He was in a city he wanted to explore, with eight days of nothing else to do, and he got sick.  He felt a nagging ache and sapped of energy.  He had strength enough to explore the street outside if he had wanted, but instead, to still feel he was out and about, he ensconced himself on a highback chair in the hotel lobby.  It didn’t take long before he, with a question or two, began to compel tourists and natives to deliver complete reports to him on the sights and sounds and doings of the city.  Though he could have stepped out by the fourth day of illness and explored a few blocks around the hotel, or looked upon the city from the back of a taxi, he preferred instead to stay perched on his chair in the lobby and have the city be brought to him.  Tourists were starting to check in with him: he had taken to recommending places and experiences which had been recommended to him.  By the sixth day, he was even recommending to natives places that tourists had discovered.  For much of the last two days, people had taken to hanging around that corner of the lobby, attending seminars as it were on aspects of the city.  He had to return to work, but how eager he now was for his return to the city, to explore it as he had when, after years of listening to the lore, he had first visited his grandparents’ ancient ancestral home.