Lux

 

The strangest thing that I ever saw, was when I was a child in the desert. We passed a camel, carrying a great curved slab of water. This was not cold like ice, but crystalline water. There was no container, merely ropes to fix it in place, I was told that some light wires were submerged in the mass, and there was a battery to provide a modest trickle charge forcing the water to retain its crystalline form. A few metres in height and breadth, it was curved coming to a peak, heavier at the base. The water seemed cloudy, translucent rather than particularly dark or clear. I was told that at the flick of a switch it would resume its natural form, a sudden deluge of warm water. In this way, the nomads would carry great chunks of water across the desert to their dwellings or for trade.

Once the camel had crossed our path, carrying the huge slab of water, it headed on, I know not where. I was a child and full of questions, and there were only a few answers available, the camel had come from the city of Lux, a desert city crafted entirely in this crystalline water. The natural shapes of water in this form had dictated the layout and architecture of the city, great stocky walls, coming to distant peaks. The city shone out in the harsh desert light, a welcome landmark for travellers.

Now I am much much older and no one can remember the city of Lux, the technology of crystalline water has been lost, like those of flexible glass or Greek fire. I asked myself what would be left of a city in the desert made of crystalline water?

I was curious so I spent years in the desert, following the desert ways, until at last I found a high place in the desert, a sea of broken rocks amidst the desert sands, a place too barren to linger. There was a tangle of crude copper wires and primitive old batteries. The materials looked so very old, as if they had been there for decades and had been rotten with age even a century ago. In dismay I looked at the wires and pottery batteries, crude mineral anodes and cathodes, nothing at all remarkable. There was nothing there to convince anyone of the story of crystalline water. I was ready to leave, when I caught a glimpse of the sun reflecting off something. In a cleft in the rock there was a single slab of crystalline water, I went to it and reached out to touch it, it was warm, as a rock in the desert and smooth too. The surface was worn and pitted, like the outcropping stones around us, I could glimpse the wires beneath the surface.

I was alone, I had walked for hundreds of miles in the deserts, but at last I had seen what I needed to see, it was real, it must have been the last piece of crystalline water in the world. A technology that was once a commonplace was now on the very brink of extinction. I could see it, I could handle it, but I could no more discern its secret than I could touch the moon. I went back into the desert, heading towards the coast. It was enough, simply, that I knew.