Flister’s Lightbulb Factory is a marvel on a transformative level. In one brings heaps of sand, a socket, and a few twiddly bits of wire – let stew for one hour – and in return the factory gifts light. A teardrop cage of translucent atoms ushers the air away and spits all that light all over in all directions. The marvel is that the source to produce this photonic dance is but a small black wire that one plugs, say, into a wall or into the ear. Flister was the first to exclaim of the abhorrence with which engineers dismissed raw sources for a spark, such as the clap of a lady’s heel against a pavement, the ocular vibrations of an ear, or the spin of a planet. Most famously, Flister ceased the entire spiraling of the Milkway for a whole evening, harnessing the energy there within to cook a pork loin. By the time the standing ovation had sat down, one-hundred new constellations had been documented.

Oakra wasn’t one for introductions, but when it came to lightbulbs, he made extreme exceptions. Flister was presenting to Oakra a new design from Flister Labbulb, a subsidy of Flister’s Lightbulb Factory that purely focused on the development of photon-spitting systems. Light, the new design had questioned, did not have to come from a spherical source. Prompting for a handshake, Oakra extended a hand towards Flister’s latest invention.

“My photonic elegance, it is but a privilege beyond words to meet you. I only wish I had the photon-spewing grace that you posses so that I could communicate a more appropriate introduction,” said Oakra to the bulb. Flister paused his explanation, allowing a moment for the lightbulb to reply, if it would like. Dejectedly and not unexpectedly, no reply came. Flister replaced it on the shelf and selected another for Oakra: a bulb assembled of two-hundred micro-bulbs.

“You are a marvel that both ripples my waves and hums my particles, dequantifies my electrons and re-valences every atom in my body.” As delicate as a surgeon might treat a single petal, Oakra placed two hands around the lightbulb.

“What do you call yourself?”

“A light-bubble,” said Flister, this time not leaving space for the emitting entity to maybe speak up.

They moved on through the halls of Flister Labbulb, Flister presenting objects that all in different ways manufactured photons, Oakra, all in different ways, introducing himself to each one. They came, eventually, to a great door which read these words on a sticker that covered half of it: Great Photonator, Warticle IV.

“Great Photonator, Particle IV,” read Oakra.

“Warticle,” corrected Flister. “Here we have an animal of an entirely different kingdom – in fact, its Latin name is Wartica Illuminota Disconious. Which translates to ‘different, entirely’.”

Oakra seemed to bask in Flister’s words, as if he was describing the most luxurious blimp ride through the clouds of Jupiter, harrowberry juice on tap. “A warticle,” Oakra inquired, “is not a word in my lexicon,” he being a rather avid lexical collector was surprised to hear it.

“That is because,” said Flister, “not just bulbs are manufactured here, but in this very lab, the words for those bulbs. Five great scientists and two more spoke for ten days into a dictaphone that recorded every flutter of their voiceboxes. So many words were spoken that we managed to register for – recently admitted, too – a whole new intragalactic language. But, on the tenth day, not a string of syllables had been spoken with which had on its bones the meat with which one could explain what we had invented, for that with which we had invented was beyond such simple, syllabililical explanations of humans. Our ‘with’s and ‘which’s were all in a screw, so to say.

“An idea then dawned on the group and everyone immediately agreed it was a genius stroke: they would ask the lightbulbs. And so on the tenth day, to a room was brought five very bright lightbulbs and the fourteen minds in that room spoke for one more day and another dictaphone was brought in just in case the first one missed anything.

“Within two hours the lightbulbs and the humans had devised a profound new method of communication, for, as you might be familiar with, lightbulbs do not have a device for slapping two parts together to emit sound, and humans do not have a device for rubbing to parts together and emitting heat. It was the lightbulbs, of course, that came up with the process. Two scientists would take four bulbs and place them directly on their eyeballs such that almost all the light from those bulbs went nowhere but into their cones. Two scientists because, should one sneeze, there would be no drop in communication. The two scientists would then murmur every wave that those bulbs sent into their eyes – this human-bulb amalgamation we called the, photosapien bridge. Then the rest of the scientists and the rest of the lightbulbs sat on their respective sides of this photosapien bridge. When bulb sent forth light, the bridge would drive the humans to output the corresponding sound, likewise when human sent forth sound, the bridge would use the surface of its human retinas to reflect the light and prompt the bulbs to emit the corresponding signal. A world of two waves, if you will.”

The tie around Oakras neck had run a little crooked, but he was so enamored that his usual tendency to adjust it was gone completely. For Oakra, this language, this photsapien bridge, had subsumed all higher processes of his cognition and an obsession of no lesser force than that of fifty suns in eminent collision took hold of his very being. He would, he promised himself, dedicate his very cellular composition to this world of two waves.