The mountains are closer than they used to be. This is not a metaphor. Convoy drivers on the Colorado-GLMZ trade route have been reporting for approximately eight years that the Rocky Mountains appear to be moving east. Not fast. Not in a way that shows up on a single trip. But drivers who have been running the route for a decade say the point at which the mountains become visible on the western horizon has shifted by what they estimate is forty to sixty kilometers. The mountains are approaching.

The obvious explanation is tectonic activity, and Arcturus dispatched a geological survey team in 2222 to investigate. The team's seismological data showed no unusual plate movement. The Rockies are not migrating east. The ground beneath them is stable. The continental plate is behaving normally. The survey team set physical markers at measured distances from the range and returned six months later to re-measure. The markers had not moved. The mountains were closer. The distance between the markers and the mountains had decreased by 1.7 kilometers in six months. The markers were in the same place. The mountains were in the same place. The distance between them had changed. The team's geologist wrote in her report: "The distance is shrinking without either endpoint moving. I do not have a framework for this."

A second theory — spatial dilation — was proposed by the same physicist who wrote the urban cyst paper about the Lost Blocks. She argues that the space between the GLMZ and the Rockies is compressing. Not the land. The space itself. The ground doesn't move. The air doesn't move. But the distance decreases. Her model predicts that at the current rate, the Rockies will be visible from GLMZ within forty years. They should not be visible from GLMZ. They are 1,400 kilometers away. Her model says that number is no longer accurate and hasn't been for some time.

Convoy drivers have started calling it "the Approach." They say it's worse at night. Not that the mountains move faster — that they feel closer. One driver described pulling over at a rest point she'd used for years and finding that the mountains, which had always been a smudge on the horizon from that spot, now had visible tree lines. She could see individual peaks. She said it felt like the mountains were leaning in. Like they were curious. She does not drive the western route anymore.

The lights on the mountain peaks — the ones the high-route pilot reported — are brighter now. Or closer. The distinction may no longer be meaningful.