2 DUBAI, MAY 2015

Researchers are used to cheap hotels; they don't squander the public money that finances their travels. I've slept in countless tiny rooms, sometimes without a bathroom, and once even in a windowless basement room near a subway whose regular vibrations made me feel as if I were sleeping in a submarine. On the day this story begins, the situation was very different. I'd been invited to spend a week at the Masdar Institute at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, and my hosts had done very well by me. I was housed in a luxurious Dubai hotel, the sort of place where you drink cocktails in an infinity pool with a view of the Persian Gulf.