The copters are with us and the Thought Police are not far behind, scaling just a few floors below us. Lights shine intense, even though the sun is sufficient. I’m blinded by the copter’s glare and appropriately furious that I cannot look up without being unsighted by the copter’s lights. Jacob, again to the rescue, pulls out a small trigger and presses it. The copters immediately shut their lights off and stumble to stabilize. “Go on. Look,” he tells me. He tells me this and I grab at him. His hand is just as much a friend as I am to him. And now me with Jacob is all there is. The spacetime that once gripped us in health is now loosened. I crane my neck to the burnt sky. A thousand tons of smog rotate in the atmosphere. A million acres of land catches me. And a trillion people populate Earth. I catch at my breath and look up.