Amit opened his eyes.

The cold wind hissed past his ears as he stood, the grass bending in submission to it. The prairie stretched for a fair while, eventually giving way to a frothy sea, rimmed with a thin strip of gray sand.

Amit turned around and beheld civilization. The double-helix of the Lianhua Tower glowed against the dark sky, shining in colors that rippled down its seven-kilometer sides. Far in the distant, the tiffany black wire of the Wen Zhong space elevator bisected the afternoon light.

Jing-Jin-Ji roared, as all cities did. Apart from the iconic skyscraper that poked out of the rabble like a giant's scepter, the city also looked the same as any other. The sea frothed at the bulkheads and docks in the distance, raising a faint mist of salt. Nothing was rusted. Massive ships thundered through the surf, carrying the products of an interplanetary economy. The sky was devoid of stars, except for the blinking lights of airliners and the occasional shooting star of a returning shuttle.

Amit walked shakily toward his hometown. Before long, he was walking beside the acres of lush suburbia. Then he was in the heart of the city.

A canyon of apartment complexes rose around him. A trickle of vehicles thundered by, accompanied by a flood of people. Amit sat at a bench and watched the yellow headlight blur. He was still disoriented, and was in desperate need for a meal and a bed. The Lianhua scoffed at him and undulated beautifully.

A man walked up to the bench, separating from the general flow of people. Unlike the rest of the crowd, he was dressed formally, with a professional suit. He sported a pale goatee.

"Greetings," said the man, smiling.

Amit stared at him warily.

"I am Somnus Porifiro. Walk with me, Dr. Gabriel."

Amit wordlessly complied.

"Let me introduce myself. I'm a psychologist working for DreamCluster her in Jing-Jin-Ji. I'm the one who makes that chip in your head work its wonders."

Amit nodded in understanding.

"And you, I gather, are a planetary geologist, discovering the buried secrets of the heavenly bodies. How exciting!"

Amit mumbled in the affirmative.

The psychologist seemed to assess him, then spoke. "I notice that you're greatly stressed. I personally find that rest and relaxation are the best cures to a troubled mind, and a short sea voyage is the epitome of such pleasures. I invite you to a day on my little dinghy if you wish. It is the least I can do for a scientist of your stature."

"Certainly, certainly..." responded Amit, somewhat taken aback.

"Very good! I'll meet you at the dock tomorrow morning. Glad to meet you, Dr. Gabriel!"

It took him several hours to find his own apartment. He barely recognized the streets anymore. Amit was still far from calm as he sat in his bed, one that he had thought he left more than six years and seven parsecs distant. The faint, yellow luminescence of the city shone through the window. The noise of traffic rattled it in its frame, beating out a melody that lulled Amit to sleep.

The next morning, Amit found his way to the address sent to him by Dr. Porfirio. The private dock was gleaming white plastic that attempted to mimic wood. The water was calm in the artificial harbor, protected from the raging surf of the Pacific by heavy mountains of cement. The Lianhua Tower gleamed in the sunlight reflecting perfectly on the flat bay, extending its impersonation of a DNA molecule into the water.

Porifiro waited at the end of the dock, besides a large yacht that floated sleekly on double fins of sky-blue plastic. The ship looked rather like a spacecraft, designed to plow through air instead of cleave through water.

"Good morning, Dr. Gabriel! I trust you had a good rest?"

"Yes, I did," responded Amit with a strained approximation of joy.

"Good!" Somnus turned to the ship, which extended a boarding ramp in response. "Please, follow me."

The interior of the yacht was just as polished as the hull. Obsidian counters presented a few glowing symbols. The only one that would ever be used was the blue-tinted map that spread underneath the curving front windows. The floors were made of genuine mahogany, the walls and ceiling were jet black plastic.

"I hope you find my boat nice." said Somnus.

"I do."

Amit walked up to a nearby porthole, a rounded rectangle that was flush with the rest of the wall. Through it, the sky shone a bright blue. Far to the east, a storm was brewing. Dr. Porifiro absentmindedly flicked at the map and walked to the porthole with Amit.

"We will be traveling south at first, to avoid the worst of the winds, then head out east and into the great Pacific. I expect this will take no longer than two days, if everything goes as planned.

The yacht contacted the Tianjin Harbor computer on its own and requested permission to sail. It eventually received a clear departure path, and went on its way.

It skimmed along the water, hydrofoils churning the surface to a spray. Lifted by the curved wings on which it flew, the yacht shot above the water, reducing its contact with the water to the point where it might as well have been an aircraft.

The yacht quickly entered a long queue of ships waiting to leave the harbor. Most were heavy freighters, carrying commercial products in massive, multi-colored containers. There were a few luxury liners, dwarfed beside the cargo ships, and even smaller private yachts. All waited impatiently for the traffic to pass through the opening to the harbor and into the raging sea.

Finally, the yacht hissed beyond the straits that led out of the harbor, and skipped over the angry surf.

