- Alan and Yousef make it to the Welcome Center at KAEC. It's a million degrees outside.
- Alan is greeted by two men, Sayed and Mujaddid, who give him a tour of the center, complete with a mock-up of the completed city.
- And Alan loves it. He loves the exciting vision of a shiny city rising out of the desert.
- He recalls another bout of optimism in his professional life. He'd worked to open a Schwinn manufacturing plant in Hungary—which failed spectacularly. Hmm…maybe optimism doesn't always work out for our man Alan?
- Yousef doesn't seem to be buying any of Mujaddid's propaganda (a marketing film and the model), but Alan is totally into it.
- It's clear that Sayed and Mujaddid have his number. They've done enough research to know a little something about Alan and what will appeal to him.
- Alan recalls participating in case studies for business students in which they asked him about his astounding lack of professional foresight.
- He often asks himself the same questions, wondering how he could have been so gullible as to allow Chinese suppliers to become competitors.
- The memories of golden days in manufacturing are actually painful to Alan. He's watched manufacturing leave the U.S. and had to acknowledge his role in that.
- Now Sayed is asking him if he would have done things differently. Duh.
- At the end of the presentation and tour, Mujaddid takes Alan and Youssef by car to a huge tent pitched outside the Welcome Center.
- It's where Alan and his crew will prepare their tech presentation for the King. In a tent. In the desert. With patchy wi-fi.