All too soon I understood what Tricorder Guy had meant.

You see, for a few years I'd been getting letters from a big real estate mogul who hailed from a long line of moguls, magnates, land barons, captains of industry, and other such pillars of the American aristocracy. Instead of putting his name on castles, he liked to put his name on shopping malls.

When it came to moguling, everyone said he had the Midas touch, and I guess that's true; all the land he touched would turn to gold-which is to say, it became cold and dead, if you remember how that old story went.

In his letters, the mogul liked to inform me of his exciting plan to buy my house, demolish it, scoop away the surrounding hills—including the one my house used to sit on—and use the dirt to fill in the valley, until everything was all the same height. And once he'd reduced the land to its lowest common denominator, he'd pave it all over to keep the weeds from getting any ideas. And then he'd cover it with a shopping mall to make sure the pavement stayed put. Who knows what he's got against hills. Maybe they spoil his view of the power plant.

They say money makes the world go round, but I think it's pretty obvious that money makes the world go flat.