"I had the most unusual dream yesterday," said Amit.

"Did you?"

"Yes. It was pretty vivid, actually. I was convinced I had left Earth and gone to a distant planet. The whole ordeal felt like it spanned six years or more. Weird."

Somnus looked out of the porthole with faint disquiet before saying, "I could have your chip looked at for you. If you think it's malfunctioning..."

"No, no. That won't be necessary."

"I wouldn't be so sure. It's surprising how many broken chips go undiagnosed all the time. You know, it's a wonder they work at all. Something as complex as the brain should not be adaptable enough to accept such an intrusive foreign object. But it does. Isn't that fascinating?"

The yacht sped across the crests of the waves, leaping from one to the next like a bird.

"The human mind is truly a wondrous organ. Many have said that it is the most intricate, complicated structure in the universe. That is arguable. I say we would be foolish to conclude such a thing, knowing as little of the universe as we do. It is, regardless, quite a remarkable thing. To me the most interesting aspect of the mind, and the rest of the body, is that it is a unified being formed of many."

"Really?"

"Yes. There are almost a hundred billion individual cells, interacting in ways that are still not well understood, sharing chemicals and electronic signals between them, resulting in a vast community that acts as one. It really isn't that different from the behavior of certain social insects. Are you familiar with the basic structure of an ant nest?"

"Enlighten me."

"The idea is that each insect is an automaton, reacting to stimulations in simple ways. When it is hungry, an ant leaves the nest and wanders aimlessly until it finds food, then alerts other ants using chemical pheromones, and they all help it bring the item back to the nest. There is no situation in which an ant would not respond this way, unless it is diseased. By following such simple guidelines, ants manage to create the appearance of immense intelligence. The best example is in the way they construct nests, which shows a good understanding of architecture. When new space is needed, the ants release pheromones that tell other ants to begin digging. At the same time, others respond to the activity by testing the soil and essentially marking areas that are too loose to support a new tunnel. The final product is a labyrinth of a nest, created by extremely simple minds working in unison, one that almost never experiences a cave-in."

"And how is that like a human brain?"

"The neuron acts rather like an individual ant. It receives chemical messages from the axons of other cells, and prepares another message to all connecting cells in response. The same way that the ants communicate with each other to create something larger than themselves, the neurons communicate with each other to produce a combination of hormones and electronic flashes that forms a thought. A flood of dopamine and a constellation of electrochemical flames in the frontal cortex becomes a pleasant conversation. The same applies to every emotion, concept, memory, and thought that courses through our minds."

For the next several hours, the yacht sped south, leaving behind Jing-Jin-Ji and the towering storm that threatened to whip the city later tonight. Eventually, it crossed paths with a lumbering trash freighter. The yacht skipped behind it, a midge humming at an elephant. The cargo ship was heading further into the ocean. It was nearly rectangular, with a load line indicated by a deep maroon hue that extended about halfway up the vessel, while the remainder was gray. It seemed to be floating high in the water. Its main deck was piled with plastic crates. As Amit watched, one of the crates became detached from the deck and fell several meters to the ocean below. It broke apart on impact, releasing its contents into the currents.

Porifiro peered out of the port window, glancing at the detritus that rushed by. "It looks like a trash barge," he said. The crate had been filled mostly with outdated industrial parts, among a few miscellaneous scraps of wood, metal and plastic. Among the floating residue was a large, wrought iron structure. It reminded Amit of a tree.

As the structure receded, the wake of the yacht disturbed it, causing it to flip. Momentarily, the shape was suspended upright against the sky. It was a simple form, really, two straight bars perpendicular to each other.

"This one looks like it came from New Shanghai. I think we'll be passing the old city any moment now," Porifiro said.

Indeed, the yacht began to slow about an hour later, forced to maneuver the rusting hulks of ancient buildings that poked out of the shallow sea. A few were tall enough to be called skyscrapers, rising tens of meters out of the water.

"It's a wonder that these structures are still around. You'd think after a few centuries of marinating in brine, they would rust away, but here they are in all their glory."

One especially tall tower appeared from behind the lower buildings, sporting an absurd hole near its top. The windows were blackened and most had fallen from their frames. Amit realized that the water was filled with shards of glass that scraped against the yacht's hull. Near the base of the tower, streaks of dark rust rose out of the sea, as if the water were trying to claw its way up the building.

"The city of Shanghai is especially interesting because, unlike most old cities, it wasn't merely swamped. It began to sink into the ocean as well, weighed down by the buildings constructed on the unstable land, and was doomed to be swallowed by the tides. The same thing happened to parts of Hong Kong. The cities are still as they were, hundreds of years ago. They've become something of a tourist trap."

