Tea from an Empty Cup

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'Tea from an Empty Cup' (ISBN 0-586-21842-4) is a 1998 cyberpunk novel by Pat Cadigan.

[edit] Plot synopsis

The story revolves around near mythical Japan, which had been destroyed in a vaguely described natural cataclysm several decades before the story opens. A virtual version of Japan has become a sort of holy grail for certain kinds of artificial reality addicts. Artificial realities, like post-holocaust New York City being immensely popular, not just as games but as ways of life.

And not just a way of life, but also of death, as New York homicide detective Dore Konstantin discovers when she is called upon to investigate the murder of a young man in an artificial reality parlour and discovers he died the same way in the game as in reality.

She therefore has to investigate this young man's life within the artificial realities he frequented. In the process she stumbles onto something far more complicated then a mere murder case.

In Tea from an Empty Cup's second storyline, Yuki, a young ethnically Japanese woman is desperately looking for her boyfriend, who she fears has taken up with one Joy Flower, becoming one of Joy's Boyz, about whom a lot of nasty rumours circulate.

When Yuki seeks Joy Flower out, she immediatedly is taken into Joy's orbit herself, becoming her personal assistant, which leads her, like Konstantin onto a voyage of discovery towards the central mystery of the book.