trees circumventing the whole, waving almost imperceptibly to and fro in
the light breeze that was blowing. A few miles to the southwest there
was a group of odd looking trees stretching up over the horizon to a
considerable height. They were closer than the outer ring, which kept a
uniform girth around the prairie, but somehow they looked very peculiar
and foreboding, and I got one of those sobering feelings which I like to
call predestined deja vu. What I mean is that I got a sense of deja vu,
but instead of the past converging with the present into one thought,
the present seemed to converge with the future, and the result was a
mysterious foreboding of something, though I couldn't tell what. That is
the sensation that I had when I saw what I assumed to be a small
grouping of trees somewhere in the southwestern portion of the savanna,
though that was merely a guess, for in the distance I could only make
out several dark forms rising out of the grassland like trees, or
possibly buildings, one of them being a great deal taller than the
others, with a spherical shape on top that only faintly resembled a
tree's crown. If it was indeed a tree, it was the largest that I have
ever seen, for it looked to be upwards of 800 feet tall.

My mental warning bells were ringing quite loudly, and I endeavored to
silence them by extreme exertions of the will, but they would not be
subdued. I assumed that they were not at all correct, much like the
fearful expectancy some have while swimming in the ocean, out of sight
of all land, of being attacked by an enormous leviathan of the deep. As
unfounded as the fear is, it places one into a frenzy of dubious
thoughts that inspire equally frantic and anarchist actions. Because of
this, I thought that my ideas were naught but superstitious fancies, yet
try as I might, I could not rid myself of them.

Instead, I made up my mind to set off in the opposite direction, north,