The first part of the drive took them through mile after mile of classically American strip development landscape. They got on an elevated highway that was the largest she’d seen outside of China and drove east for a while past a district of mid- and high-rise office buildings, many of which bore the names of oil companies. This wasn’t downtown, though; much larger buildings loomed in the distance. Her internal GPS, calibrated for the Low Countries, told her that they were driving from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, or Rotterdam to Antwerp, but of course nothing of the sort was happening—they were just moving around between different parts of Houston, a metropolitan area the size of Belgium.