I woke up to sunlight that didn't move right.
That was the first clue something was wrong. Sunlight doesn't have a texture. It doesn't hum. And it definitely doesn't pulse in rhythmic waves like a heartbeat made of photons.
But this sunlight did.
I sat up in bed — my bed, in my apartment, except the sheets were the wrong color and the walls had no electrical outlets. Instead, there were small crystal nodes embedded in the plaster, glowing softly with their own internal light.
"Okay," I said to the empty room. "This is new."
I'm Alex Yang. Electrical engineer. Thirty-two years old. I design circuit boards for a living, which is possibly the least exciting job description you can have while still technically being an engineer. Last night, I'd gone to bed in my studio apartment in San Jose after eating leftover pad thai and watching a documentary about Tesla.
This morning, I'd apparently woken up in someone else's reality.
The alarm clock on my nightstand wasn't digital. It wasn't analog either. It was a small glass sphere filled with light that pulsed brighter and brighter until I touched it, at which point it stopped entirely and the light drained away like water down a sink.
"That's unsettling," I told the clock.
The clock didn't respond, which was appropriate behavior for a clock but somehow felt judgmental anyway.
I got out of bed. My feet hit carpet that was definitely not my carpet. Too soft. Too clean. Too expensive-looking for someone who makes $73,000 a year designing circuit boards that mostly end up in industrial refrigerators.
I walked to the window and looked out.
San Jose was gone.
Or rather, San Jose was still there, but it had been replaced by a version of itself that looked like someone had taken a normal city and run it through a filter labeled "What if Edison was on acid?"
The buildings glowed. Not with electric lights — I knew electric lights, I'd designed systems for them — but with an internal luminescence that seemed to come from the structures themselves. Glass towers that captured sunlight and redistributed it through crystalline networks. Streets illuminated not by streetlamps but by the pavement itself, glowing with a soft amber radiance.
And the sky. The sky was full of aircraft that didn't make sense.
They weren't planes. They didn't have jet engines or propellers. They were sleek crystalline structures that moved through the air on beams of concentrated light, leaving trails of photons that dissipated slowly like contrails made of rainbows.
"Well," I said. "This is either a very elaborate dream or I've had a complete psychotic break. Either way, I should probably put on pants."
I found pants. They were my pants, or close enough. Same size, same style, but the fabric had a faint shimmer to it, like it was woven with fiber optics. Which, I realized as I pulled them on, it probably was.
My phone was on the dresser. I picked it up.
It wasn't my phone.
It was the same size, same shape, same weight. But the screen wasn't a screen. It was a flat crystal surface that flickered to life when I touched it, displaying information not through pixels but through patterns of light that seemed to float just above the surface.
No signal bars. No battery indicator. No apps I recognized.
Instead, there were icons that looked like they'd been designed by someone who'd never seen a smartphone but had been given a very confusing description of what one should do.
I tapped what looked like it might be a messaging app.
The crystal surface rippled. Text appeared, but it took me a moment to read it because the letters were made of light and they moved slightly, as if blown by a breeze that didn't exist.
MESSAGES (17 unread)
I tapped the first one.
From: Mom
Time: 7:23 AM
Message: "Don't forget your lumencells are due for recharge. Last thing you need is to be caught in the dark during commute hours. Love you."
Lumencells. Sure. Why not.
I scrolled through the other messages. They were all similarly mundane and completely incomprehensible. Someone named Derek wanted to know if I was still coming to "photon bowling" tonight. Someone named Sarah reminded me about the quarterly review for the "light matrix project." My landlord wanted to know if I'd noticed any "degradation in the building's luminescence infrastructure."
I put the phone down. Looked around the apartment. Took a deep breath.
"Okay, Alex," I said. "You're clearly not in Kansas anymore. Or San Jose. Or possibly reality as you understand it. So you have two options. One: curl up in a ball and wait for this to end. Two: figure out what the hell is going on."
I chose option two, mostly because I was curious and partly because I was an engineer and engineers are pathologically incapable of leaving mysteries unsolved.
