She turned to one of those enormous screens, white and geometric, and tapped and fiddled. When she ushered me into the chair—the screen, clear as glacier ice on the surface of a lake, filled my vision—I saw a tiny homunculus standing on a wide red plain. It looked like Arizona somewhere, or perhaps, though I have never been, the Australian outback. All manner of traffic and fantasy was swarming around the man, but Annie quickly took him away from that and up a hill, so that very shortly he was alone on the summit, facing west. She sat him down, and pulled up a chair next to me, and we sat watching the sun set on this faraway place called the Barrens. The sky was rich and deep, the distant mountains blue, an oasis lush to the south. Birds flapped by, and then bats, as the sun gave way to early night, and when, a little later, the moon rose and it began to rain, I realised we had been watching without speaking for nearly half an hour. Colson appeared with more tea, and Annie turned off the machine.