirror Sea at all. They gave me pills to take if I start.