The yacht eventually left the drowned city and began to curve east. The sun began to set across the liquid horizon, glinting off the water in a thousand golden sparks. As night fell, the ocean calmed and the yacht flew with almost perfect stability across its flat surface. The stars began to gleam from the fiery dusk, then glowed brighter as the sky continued to darken. Dr. Porifiro retrieved a telescope from nowhere and exited the cabin. The outdoor deck was surprisingly calm, with only the slightest sprays of water cresting the hull. Porifiro secured his telescope to a small tripod mounted at the back of the deck, and pointed it to the heavens. The sky was alight, populated by both stars and the millions of satellites and space stations that humanity had sent to join them. For some time, the only sound was the faint hiss of water flowing over the yacht's hydrofoils.

"Look," said Porifiro, as he stepped away from the telescope.

Amit did so. He saw a huge column in the eyepiece, slightly blurred by the atmosphere. It was red on one side and blue on the other.

"The Facem"

"Yes. They say the ship got its name because it will outshine every other object in the night sky for a week after launch."

Amit stared at the dichotomous spacecraft, before finally stepping away and re-entering the cabin. It was only much later, as he lay in his hammock that he began to wonder how the stationary telescope could track an orbiting spacecraft.

The next morning was crisp and muted. The soft flush of the early sun painted the yacht in yellow and orange as it sped eastward. It shone blindingly through the bridge windows. As the day progressed, the ocean rolled by below the ship. At about noon, after hours of endless, pristine water, a minute fragment of land appeared on the horizon. Porifiro ordered the yacht to slow down and approach the island.

The island was picturesque, almost irrationally so. It sported a thin stand of palm trees, surrounded by a lush scrub of ferns and bushes. Perfect white sand drew a clean border around it, and the surrounding water was a beautiful, glinting turquoise. A few seabirds flew against the cloudless sky. Floating directly above the island was a sentry robot. It had been put there to make sure that nothing approached the tiny gem of biodiversity. Normally, it would've matched the color of the sky perfectly, thus rendering it invisible, but it was currently black to warn the incoming vessel. Porifiro sailed directly toward it. As he had only come within two kilometers of the shores, the robot subtracted a few thousand dollars from his financial accounts.

"Are you sure you should be doing this?" asked Amit.

Porifiro did not answer.

The automaton counted meters as the yacht approached the island, and removed another thousand dollars with each one. Eventually, as the ship drew alongside the shore, it ran out of money to confiscate, and was forced to take more serious measures. It tilted forward and hummed toward the yacht.

Porifiro left the cabin and leaned over the hull, dipping his hand in the water as if trawling for a fish. He seemed to find what he was looking for, pulled it out of the sea, and rushed back to the bridge. He ordered the yacht to pick up speed and leave the area. The robot, discouraged by the rate at which the ship was receding, returned to its post and alerted the UDS police forces. The owner of the yacht would be found and arrested in less than a day.

The yacht sped across the water, away from the island. Porifiro approached Amit with his hand outstretched.

"Look," he said. He held out a small, cone-shaped shell, mottled black and white. "This is the geographic cone shell. It is a marine predatory snail."

"Is it?" said Amit, who was more interested in the legality of the situation.

"It is! And this little snail is equipped with the most potent venom on Earth. It can kill a man in less than an hour. Interestingly, the cone shell eats only small fish, and none of the potential predators in the area are nearly as large as a human. And yet, this tiny animal can kill a man. Why?"

Amit stared at the snail. It twitched on Porfirio's hand.

"Why are you holding it?" he said. entirely ignoring the question.

"It has been discovered that only a fraction of the proteins present in the venom have an effect on its prey. It has thus been assumed that the rest of the substance is devoted entirely to killing for defense. However, these waters are mostly empty of large predators. There is no reason to have a poison so terrible. Unless one considers the snails themselves. It may be that this venom is the result of an arms race among the cone shells. A more lethal snail will deter more predators, thus increasing its chance to reproduce. And if a snail can kill without any warning at all, the mere sight of it would scare away any would be attackers without fail."

"You really should put that thing down..."

"And so evolution has created this tiny mollusk, working against itself in an endless spiral of virulence, at the expense of every other organism."

Somnus deposited the animal on one of the dashboards, where it crawled for a few minutes before settling on the surface.

"Do you know how the poison works? It interferes with the transfer of information between the peripheral nervous system and the muscles, thus causing paralysis of the limbs. The venom spreads with the blood stream, and eventually reaches the central organs, the heart and lungs. When these lose contact with the brain, the body can no longer breathe, and may not be able to control the tempo of the heart. The victim will usually die of asphyxiation. It turns out that the body is an extraordinarily fragile thing. All that is required to destroy the intricate spindles of organic matter is a few chemicals inserted in the correct place, and it all comes crumbling down. All organisms have found ways to nullify the huge detriment caused by their own frailty. This cone shell takes advantage of other organism's fragility, discouraging them from doing the same to it. Bacteria and other unicellular organisms reproduce so quickly that nothing can hope to eradicate them all. We humans simply outsmart anything looking to kill us. "

The yacht continued to skip across the waves. A tropical storm was forming far to the south, casting a shadow the size of a continent.