The fog sets in. A friend of mine has been long fascinated with electrical infrastructure. He’s explained that, by counting the number of ceramic insulators on a line, you can determine its load. It’s as you would expect: more insulators, greater voltage. The roads are quiet and empty. Before the fog, the whole valley of Denver is as clear as I have ever seen it. The thin sliver of earth that recedes eastward into Kansas is tack sharp in the dry, clear air. Another friend sends a text. Midday. It is short. “My first COVID patient is dead. 71. Healthy.” I’m delivering groceries to my parents when my phone buzzes with the news. I’m reminded of the videos taken in the minutes preceding the Indian Ocean Tsunami where the water drains far away from the beach revealing something marvelously unusual. In some of the videos you can see people looking at the sands as they spread out against the disappearing surf. It’s hard not to feel terror precisely because nobody in the videos seems to. The viewer knows that somewhere out there, past the line that marks the horizon, is a 108 foot-tall wall of incompressible water moving at a predictable and constant speed to backfill the void.