If you’re big enough to get by on one breath a year, you can hibernate for a very long time. Matociquala has.

The effort it once took to irrigate Las Vegas seems absurd, in 2050, as meltwater trickles down from Hubbard to refill the Precambrian sea. The West is a greenhouse, and things long dormant are waking: flowers, and trilobites, and beasts aching for heat.

His crypt is broken; the waves of his footsteps capsize speedboats down the Strip. Lost salmon climb balconies in ancestral terror.

Matociquala, his hour come round at last, lurches toward the desert city like a stóribjörn.