We drove for an hour and ten minutes before we reached our destination. On the way, we listened to music and talked about why no one had invented flying cars yet. We rounded the last bend and as we did, they came into view for the first time. Zac leaned forward and his eyes widened. He looked like he was going to jump out of his seat with excitement—in fact, I could see he was struggling to contain his emotions as he flapped his hands in the air.

“Wind turbines!” he yelled. “Wind turbines!”

“I know,” I said as I gawked at the massive steel giants that rose up into the air in front of us. Before we’d come, I’d done some reading so I could furnish him with facts that I knew he would like.

“Did you know,” I started, “that they stand almost a hundred meters tall?”

“How big is that?” Zac asked.

I smiled to myself. I knew he would ask this question. “You know how tall Ponte tower in Joburg is? Well, imagine cutting Ponte in half, that’s how tall they are!”

“Wooooow!” he declared. “That’s tall!”

We pulled up to the gate, and just as Jake had said, someone met us there. He introduced himself as Michael, one of the technicians, and was excited to give us a tour of the facility. But he definitely wasn’t as excited as my brother. Zac was like a kid in a candy store, in among the massive electricity-generating giants that turned slowly in the wind. His face was alive with excitement when Michael showed him inside the many rooms that contained more batteries and wires and knobs and switches than even Zac could handle. Zac asked a hundred questions about how the wind became electricity, how that got into your home, and into your microwave, and how the giants were built, how much they weighed, and if it was possible for him to make small ones for the beach outside his house, and if so, should he use wood and if wood, what kind of glue was best, or should he use a nail and hammer? The questions flew out of his mouth one after the other and I could see that Michael was really enjoying it. We ended the tour right underneath one of the giant turbines. Zac and I stood there and looked up. It dwarfed us. It was hard to imagine how something like this could have even been constructed. Zac looked up at it in silence, but I could see his brain was ticking away. He was probably trying to work out a million things at once while looking at it. The sun was behind us, and I looked at the ground as the massive shadows from the turbine whooshed across it.

“You know I’m leaving tomorrow to go to Paris?” I asked, my throat tightening a bit.