every single human being is part of a grand universal plan. That''s what my Nana always says. We''re not alive just to lounge around and contemplate our umbilicus. We''re meta- physical beings! Open us up, and there''s more rattling around in there than just brain sacs and fatty tissue. We are full of imperceptible essences. Invisible spectrums. Patterns. Ideas.

We''re containers of awesome phenomena! Which is why it''s important to live right. You have to be attuned to what''s around you, and you have to keep from clogging your receptors with crap. According to my Nana, the universe is sending signals every day, and it''s up to us whether or not we want to listen. We can either perk up our ears, or walk around like dead piles of dermis. I always preferred the for- mer. Which is why I found myself up on top of the roof of our dome on that fall Sunday when everything began. I couldn''t tell you for certain that I''d ever heard messages from space up there, but at the very least I had a tremendous view. Hanging in the brisk October air, Anver heavy-duty suction cups on my hands, and a no-slip rubber guard harness around my chest, I could see the entire town of North Branch arranged with the uniformity of an architectural model.

It stretched below me like a wide lake of split-level dwellings, flowing over the small hills and dips in the eastern Iowa landscape. And above the horizon was the endless ice- blue troposphere, nearly unobstructed save for the waving branches of our black walnut trees. It was this towering group of trees that gave me my official reason for ascending to the top of the dome that Sunday. Every autumn they bombarded our translucent roof with pungent green-shelled nuts the size of tennis balls, and it was my job to climb the walls like a salamander and scrub away the stains. For this purpose, I kept a large squeegee strapped to my back along with a small bucket of orange-scented cleaning solution. And once attached to the glass, I scrubbed each insulated panel, and kept an eye on my Nana inside at the same time. Right beneath me, through a soapy triangle of glass, I could see her on her NordicTrack, grinding away. Click- Clackita Click-Clackita Click-Clackita.

The sound was like a distant Zephyr train. Just the day before, she had told me that most human beings only saw a hundred-thousandth of the world in their lifetime. Maybe a ten-thousandth if they traveled a lot. Only she called the world "Spaceship Earth," because that''s what Buckminster Fuller called it, and she thought he was humanity''s last real genius. Either way, I was sure I could see my entire portion from this spot. Up on top of the dome, my view was quite possibly someone''s whole lifetime. "Sebastian!" Nana called from below, her voice echoing off the glass. "Are you watching for visitors up there?" She stood outside now, squinting up at me.

"Affirmative!" I yelled. "No sightings at present." Nana called the weekend tourists to our home "visitors," as if they were alighting on our lawn from other galaxies in blinking mother ships. In reality, most of them made the trip in large automobiles, and it was my job to spot them from my perch. It was early yet for visitors, though. Every Saturday and Sunday we opened our home to the public at nine o''clock sharp, but it was usually ten or ten-thirty before anyone arrived. According to Nana, people in the Midwest had to finish with church before they could seek any leisure. They had to exalt and repent, and perhaps attend potlucks.

We had begun giving tours a few years back because our home was the first Geodesic Dome ever constructed in Iowa, and there seemed to be some interest in that fact. In truth, we were only a moderate-to-marginal tourist attraction, but most years we made enough to supplement Nana''s modest pension, which is all we needed. No matter how much we brought in, though, I was supposed to behave as if we were overrun with business. Negative thinking sent out the wrong kind of messages to the higher powers, Nana said. Each negative thought was like a hemorrhoid to the controlling forces of the universe. It burned them endlessly. "Make sure to get the northwest side, Sebastian!" Nana shouted now. "I spotted some bird waste over there.

Then come down for breakfast. I need to speak with you." "Will do," I said. I took a deep inhalation of chill air and began pressing and releasing my suction cups, moving over the apex of the dome to tend to the bird stains. At the age of sixteen, I was already the same height my father had been when he passed away, and my lanky frame covered a surprising amount of space on the dome. When I adjusted myself perfectly on the top, every major landmark in town was visible with the naked eye. If I looked to the east, for example, I could see the slanted water tower that read "North Branch Beavers" in rust-colored lettering. Farther north was the symmetrical row of small businesses in the town square.

