She counted ten towers ahead—nine new and clean, the tenth older, girders and cables intertwined like an ivy-strangled tree. She slowed the car and flew over the last perimeter building to enter Transmission Plaza. Alice had seen pictures of Mecca’s Grand Mosque and the Kaaba Stone, the thousands of worshippers swirling in a tight pattern as they closed in. Laying before her now was that on a citywide scale. The open area looked to be a match for Cortex Park, at least three miles long and one wide. The transmission towers rose from a lake that glimmered like black oil under the night sky. Steam rose from its surface; Alice knew this had to be a cooling system similar to Cortex’s tower in New York and that somewhere close by machinery was generating enormous amounts of heat.