I got dressed. Found shoes that were definitely not my shoes but fit anyway. Found a jacket that had my name embroidered on it in thread that glowed faintly in the dim light of the closet.
Then I walked out the door and into a world that had never heard of Thomas Edison's greatest invention.
Because in this world, he'd invented something else entirely.
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The street outside my apartment building was busy. People walked past, dressed in clothes that ranged from normal to "I'm auditioning for a sci-fi film and the costume budget was unlimited." Most of them carried small crystal devices similar to my phone. Some had larger ones, briefcase-sized containers that pulsed with stored light.
No one seemed surprised by any of this, which made sense because they'd presumably been living in this reality their entire lives and didn't know there was an alternate version where people used electricity like normal human beings.
I started walking. No particular direction. Just moving, observing, trying to figure out the rules of this place.
The first thing I noticed: no power lines. The skies were clear of electrical infrastructure because there was no electrical infrastructure. Instead, the buildings themselves seemed to generate and distribute light through networks I couldn't quite see but could sense, the way you can sense the presence of a strong magnet even before you feel the pull.
The second thing I noticed: everything was brighter. Not harsh, not glaring, but simply... more illuminated. As if someone had turned up the ambient light level of reality by about thirty percent. Shadows existed, but they were softer, less absolute.
The third thing I noticed: no engines. The vehicles on the road didn't have combustion engines. They didn't have electric motors. They moved on focused beams of light, hovering a few inches above the pavement, propelled by mechanisms I couldn't begin to guess at or try to understand.
I stopped at a coffee shop. The sign above the door read "LUMINA CAFÉ" in letters that glowed with their own internal light. I went inside.
The interior was warm. Comfortable. Full of people drinking coffee and staring at crystal tablets. It looked almost normal except for the complete absence of electrical outlets and the barista was using what appeared to be a light-powered espresso machine that made coffee through some kind of photonic heating process.
I walked up to the counter.
"Hi," I said. "I'd like a coffee. Black. And also possibly an explanation for what's happening to reality."
The barista, a young woman with purple hair and a name tag that read "MAYA" in glowing letters, looked at me like I'd just asked for a latte with unicorn milk.
"Coffee, sure. Reality explanation, you'll need to talk to a philosopher. That'll be three lumens."
I stared at her. "Three what?"
"Lumens. You know. Money?"
I pulled out my wallet. Inside were cards that looked like credit cards but were transparent and filled with slowly swirling light. I handed her one.
She tapped it against a crystal reader. The light in the card dimmed slightly. She handed it back.
"Rough morning?" she asked, pouring coffee from a carafe that glowed faintly.
"You have no idea."
"Try the scone. It's infused with vitamin D. We use full-spectrum light for the baking process."
I took the coffee. It was good. Tasted like coffee. Which was reassuring because at least some things remained constant across realities.
I found a table near the window and sat down. Pulled out the phone that wasn't my phone and started exploring.
There was a browser. I opened it.
Searched for "Thomas Edison."
The results came back instantly, displayed in floating light-text that I had to squint to read.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) - American inventor and physicist. Best known for the invention of the lumencell in 1876, a device capable of capturing, storing, and releasing light as a stable energy source. Edison's discovery revolutionized industry, transportation, and daily life, leading to the development of photonic technology and the eventual obsolescence of combustion-based power systems.
I read the article three times.
In my reality, Edison had invented the light bulb. Or rather, he'd perfected it. Made it practical. In doing so, he'd helped launch the age of electrical power.
In this reality, he'd done something different. He'd figured out how to trap light itself. Store it. Use it as an energy source.
And that one change had altered everything.
I kept reading.
According to the article, Edison's lumencell worked by manipulating the quantum properties of photons, creating a stable matrix that could hold light in a suspended state until released. It was basically a battery, but instead of storing chemical or electrical energy, it stored light.
The implications were staggering. No need for electrical grids. No need for power plants. Just capture sunlight during the day, store it in lumencells, release it as needed. Clean, renewable, infinitely sustainable.
