I started walking again. At last the tunnel broke onto a clearing where the haze thinned somewhat, revealing two structures—a house and an outbuilding—on a roughly circular field of dead grass ringed with pines. I kept to the perimeter, not wanting to leave the cover of the trees.

The house comprised five or six glass cubes on an elevated stone foundation. All the lights were on, as if it were night. Even through the dimming smoke, I could see into a living room and kitchen and up a staircase to a bedroom.

The man had parked the Common Dreams truck at the outbuilding, a flat, windowless construct that looked cheap and hasty beside the house. If it hadn’t been so large, I would’ve thought it was a shed, just squat concrete brick with one metal door.

I hid in the smoke for a long time until I thought I detected movement in the house. I hurried along the edge of the clearing and found a better view. I don’t know whether it was the air quality or the elevation, but I felt breathless after just this slight exertion. I lay on my stomach on a bed of needles and peered through the binoculars, steadying them against my heaving lungs.

Inside the house, the man was mounting the staircase, still wearing those red-yellow sunglasses. When he entered the bedroom, I saw him twice, both standing by the bed and in a nearby mirror. Dr. Kriss stepped into my circular frame. She was wrapped in a towel, wet hair clinging to her shoulders, and she sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back on her hands. As she listened to the man talking, I discerned that cross, impatient look, the last face seen by her many fired employees.

Now I was almost certain this was Rainer, the Rubicon technician, the one she disclaimed any relationship with, because, to my surprise, she put a hand on the crotch of his jeans, felt him through the denim, and unclasped his belt. Without pulling his pants down, she reached into his underwear, removed his cock, and let it dangle, half-hard. I changed angles again and saw Dr. Kriss grip the cock—it wasn’t very large—at the base of the shaft and take the whole thing in her mouth.

I put the binoculars down, embarrassed. Smoke peeled off the tips of the pines.