Hackworth remained silent for a full minute. Images had come into his mind 
again, not a fleeting hallucination this time, but a full-fledged vision of a 
China freed from the yoke of the foreign Feed. It was something he'd seen 
before, perhaps something he'd even helped create. It showed something no gwailo would ever get to see: the Celestial Kingdom during the coming 
Age of the Seed. Peasants tended their fields and paddies, and even in times of 
drought and flood, the earth brought forth a rich harvest: food, of course, but 
many unfamiliar plants too, fruits that could be made into medicines, bamboo a 
thousand times stronger than the natural varieties, trees that produced 
synthetic rubber and pellets of clean safe fuel. In an orderly procession the 
suntanned farmers brought their proceeds to great markets in clean cities free 
of cholera and strife, where all of the young people were respectful and 
dutiful scholars and all of the elders were honored and cared for. This was a 
ractive simulation as big as all of
China, and Hackworth could have lost himself in it, and perhaps did for he knew 
not how long. But finally he closed his eyes, blinked it away, sipped some tea 
to bring his rational mind back into control.