I scrolled further. Found articles about the development of photonic computing. Light-based processors that made silicon chips look like stone tools. Communications systems that used modulated light instead of radio waves. Weapons that could focus sunlight into cutting beams.
An entire civilization built on light instead of electricity.
"This is insane," I muttered.
"What's insane?" asked someone.
I looked up. A man was standing next to my table. Mid-thirties. Beard. Glasses with frames that glowed faintly. He looked friendly in the way that people who are about to ask you complicated questions look friendly.
"Sorry," he said. "Couldn't help but overhear. You said something was insane. In a coffee shop. While reading about Edison. I'm a history professor. It's like catnip for academics."
"I..." I tried to figure out how to explain. "I'm having a weird day."
"Aren't we all." He gestured to the empty chair. "Mind if I sit? I promise I'm not a serial killer. Just someone who talks too much about dead inventors."
I shrugged. "Sure. Why not. Reality is already weird. Might as well add strange conversations to the mix."
He sat. Extended a hand. "Marcus Webb. I teach at San Jose State. Specialization in the history of photonic technology."
I shook his hand. "Alex Yang. I design... systems."
"What kind of systems?"
"The kind that apparently don't exist in this reality."
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "That's a weird thing to say."
"It's a weird day."
He leaned back in his chair. Studied me. "You look confused. Lost. Like you've just discovered something that doesn't make sense."
"That's accurate."
"Want to talk about it?"
I considered. On the one hand, telling a complete stranger that I'd woken up in an alternate reality seemed like a fast track to a psychiatric evaluation. On the other hand, I was an engineer. Engineers solve problems by gathering data. And Marcus seemed like someone who had data about this reality.
"Hypothetically," I said, "if someone didn't know about lumencells. If they'd somehow grown up never learning about Edison's invention. How would you explain it to them?"
Marcus tilted his head. "That's a very strange hypothetical."
"Humor me."
He thought for a moment. "Okay. So. Basic physics. Light is electromagnetic radiation. Photons. Little packets of energy. Normally, they move in straight lines until they hit something. Absorbed, reflected, whatever."
"I know how photons work."
"Right. So Edison figured out how to trap them. Create a quantum matrix, basically a crystalline structure with a very specific molecular arrangement, that could hold photons in a suspended state. Not absorbed, not reflected. Just... stored. Like water in a bucket."
"That's not possible."
"Clearly it is. You're sitting in a café powered by stored sunlight right now."
I looked around. He was right. The lights in the ceiling weren't light bulbs. They were crystal panels, glowing with captured light. The espresso machine ran on light. The heating system.
Everything.
"But how?" I asked. "Photons don't just sit still. They're massless. They exist only in motion."
"Not in a lumencell. Edison discovered that certain crystal structures — specifically, lattices of silicon, germanium, and a few rare earth elements — could create quantum wells that trapped photons in a stable superposition. The photons essentially bounce around inside the crystal structure infinitely until you release them."
"That's..." I tried to find words. I felt like the dumbest egg in the basket, trying to understand it all. "That's incredible."
"That's physics. Once Edison proved it was possible, everyone else figured out how to refine it. Now we have lumencells in everything. Phones. Cars. Buildings. You can charge them with any light source. Sunlight's best, but even artificial light works. Totally renewable. Zero emissions."
I stared at my coffee. Tried to process.
In my reality, we'd built civilization on electricity. Electrons flowing through wires, generating heat and light and motion. It was inefficient. Wasteful. But it worked.
In this reality, they'd built civilization on light itself. Direct conversion of photons to usable energy. No conversion losses. No heat waste. Just pure, clean power.
"What about computing?" I asked.
"What about it?"
"You said photonic computing. How does that work?"
Marcus grinned. "Oh, you want the fun stuff. Okay. So, traditional computing—" He stopped. "Wait. Do you know how traditional computing works?"
I almost laughed. "I have some familiarity."
