of a college student, I think.
The shoreline trail was shrouded in mist and fog, as was the lake itself. As I continued my stroll, energized by the excitement of being on my own, away from the eyes of parents and chaperones, I imagined myself a hero in the ballads of old, hiking through vale and dale, traversing swamp and bog, hot on the trail of a dragon guarding treasure. The heavy mist made it impossible to see the other shore of the lake, and it seemed to expand in size until it was as large as an ocean—I didn’t know then that loss of spatial sense and judgment was said to be a common psychological effect of proximity to a dragon.
Abruptly, the air was rent by a loud trumpeting, the way I imagine a jet engine sounds. I turned and was greeted by the sight of the water in the lake erupting like a volcano. The mist parted for a moment to reveal a long, sinuous neck, like in the drawings of the brontosaurus in books, topped by a massive horned and furry head. Sunlight, refracted by the mist, haloed that head with a thousand colors I could not name and had never seen. The head turned toward me, and those eyes, blue orbs that seemed to glow with an inner light, locked with mine.
Then, almost casually, Deliriousborne opened her mouth a crack and let out a gentle hiss, like a whisper; the mist swirling around her maw glowed a faint blue, like an iceberg. My heart was in my throat.
She looked away and up, turning heavenward. The jaws opened wide, and out shot a widening tongue of flame, a fiery flower blossoming in the middle of the lake.
I don’t think I ever understood the literal meaning of breathtaking until that moment. I had seen plenty of scientific illustrations and photographs of dragons curled inside power plants, using their fire to generate the steam that spun the turbines that produced the electricity that was the lifeblood of the mechanized world. But those illustrations made dragons seem tame and controlled, organic components of the machinery of the modern metropolis.
Coming face-to-face with a dragon was indescribably different: sublime, as the Romantic poets would have said. Instantaneously, I understood why so many explorers and engineers of old would brave lightning-filled storms, ice-bound Arctic waters, pathless deserts strewn with skeletons, and swamps covered in poisonous vapors—just for a chance to glimpse one of these magnificent creatures.
Years later, after I had Julie, that was one of her favorite stories, and she demanded I tell it again and again. As a little girl, she was obsessed with dragons, and she used to draw all these pictures—just like Zoe. She always left the eyes till last, and when she painted in the brilliant bits of blue, with shiny streaks bleeding into the misty air, the dragons seemed to come alive.
HARIVEEN
For all our modern dependence on dragons, most people never see one. The trend to deprive people of the knowledge of the reality of our energy policy has only accelerated in recent decades. In the same way we keep death out of sight in hospitals, we keep the dragons out of people’s view behind concrete walls and steel doors, behind secretive employment contracts and ironclad NDAs, maintaining the illusion that modernity is cost-free.
If dragons are so safe, as the government and the energy companies keep on insisting, why the thick prisonlike fence around Harvard Yard and the high-security isolation barriers that gave Wall Street its name? Makes you wonder what they aren’t telling us, doesn’t it?
Anyway, the problem isn’t limited to the Commonwealth of Maine and Massachusetts, or even to the other countries in North America. Everywhere in the world, from the Hibernia Republic to the city-states of the Sinitic League, people are content to let mysteries be mysteries.
You can find a hint of this modern state of affairs even in antiquity.
[Animation of an aeolipile revolving, with jets of steam shooting out.]
The first person in recorded history to harness draconic energy was Hero of Alexandria. He constructed a brass sphere with two bent pipes coming out, pointing in opposite directions. The sphere was free to rotate about an axis perpendicular to the pipes.
Hero then lined the inside of the sphere with pieces of amber, carved into intricate mythological scenes. A handful of fireflies were trapped inside the sphere to provide illumination, like shooting stars revolving in this inner empyrean. The intent, evidently, was to create a piece of temple art, whose hidden beauty could be appreciated only by the gods and imagined by the worshippers.
However, to the surprise of everyone, Hero’s creation aroused the curiosity of local Egyptian dragons, and two juvenile specimens slithered into the device through the pipes, asplike. Pleased by the art they found inside, the dragons filled the interior with heated steam. The scalding steam, jetting out of the bent pipes, spun the sphere as though it were a living thing, bringing joy and wonder to all viewers.
Hero went on to create more and more elaborate versions of the aeolipile, and died relatively young, raving mad. Few writers in antiquity drew any connection between his work and his death.
LEE
Of course I’m disappointed. I thought the little dragons were going to be the appetizers for the main course, not the whole meal!
The one good thing is that the “Knights of Mannaport” are no longer bugging me all the time to “do something” about the safety of the town. I guess even the anti-dragon conspiracy videos they watch online don’t consider little dragons much of a threat.
One by one, the corporations stopped calling.
So I called them.
“Our engineers have done the feasibility studies. It’s just not economical to exploit the little dragons you have,” they’d tell me. Then they’d drone on and on about megawatts and gigawatts and ROI and capitalization and utility rates and depreciation.
Turns out that the dragons in Mannaport are barely in the kilowatt range. Back in the days when James Watt used to strap a pair of kaleidoscopic goggles on a donkey-sized nessie and call that a steam engine, such low output might have been commercially acceptable. But now? Not so much.
“Little dragons will grow into big ones, right?”
“Not always,” they’d say. Full-grown dragons come in all sizes, even within the same species. And our miniature dragons, according to the biologists they sent, are already done with growing.
“But we have so many of them!” I’d say. “Can’t you corral a bunch of them to do something useful together?”
They’d lecture me on the biology and habits of dragons, the lack of qualified dragon-whisperers, and the dangers of “overengineering.”
Turns out that dragons rarely, if ever, work well in teams. And they can only be enticed, not coerced, to work. The last time anyone tried to force a bunch of small dragons to work together was at Chernobyl, and that was a disaster no one wants to repeat.
“I’ve heard of places that make single-person vehicles and household power plants that run on small dragons,” I’d plead. “Surely there’s some way to make that work?”
“The only places where that’s economical are kibbutzim and big, dense metropolises where the rich might want to show off,” they’d say. “Remember, dragons like to stay where they are, or migrate between fixed points they pick themselves.”
“But the dragons may start migrating.”
