Before the noon hour is done, an armed SDF courier arrives with the data-storage modules from the SDF's pair of twin-engine Mistral sensor aircraft. At Machiko's request, these aircraft have completed over-flights of the two regions in the New York-New Jersey megaplex, where, as Sashi-san said, "the earth is most grievously wounded." The first region is a portion of the Newark sprawl known as Sector 13, said to be the result of some massive metaphysical catastrophe. The second region is located along Long Island's northern shoreline, a portion known as the Slag Heap, a toxic waste dump further poisoned shortly after the Awakening by the crash of a military transport carrying an eclectic mixture of toxic materials.