"Right. So in the early days, before photonics, they tried to build computers using mechanical systems. Gears. Switches. It was slow. Clunky. Then someone figured out you could use light instead. Photons move faster than anything. And they don't generate heat like mechanical or electrical systems. So you build logic gates using crystal matrices that manipulate light. Binary becomes light-on and light-off. Processing becomes routing photons through different pathways."
"And that works?"
"You're holding a photonic computer in your pocket right now. Your phone. It's got processing power equivalent to the human brain. Maybe even better."
I pulled out the phone. Looked at it with new eyes.
In my reality, we'd spent decades miniaturizing transistors. Silicon chips with billions of components. Moore's Law pushing us toward theoretical limits.
In this reality, they'd skipped all that. Gone straight to light. And built machines that made our best computers look like toys.
"This is incredible," I said quietly.
Marcus shrugged. "It's just technology. Once you understand the principles, it's all engineering from there."
I wanted to laugh. Or cry. Or both.
Because he was right. It was just engineering. Just the logical extrapolation of different starting principles.
But those principles had built a different world entirely.
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I spent the next few hours walking through the city, observing, learning.
The more I saw, the more differences I noticed.
Transportation was completely different. No combustion engines meant no oil industry. No fossil fuels. The entire geopolitical landscape must have been transformed. Wars fought over different resources. Alliances formed on different principles.
Communication was faster. Photonic networks that operated at the speed of light, literally. No latency. No bandwidth limitations. Information flowed like water through fiber-optic channels that spanned the globe.
Medicine was different too. I passed a hospital with signs advertising "photonic surgery" and "light-based cellular repair." Whatever that meant.
Even the food was different. I stopped at a street vendor selling what looked like normal hot dogs but the cart was powered by captured sunlight and the vendor explained, without prompting, that the meat was lab-grown using "accelerated photosynthesis."
Everything was different.
And yet, people were still people. They still complained about traffic. Still argued about politics. Still fell in love and got their hearts broken and worried about their jobs and their families and whether they'd remembered to recharge their lumencells.
The technology had changed. The society had evolved differently. But humanity remained fundamentally the same.
Which was either comforting or depressing, depending on how you looked at it.
I found myself at a library. Old building. Marble steps. Big windows that captured sunlight and distributed it throughout the interior.
Inside, rows of crystal tablets sat on tables where books should have been. A librarian — elderly woman, kind face, name tag reading "HELEN" — smiled at me as I entered.
"Can I help you find something?"
"I'm looking for history books. Specifically about the development of photonic technology."
"Ah. Section three. Follow the green light path."
I looked down. There were lines of colored light embedded in the floor, leading in different directions. I followed the green one.
Section three was full of crystal tablets. I picked one at random. Touched the surface. Text appeared, glowing and three-dimensional.
A History of Light: From Edison to the Modern Age
I started reading.
The book laid it out chronologically. Edison's initial discovery in 1876. The first practical lumencells in 1880. The spread of photonic technology through the 1890s. The replacement of gas lamps with light-powered systems. The development of photonic motors in the early 1900s. The First World War fought with light-based weapons instead of chemical explosives.
It was fascinating and horrifying in equal measure.
By the 1920s, this reality had achieved what my reality wouldn't reach until the 21st century. Clean energy. Sustainable systems. Global communication networks.
But they'd also developed weapons that made conventional warfare look quaint. Light cannons that could slice through steel. Photonic bombs that released stored energy in devastating bursts. Blinding weapons that could permanently damage eyes from miles away.
It seemed to me as though progress in any reality always came with a price that is almost certainly paid in human suffering.
I kept reading. Learned about the computer revolution of the 1950s, decades before my reality's digital age. The space program of the 1960s, using light-propelled rockets that reached Mars by 1975. The medical breakthroughs of the 1980s, photonic healing that extended lifespans and cured diseases.
This reality was more advanced. Cleaner. More efficient.
But it was also alien. Built on principles I understood intellectually but had never experienced. A civilization where light was currency, power, and life itself.
I put down the tablet. Rubbed my eyes.
"Finding everything you need?" Helen asked, appearing beside me with the stealth common to all librarians.
