The freeway is barely alive. Only a single driverless truck barrels past in the darkness, disappearing into the distance. I watch its taillights growing dimmer through the falling snow, knowing that somewhere in India there’s a father sitting in a dark, empty room, think-monitoring the truck’s journey. What I tell myself is that things are going to get better. They’ll fix the problems, Mom will recover, my folks won’t have to disappear into the mountains of Peru to escape progress. How long do they even think it’ll be before the Towers arrive? There are more satellites going up daily. They’ll have a year, maybe two at most. I envision them living out of a microbus by the foothills, washing their clothes in the river, rising with the sun, wind drumming, arum, rum, rum; arum, rum, rum; arum, rum, rum. I’m drifting to the side of the road. I shake my head awake, roll down the window so the flurries whip in, and signal to get off the interstate for the safety of local roads. Far ahead on the horizon, a Tower reaches into the sky, and for a moment I imagine it lifting off like a rocket, heading past the clouds, up through our stratosphere, drawn toward the satellites floating high above, arum, rum, rum; arum, rum, rum; arum, rum, rum. The sharp beams of a hatchback startle me at the intersection of the exit ramp. I slow down, let it pass, and watch its taillights on the road as I pull behind it. Up ahead, another car merges onto our road, then another. A pickup truck appears behind me, until I’m in a line of cars, all of us creeping along the state road like some long metallic caterpillar, closing the distance between us and the Tower that squats in the middle of the dead fields.

It’s when we come over a small hill that I see the horde of mismatched automobiles at the Tower’s base, their parking lights speckled across the dark field like fireflies. There’s an old Tesla, a sedan and a minivan, and a dozen other cars huffing exhaust into the darkness. The hatchback in front of me slows to a crawl, signals, and pulls into the frozen soybean fields. I take my foot off the gas and almost come to a stop in the middle of the road, watching, until the lights of the car behind me flood my cabin with high beams, and then I pull off the road, too.