We made the trip in silence. As we traveled through the apartment-blanketed hills west of Auburn, the sprawl that is Greater Seattle was glowing like fairy-lights-or maybe a convention of chipped-up fireflies-a spreading sea of light that seemed to reach to the horizons. Its brilliance leeched up into the sky, so thick with chemical smoke and its normal devil's-brew of toxins that the air itself seemed to glow with a sullen red light. The city shone on the underside of the solid cloud deck, which in turn reflected the light back to the earth. Highways were radiant rivers, and the taller buildings were pyramids, ziggurats, or talons of multicolored illumination reaching upward as though the corps wanted to own the clouds, too.