The massive painting hung at the end of the dome car attracted all who laid their eyes on it. Homer was one of the bodies who were drawn to it irresistibly as if to a magnet. He stopped in front of the painting in the optimal viewing spot, given that no one else was in the dome car at that early hour. Above the dome car, the stars faded out one by one as the sky gradually lightened.

The painting showed a man in a black jacket and a matching Stetson and a woman in a pristine white dress and a white derby hat, with their backs turned. The landscape told the story: they were looking west across on the dramatic red sandstone cliffs of Southern Utah as their shadows from the setting sun cast weird shapes on the cream-colored canyons. The dying light showed them the tenacious plants that clung on to the canyon walls despite impossible angles. The couple were having an intimate conversation to which the viewer was not privy. They were pausing to enjoy the scenery before making camp for the night. It took him about a minute to realize why the river that ran through the background of the painting twisted itself into a weird shape in the bottom right; it was the author's signature. The title of the painting, on a small golden plaque below, was "LET THE REST OF THE WORLD GO BY--In Honor of the Mormon Pioneers".

"Interesting title," he said.

"With someone like you,
A pal good and true,
I'd like to leave it all behind--
And go and find,
A place that's known
To God alone,
Just a spot to call our own;
We'll find perfect peace,
Where joys never cease,
Out there beneath a kindly sky;
We'll build a sweet little nest,
Somewhere in the west,
And let the rest of the world go by."

Homer heard singing. He looked to his left. It was the girl he had dined with last night. She had a Polaroid around her neck.

"It's you. You were..."

"Homer," he put out his hand, "your voice is heavenly."

"Thank you. Ada," she shook it, "this song is a half-century old. I wonder what life will be like a half-century from now?"

"Well, I'll have a part in shaping it!" Homer boasted.

"I can't begin to imagine how different 2019 will be from 1969. In 1919 we were dropping bricks from biplanes. Now we're flying rockets to the Moon."

"More importantly, we shall augment the human mind and create a synthesis of man and machine."

"Will we have computers like HAL 9000? Will they take over the world?"

"Man-machine synthesis is already a thing with tools. You use them every day to augment your body, don't you? And they haven't taken over the world."

"No," agreed Ada.

"We already have computers to help us do difficult calculations. In a few years, as computing power improves, they shall help us prove our as yet most intractable theorems. But that's not where I want the story to end. What we're doing is connecting all these augmentations of the mind together...to create one big network in which everyone can communicate with everyone."

"How will the infrastructure handle it?"

"The telephone network, at present, is inadequate for the mass communication I envision. But with a minimum of investment this country could win the Computer Networking Race without the Soviets even knowing it existed."

"What can I do?"

"What do you do?"

She leaned close and said, "I'm a phreak. I make long-distance phone calls for free by producing the pulses the phone system uses to transmit information about calls. I hope...you're not a fed."

"Am I working for the Federal Government? Yes," Homer smiled, "but I don't have arrest powers and I don't have the Miranda warning memorized."

Ada laughed.

"Study the telephone network. And study it hard. This way you may find some insight as to how we'll be able to scale the computer network up."

The sun was rising, revealing more and more of the landscape. Being the math geek he was, Homer naturally thought "discrete". Pillars of rock towered hundreds of feet into the air, seemingly from nothingness. Bottomless slot canyons scarred the land.

"Folks, if you're up this early and you look right, we're passing through Zion National Park."

When they saw the sun shining through a rock arch onto the train, Ada grabbed her camera and took a photo, and the camera printed it out instantly.

"Always prepared," said Ada.