Then past the businesses, a little to the west, was the giant brick castle of James K. Polk High School, which I was not allowed to attend because Nana said their worldview was myopic and wrong. And finally, to the far west, I could see all four lanes of the expressway, including the exact exit that the tourists took to visit us. I couldn''t see our garish billboards, but I knew they were there, facing the road, imploring every motorist to visit "The House of Tomorrow." I scraped my squeegee slowly over the last of the stains, and then pressed and released all the way down to the brittle grass of our lawn. I had seen on the World Wide Web once that a man from France climbed the Empire State Building with just his hands and feet. No cups. No harness.

He was arrested, but he claimed it was worth it to know he was really alive. It was a secret goal of mine to one day scale our dome in this fashion, but for now I played it safe. My sneakers touched the ground with a satisfying crunch, and I undid my harness and let it drop to the ground. I walked around to the front yard and turned the knob on our clear front door. There sat Nana in our open dining room, imbibing one of her signature smoothies. Every day, she performed the morning ritual of dumping things in her Vita-Mix, a machine that pulverized her breakfast. Anything that could fi t through the clear plastic shaft was fair game for one of these shakes. This morning, the concoction was the same color fuchsia as her tracksuit.

She owned a rain- bow of these sleek workout suits, and this particular one was made of pink, sweat-resistant fibers and had a matching headband for her shock of fl our-white hair. "Oh, Sebastian," she said, glancing up at me. "You look like a cave dweller, or one of those horrible men who collect all the lumber." "A lumberjack?" "Yes," she said. "Exactly. One of those." I was wearing the same blue flannel shirt and jeans that I always wore. But my dirty-blond hair had gotten a tad shaggy around the ears.

I pushed it off my forehead and sat down. Nana leaned over and kissed the top of my head. "Is your room arranged to specification?" she asked, her mouth hovering back over her straw. "Affirmative," I said. "Have you performed your toilet?" "With startling success," I said. "A yes or no answer would be adequate," she said. She sipped again on her smoothie, then frowned and let the straw rest against the lip of the glass. "Well, enough idle chatter," she said.

"We need to have a conference." I moved in closer and watched her face. It was inexplicably tight for a woman of her age. You had to stare at it closely before you could begin to find the thin wrinkles, like hairline cracks, in the firm skin around her mouth and eyes. And it was only when she glowered or furrowed her brow in the deepest of concentration that you could tell that she had lived nearly eighty years on this earth. "I''ll be direct with you, Sebastian," she said. "The heating bill is going up this month, and we need to maximize all sales efforts in the gift shop. Do you read me?" "I think so.

" She slurped at her shake. "Additional capital must be raised. I need you to try to sell a photograph today. That''s your quota," she said. I sighed softly. "What?" she said. "What is that dramatic breathing?" "The photographs are costly," I said. "The photographs are art objects," she snapped, "and they are priced accordingly.

" I sighed again. "Would it surprise you to know that your numbers are down since August?" she asked. "I don''t know." "Well, they are. They''re down." I avoided her stare, but I could still feel it on me. "An education means knowing how to do everything. Including things you don''t have a predilection for.

You should have seen the way Bucky made things salable. He could make men salivate over a new kind of winch. A winch!" "Bucky" was R. Buckminster Fuller, Nana''s onetime colleague and personal hero. He was the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, among other things, and, according to Nana, "the most unappreciated genius in all of human history." His life''s work had been dedicated to futurist inventions and ideas, which he thought could eliminate all negative human behavior. Fuller dabbled in every- thing: architecture, physics, engineering, cosmology, design, and poetry. And he dreamed of creating a "Spaceship Earth" where every human could prosper and grow.

Nana had worked with him at Southern Illinois University in her younger days. And by the time she was finished in his company, there wasn''t a single one of his ideas she disagreed with. This included his belief that Nana, aka Josephine Prendergast, was the most beautiful and vibrant w.