I’m sorry. We’re all drafted for loading duty and it’s going to take all night.

We start working at sunset. Rachel has joined us, coming from the kibbutz dormitory where she has been sleeping. The Dead Sea shore for six contiguous miles north of Ein Gedi has been converted, we are told, into a half-military, half-civilian Eco-Research Park. The salt-heavy waters, which conduct electrical current nearly as efficiently as copper wire, have been employed for three decades in experiments by government agencies and civilian start-ups seeking tech breakthroughs to combat climate change. A consortium associated with the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology at Haifa, runs this facility. Ben-David has been the intellectual guru and emotional catalyst behind many of these projects.

The building we’re in looks like the Apple campus in Silicon Valley. Everything is Cube Modern and automated, powered by sun and wind. The bay is air-conditioned, thank God. The loading is done by forklifts manned by facility crews. Our job, under Ben-David’s supervision, is to sort and rewrap the hundreds of pieces of equipment, which had been bundled for transport on forty-foot-long trailers and now must be broken down to fit on three-ton army trucks.

The gear, Ben-David tells us, is a revolutionary type of aeration apparatus for a system that climate engineers call SROG, Seawater Re-Oxygenation and Generation.

SROG technology mimics the process of photosynthesis in plants. It uses sunlight and salt water to produce electricity, which is then stored in an equally innovative medium constituted of 99.99 percent silica, i.e., sand.

This system alone, if deployed worldwide, says Ben-David, could retard if not reverse the most dangerous aspects of atmospheric carbon accretion.

Our party labors till midnight, when plans change again.

A fierce khamsin has come up with the fall of darkness. By ten the storm has become electric. Swarms of migdalim mini-tornadoes (“towers” in Hebrew) roar across the surface of the Dead Sea. Lightning strikes by dozens boom over the biblical landscape.

Electrical power has failed. A/C crashes. Temp soars to 105°, then 110°. No one can sleep. Across the loading area I spot Manning in some kind of clash with Rachel, with Ben-David in the middle and Dana and several other troopers looking on.

Do I care? I’m exhausted and dehydrated. My body clock is fifteen hours out of whack, and to top it all off I’m getting my period. Cramps knot my guts. I can’t remember why I’m here or what I imagined we had hoped to accomplish.

I cross toward the fracas in time to hear Rachel confronting Ben-David and pointing indignantly at Manning.

RACHEL

Why is he even here? Why did you let him come?

Rachel is telling Ben-David he must go to Haifa, to the port from which he and this equipment will sail for Cyprus. “Don’t listen to him!” she’s saying, indicating Manning.

RACHEL