"You can just imagine how expensive this is," T.R. remarked, pausing the swarm for a moment so that they could look at a house that had been caught in the middle of the house-jacking process when the current round of flooding had struck. The contractors had left it high and dry on stacks of crisscrossed railroad ties and evacuated their equipment. An open skiff was bumping against its front porch on the end of a rope. A man came to the window of an upper bedroom, drawn by the noise of the drone swarm, and peered back at them. He was an ordinary-looking man in his fifties, shirtless in the heat, a strap angling across his pudgy torso from a long weapon slung across his back.