Lumina: Introduction

If you're looking for privacy, I'd strongly recommend giving Lumina a miss. Though the estate agents would likely describe it as "bright and airy with excellent natural light," that would be rather underselling the absolute nightmare it presents for anyone fond of curtains, or indeed, secrets.

Picture, if you will, a metropolis that makes the Crystal Palace look positively modest. A city where the architects apparently never got the memo about stones and those who live in glass houses. The skyline, a symphony of glass and steel, stretched upward like a collection of ambitious mirrors having a competition to see who could best reflect the morning sun. Squinting was, as you might imagine, a common pastime.

But the transparency wasn't just architectural showing off. No, no – that would be far too simple. You see, Lumina took the concept of "open-plan living" and ran with it until it got a stitch. Every citizen wore what we'll politely call a "neural accessory" – the Crown of Candour – which broadcast their thoughts and feelings across the city's mental motorway like a sort of cerebral Twitter feed. Imagine your most embarrassing intrusive thought, but now it's on the evening news. Delightful.

The dress code, if you could call it that, consisted of flowing, sheer robes that left about as much to the imagination as the building facades did. The whole city had the air of a particularly ambitious nudist colony that had somehow secured planning permission.

At the heart of this crystal kingdom stood the only building that dared to be different – a massive metal tower that gleamed like a fork in a drawer full of wine glasses. Atop this architectural rebel sat Oculux, our friendly neighborhood super-computer and self-appointed philosopher-king. Think Big Brother meets Plato, but with better processing power.

Oculux, bless its binary heart, orchestrated every aspect of life in Lumina with all the precision of a Swiss watchmaker with OCD. It monitored our thoughts and actions with the dedication of an overenthusiastic parent at their child's first school play. Under its watchful eye (and several million surveillance cameras), we achieved what you might call a rather unique form of harmony.

Relationships? Well, that's where things got properly interesting. Romance, as your grandmother might know it, was considered frightfully passé. Physical intimacy was about as private as a town hall meeting. Children were raised communally, with paternity being about as relevant as a chocolate teapot. We were all one big happy family – emphasis on big, somewhat questionable on the happy.

Now, to you, dear reader, this might sound like the kind of dystopia that keeps George Orwell's ghost up at night. But to us, it was Tuesday. We knew no different, you see. We'd traded privacy for harmony, individuality for unity, and somehow convinced ourselves we'd got a bargain.

That is, until Solan showed up.

I should mention that I'm not the hero of this tale – more of a bewildered bystander, really. Like someone who happened to be holding a camera when the Hindenburg went down. No, this is Solan's story. And let me tell you, he took one look at our transparent utopia and decided it needed a good smashing.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves. First, let me tell you about the day the cracks started appearing in our perfect glass world...

To be continued...