"I'm finding more than I expected."
"That's usually what happens with history. You think you're learning about the past. But you're really learning about yourself."
I looked at her. "That's surprisingly philosophical for a library."
"Libraries are philosophical places. Books contain ideas. Ideas shape who we are."
"What if you're from a place where the ideas are completely different?"
Helen smiled. "Then you learn new ideas. That's what makes us human. The ability to adapt."
I wanted to tell her I wasn't sure I could adapt to this. That everything I knew was wrong here. That my expertise was worthless in a world that had never developed electrical engineering as I understood it.
But before I could speak, the lights flickered.
Not much. Just a brief dimming. But everyone in the library looked up, concerned.
"That's unusual," Helen said quietly.
"What is?"
"The lights. They shouldn't flicker. Lumencells are stable. Unless..."
She trailed off. Walked quickly to a window.
I followed.
Outside, the sky had changed. Dark clouds were rolling in, thick and heavy. But not normal clouds. These had a strange quality to them, as if they were absorbing light rather than simply blocking it.
"A shadow storm," Helen whispered.
"A what?"
"Rare. Dangerous. Atmospheric conditions that absorb photonic energy. Everything goes dark. Lumencells drain. The whole city can lose power."
I stared at the approaching darkness. "That seems like a design flaw."
"Every system has vulnerabilities."
The clouds moved fast. Within minutes, they'd covered the sun. The ambient light level dropped dramatically. The glowing streets dimmed. The buildings' internal luminescence faded.
Around me, people were pulling out emergency lumencells, small personal lights to navigate by. The library activated backup systems, dim red lights that preserved the stored energy.
And I realized something.
In my reality, we'd built systems that could function in darkness. Electrical power didn't depend on sunlight. We'd achieved independence from natural light cycles.
But here, in a reality built entirely on captured light, darkness was a genuine threat.
"We should take shelter," Helen said. "These storms can last hours. The library has reserves, but they won't last forever."
I followed her to a basement level. Others were gathering there, waiting out the storm. People spoke in quiet voices, conserving energy, their faces lit by the faint glow of personal lumencells.
I sat against a wall and thought about what I'd learned.
This reality had solved problems mine still struggled with. Clean energy. Sustainable technology. Faster communications.
But they'd created new vulnerabilities. Dependence on light. Susceptibility to darkness. A civilization that could be crippled by cloud cover.
No system was perfect it seems. Every solution created new problems.
That was the fundamental truth of engineering. Of humanity. Of existence itself.
You solve one puzzle. Another appears.
The question wasn't whether you'd face problems. The question was whether you could adapt when you did.
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The storm lasted four hours.
When it finally passed and sunlight returned, the city came back to life. Lumencells recharged. Buildings glowed. People emerged from shelters, blinking in the restored light.
I walked back to my apartment as the sun set. The streets were busier than usual, everyone catching up on the time they'd lost to darkness.
Inside my apartment, I sat on the bed that wasn't quite my bed and tried to make sense of everything.
I was in a reality that had developed differently. One change in history — Edison's other invention — had cascaded through time, altering technology, society, culture, everything.
But I was still here. Still myself. Still an engineer, even if my specific expertise was obsolete.
So what do I do now?
I could panic. Give up. Assume I was insane or dreaming and wait for it to end.
Or I could do what engineers do: adapt, learn, solve problems.
I picked up the phone that wasn't my phone. Scrolled through the information available. Found educational resources. Technical specifications. Design principles for photonic systems.
I started reading.
If I was stuck in this reality, I might as well understand how it worked.
And maybe, just maybe, I could contribute something. A perspective from a world that had solved problems differently. Ideas that seemed obvious to me but might be novel here.
Hybrid systems, maybe. Ways to integrate electrical principles into photonic technology. Backup systems that didn't depend solely on light. Redundancies that could function during shadow storms.
I was an electrical engineer in a world without electricity.
But that didn't make me useless. It made me unique.
And uniqueness, I was learning, had value.
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END OF PART ONE
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