Their minds and bodies themselves become gridded. Their heart becomes a pump, their wealth a number printed by a computer. But they come back up to the thinner air. Their social circuits only intersect the rational cartography of flat land, they have not been sucked wholly into it. In these types of houses only humans circulate, of course, there are no wires, no pipes, no tubes of hot or cold air.
Humans live here.
A cow downstairs. Two chickens maybe. A sheep tethered for the Aid al-Kebir. An occasional scorpion. Those who our traveler will marry come from families who huddle together in these houses, families grounded by their name to certain small patches of flat earth, to streams they build and rebuild, to particular orchards and forests, and most of all to other families.