It’s like any place else,” Phil confirmed, three weeks later, as they watched his car drive out of the lot and pull into traffic on Fleur Drive. A pair of driverless trucks politely adjusted their speed to give it a gap to merge into. The four of them were sweating in the greenhouse summer of central Iowa. Overnight bags were suspended from index fingers instead of slung over shoulders. They jockeyed languidly to catch stray breezes. Planes whined overhead coming in to land. This was not the shaded and air-conditioned comfort of the airport’s car rental center, but an outlying lot catering to basically anyone who intended to venture more than a couple of miles from an interstate highway.

“You can set your bags down and they will be as safe as if they were locked up in a bank vault,” said Larry, the manager on duty, using a thumb to shift the strap on his shoulder and expose a sweat-darkened stripe of T-shirt. Dangling from the strap was an assault rifle, poised in such a way that its muzzle was usually aimed at the ground. Which seemed dangerous; but Larry for his part was aghast at his four young customers’ unwillingness to let their bags out of their grasp and clearly imagined that wherever they came from, no property was safe.

Sophia had her glasses up on her forehead. She was tempted to flip them down and see if they could face-rec this Larry and if so find out who his editor was—or more likely what edit stream he subscribed to and what particular flavor of post-reality it was pumping into his mind. But Larry didn’t have his glasses down and so it would have been somewhat impolite.

He turned away and led them across heat-softened asphalt toward an old vehicle that Sophia recognized vaguely as a Land Cruiser or Land Rover or one of those: boxy, upright, of a general design that was four or five decades old. But it was clean, well cared for, beaded with rinse water from the car wash. It had been modded in various ways that Larry wanted them to notice and to appreciate. He stepped up onto a running board, carefully adjusting the angle of his assault rifle so it wouldn’t bang into the side of the vehicle, and patted the roof, which was covered in bright yellow composite.

“Kevlar,” he announced. “Now. Contrary to the scare propaganda you have probably been fed, celebratory fire is overrated as far as danger. A descending round has lost most of its energy. Terminal velocity is much less than muzzle velocity. So you don’t need full armor on the roof. This will do you fine.”

“Is there a lot of celebratory fire where we are going?” Julian asked.

“No. Iowans are stoic,” Phil answered in the unduly confident tones of one who was just reading about it.