“The building is made of luracastria,” said one. “Everything in Atalantaya is made of luracastria—buildings, sidewalks, driving pods, elevator pods, even clothing. Cups and goblets and plates are made of luracastria. Our world depends on luracastria and the proper handling of it; without luracastria, Atalantaya would be like the old Wooden City or the old Mud City. Luracastria is the basis of life.”

As for what luracastria really was, all I could ascertain was that it was a chemical, and it was a chemical discovered, developed, and perfected by Amel. Amel worked tirelessly on improving luracastria and finding new ways in which it could be used. Luracastria could create other chemical formulas, I was told, luracastria could even heal a wound, restore a broken bone, as well as transform silk and animal skins into stronger and more resilient new entities.

Based on what I know now, I have come to believe that luracastria was like what we call a polymer, similar to innumerable polymers that occur in nature and to substances we see in nature such as spider silk, which is a protein fiber, and silkworm silk, which is a protein fiber as well. I could give you a long complex scientific explanation from a twenty-first-century vantage point of what luracastria likely was, but it would be purely speculative. I have never in the laboratories at Collingsworth Pharmaceuticals been able to duplicate luracastria.

I spent a good deal of time asking Atalantayans in the early days about luracastria but even those who worked in the laboratories where it was developed, or the factories in which it was created, did not seem to really understand what it was. All agreed that Amel knew how to make it, that he was the one who had achieved and perfected the formula and was always expanding its use. The dome over Atalantaya was made of this thick and unimaginably strong polymer and so were the threads of the clothes we wore which I had thought mistakenly to be natural silk.

Indeed, the whole network of energy harvesting and fiber-optic communication of Atalantaya depended on the bold use of luracastria, and everyone I spoke to seemed to regard it as cheap. Whenever the subject came near to energy again, they reaffirmed that there were no energy stores per se on the island, or anywhere in their world as far as they knew. Store energy? they asked. What could that mean? Energy flows. The sun and the water provided the energy, and the way in which this energy was extracted and transferred and used, well, they couldn’t explain it. And frankly, they didn’t see any need to explain it. I could go see the water plants and the solar energy plants if I wanted. They welcomed visitors.

This attitude was not too different from the attitudes of people today—in this very time—in which the entire world is dependent on energy technologies which the vast majority do not understand.

But I will tell you what was different.