You work at the reader's sense of reality in this story, @mrnightmare.net. The experience of the engineer is almost like that encouraged in hypnosis, or meditation. Through a mental exercise, someone can, in a sense, go to another place, as the engineer did in this story. In that other place a person may gain insight, understanding of a difficult circumstance.
You use the prompt tea here well. The Tea TreeHouse and tea are tools for expanding the mind and achieving understanding. Thank you for posting the story in the Ink Well community and thank you for engaging with other writers in the community.
Yeah, this is about a person who doesn't find his own happiness because of being so desperate. I write mostly in life happenings. Thank you.