Delicately, but without hesitation, rivers of diamond and gold reveal themselves into the greater patchwork quilt of California beneath me. I’ve traveled across an ocean, a sea of ice, and now I find myself in the final stretch, hovering above the continent that will call itself my home.

America, California, San Francisco; a landscape rich with possibility and hope of extravagant plunder.

Pillagers headed West in search of tax havens and Kingless rule, later in search of the Color, where they discovered beneath their feet (and in a dazzling array of formations) the light captured by the dirt. And now, as I head West for the Valley of Silicon, I hope to reduce the proximity between myself and the machines that made me who I am.

A network of green and silver discs roll into view, and caught in the delirium of international flight I secretly hope for an instant that I’m the first to witness signs of extraterrestrial communication. Although, why these lifeforms would pick such an unreliable data format to communicate is beyond me. The discs shortly fade from view and from the window of my plane I’m left with a window of rivers, each reflecting sunlight as if they’re all so very happy to see me.

In fact, the rivers converge and suddenly begin to look like circuitry. It appears that moments before I arrived someone had peeled off the top layer of Californian dirt to reveal hundreds of miles of copper winding their way together below the surface. All had been placed with subtlety and an eye for beauty, with each made uniform and, from a distance, made perfect.

As I hovered above this rich electronic landscape, I wondered if this was the Great American Machine I had come to turn on, tune in and drop into; am I here to join the hidden network that powers much of this landscape, or are these the copper wires I have come West to plunder?