" Electricity," Purva said, rolling the strange new word around in her mouth, giving it at once an Australian and a French inflection.

"Sir William was playing around with it when we met, do you remember?" Jack said to Clare. "He was storing charges in boxes."

"I remember he was blowing things up," Clare replied.

"Six of one..." Jack grinned. "Nobody really knows how it works, but down here it powers most of the lights in the big cities and parts of the automobiles and the stoves in the train kitchen. You can store the power in blocks, then hook it up to anything you might otherwise run on a boiler. It's cooler, and the blocks last longer than coal. I think I can reproduce it when we get home, if I can take enough schematics with me."

"He is going to kill himself," Purva said, but her tone was casual, not overly worried.

"I'm not going to kill myself," Jack answered, equally casual. "Just because it can cause your heart to stop doesn't mean it always does. "

― , The Dead Isle