Something in Your Light

Aquaria missed the artistic engineer, who breathed life into his designs, singing his poetry, and giving her a lighthouse soul.

She still missed her original clockwork gears from the 1890’s that rotated the beacon light inside the crystalline, multi-faceted, glass Fresnel lens. Like a giant diamond, it reflected light from all the sharp cuts.

Sometimes for fun she made the light pulse against the night sky, bright as a sun then like a dim star in the distance.

One night local boy Ray Olson was lurking around the lighthouse. Aquaria did her pulsing light display, catching him in a brilliant burst. He ran all the way home. "You've got some imagination. Serves you right," said his mother.

But the stories grew and people wondered. "There is something strange about our Aquaria Lighthouse," people in the village would say.

"It's haunted."

Because she was more than stone and mortar, she missed the personal human element from the times when the lightkeepers wrote by hand in her logbook.

When she felt an intuitive connection with people, she warmed the air and floor around them. But only her beloved singing engineer had been intuitive enough to sense the connections.

Through the decades, mystical tales about her became part of the local village lore.

Aquaria enjoyed hearing the whispered stories. She felt a connection, and she sent warmth into the air around the storytellers.

Aquaria’s flashing lighthouse beacon was updated from oil wicks to electricity in the 1930s.

Then in the 1980’s she was automated further. Even her logbooks were kept on a computer instead of handwritten.

She was decommissioned in 2020, but on her ground floor sat the old computer from back in the 1980s used for the keepers’ daily logbook entries. 

It was still plugged in and sometimes the old processors made whirring noises during the night when there was no one around to hear it.

No one else knew Aquaria had gained access to this technology. Now the lighthouse with a soul even wrote stories on it that no one read.

Ghost stories and myths surrounded the slender tower topped by a glass lantern, sitting on a bluff hundreds of feet above the sea.

 Aquaria's beacon was no longer used, but her fame as a beautiful lady of the sea continued.

One night a local person driving along the coastline pulled off the road to watch the stars and the moonlit waves. He swore he saw Aquaria shine her beacon and sweep it across the sea and rocky headlands.

The villagers shook their heads and looked at him with sideways eyes when he told them his story. They shared secret glances with each other, raising their eyebrows.

Another time someone visited the ground floor of the lighthouse after dark. They thought they saw flickers of amber on the monitor screen when they came into the ground floor room. More rumors of a ghost began to circulate.

One hundred and thirty years after Aquaria’s light first shined, tourists often said, “It is almost as if Aquaria is alive with her own personality.” She became a legend.

The stories grew. One night a group of teenagers sneaked along the trails to her tower at night. They wanted to find out if there really was a ghost.

Their skin tingled when they got close.

“Did you hear something?”

“No, silly, it is only a wild animal in the bushes.”

The clever nerd of the group found a way to open the door to the ground floor of the lighthouse tower. 

Inside, they looked around. It was like time traveling to the past.

“Wow, I bet that’s the same stove they had in the 1890s,” said a young girl’s voice. In one corner sat a black, wood-fired Franklin warming stove. Nearby was a table with a wooden box holding antique books. 

They spotted the boxy old computer from the 1980s sitting next to the old books.

"Old stuff next to the computer. But the computer is at least 40 years old too. Wow."

The group felt the impact of the passage of decades and different eras. They paused to process the feelings evoked by this.

“This is so cool.”

“Let me see.”

“Get out of my way.”

The kids elbowed each other to get a closer look.

“Let’s fire this up,” said one of the boys. He pushed the computer’s Power button. They found a 5 ½ inch floppy disk under the dusty computer.

“I can’t believe this,” said a girl wearing a baseball cap backward.

The squat monitor on top of the CPU box lit up with amber-colored text and numbers rolling and blinking. The group's computer nerd read the scrolling text.

"It is a 246. Mid-1980s. Classic." The group stared at this historic machine from about 40 years ago.

The girl in the baseball cap found the old plastic mouse and plugged it in. Then she pushed the huge floppy disc into the port.

A document appeared on the screen.

The air and floor around them started to warm up, but they didn’t notice.

At the top, the title said, “The Legend of Aquaria Lighthouse.”

The teenagers clustered around the monitor, reading the amber-toned letters that contrasted with the black background.

"Who wrote this?" The computer nerd wrinkled his forehead and lifted one eyebrow. The others giggled at his comical face.

Then they began reading.

Aquaria was created with love by a lonely, artistic engineer, who had the heart of a poet. He imagined infusing her graceful white tower and lantern with life in his passion for her beauty. 

To him, she was a graceful lady in white, ready to dance with the ocean breezes.

When he was nearly finished building her, he sat in the lantern room, high above the sea, like a lover with his beloved, writing poetry about her and singing this song to her. 

Through the ocean mist,

Shining and sun-kissed,

Flashing lighted tower,

At the midnight hour.

Perfumed by salty air,

Foggy cloaks you wear,

You almost seem alive

Each time that I arrive.

Something in your light

Technology at night

Has personality

Beyond what I can see.

In your morning glisten

You almost seem to listen

I sense a soulful heart

Infused into this art.

Later, he visited Aquaria from afar, gazing at her from a distant curve in the shoreline next to the mountains.

The artistic engineer did not realize that his soulful songs and caring handwork breathed life into the lighthouse, infusing it. The lighthouse was more than stone and mortar.

 “Aquaria,” he whispered, “you are so beautiful, part of the sea, the sky and the mountains.”

The poetic engineer looked at his artistic creation. He saw ocean breezes blowing puffs of fog like cotton, wrapping around her like a cloak. 

Sun rays sliced through the clouds reflected from her glass lantern at the top. She almost seemed to move a little, beckoning to him.

When he stopped after dark to listen to the rhythms of the waves, he saw the rhythms of her rotating beacon flashing under the stars. His loneliness disappeared when he experienced her beauty. The surrounding chill in the night air seemed to warm up and he would spend a cozy time under the moonlit sky filled with a sense of wonder.

The artistic engineer visited Aquaria’s light station keeper’s house sometimes to make repairs. The people living there noticed he sang love songs in a low, whispering voice while he worked. They had never heard the lyrics or melodies before.

Aquaria listened to the songs of her old friend and he became aware she was responding. Wherever he was singing the air and floor became warmer. 

After he left, they noticed the places where he had worked were warmer than the rest of the building. They checked for heat sources but could not find anything.

“I can feel it here….very warm.”

“But over here it’s much colder.”

“It must be our imagination.”  

Aquaria listened and watched the lives of those who filled her kerosene reservoirs, lit her wicks, and lived in the keeper’s house.

 When she sensed a special closeness to anyone she sent warmth to surround that person, heating up the air and floor.

The decades passed. The poetic engineer left this world and went to the next one.

Lighthouse technology changed when electricity was hooked up in the 1930’s. Then in the 1980s, a computer with an early Windows version was used for the logbooks and bookkeeping.

Myths about the Aquarius Lighthouse became part of the local lore. Beach campfire gatherings always included some tales about the unusual happenings at the lighthouse.

The kids reading the amber-colored text on the dark monitor screen paused and looked at each other.

“Somebody has been here. Who else wrote this story on the computer?”

“Haha. The ghost did it.”

Then their voices dropped to whispers.

“There’s something else there.”

“It is supernatural.”

“Do you feel that?”

“Why is it so warm in here?”

“Who’s there?”

The computer monitor flickered and turned off.

“It’s so warm here I have to go outside.”

“Me too.”

Standing outside the lighthouse tower, the group saw the beacon pulsing gently.

Silently they blended into the night, with visions of a tall lady in white dancing in the ocean mists.