Jump out of the 16-person van. Feel the air-conditioning on the tips of your fingers, lingering like lover’s breath. The mountain, you think, looms before you. Not yet dark, but in a sense brooding, mysterious, inviting.

Then, your uncle’s voice cuts your thought like a knife through cheese. Not a mountain, a hill. Its not a mile high, its half a mile high. Stop asking questions and start hiking. You’re carrying the bottles.

It isn’t long before you realize how square everything is, how obtusely rectangular the stones jutting up from the path and the roadside are. At first, its funny. A quarter mile later, its annoying. You get excited at a curve of shattered stone, then disgruntled as you realize it broke along a fractal and made tiny square ships.

Then, the stones make sudden sense. They are homes, buildings, the remnants of a race long gone. Inside, countless offices, domiciles, and centers must exist. Perhaps the ants pushed them out, or coexist in peace with them.

At the peak, it occurs to you that maybe they aren’t dead. What if they still are alive, and hide deep inside during the heat of the desert day, and tentatively poke their heads out at night? Our footsteps must resound deep within the hill, and alert them to intruders, visitors, and exercising juggernauts. Using these vibrations, which must be almost constantly present, they receive their power, and energize a whole host of wondermachines. Soon, they will rival the United States in technology.

At the half-mile marker descending from the top, the howl of a daring coyote enters your ears, all too close for comfort. If you are attacked, what will the rock people do? Will they erupt from their stony shelters and defend you? Perhaps one of the rocks under the beast will explode, and send him hurtling dead down the slopes. Or they could do nothing, and ignore you as completely as they do with the rest of the world.

And then, the dream is gone, along with the daylight. Fluorescent yellow lighting takes the place of the sun, and your feet stumble not on rocks, but pavement. The adrenaline makes you twitchy, but a glass of ice water down the shirt fixes that. The stones vanish into the black of the desert night, and their mystery deepens. The van leaves, ignorant of a whole world possibly existing under their steps.

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