Slumped and walking Jacob crosses left to right, the desert in the background. His eye crosses the clear air, seeing object lumps that have no real shape across the distance... that smudge of green is a tree, no it is a forest, a hundred thousand acres of private land, with piranha lakes and champagne vats (the latter under the great chateau, which is covered with green spackled paint to render it invisible from this surveying distance); and over there, the gray spot, next to the 7-11? That's the Roman Viaduct, enlarged in the Mormon period to carry volumes of water that could drain the Atlantic into the Pacific in 15 minutes, if they left the gates open. These and other thoughts fill his mind as his feet churn, one to the other.