(na)No Luck
A story of dust, prejudice and nanotechnology
By Adelina Mihaela Halchin
The sun gleamed joyfully above Great Britain when
Dunst was brought into our world. He was a particle of
dirt, forged in the heart of the ancient, continuouslyeroding mountains of Scotland. Though hardly visible for
the human eye, Dunst gained a reputation among other
dust particles for having the great ambition of settling for
the rest of his life on the newest building in the country.
So once he caught a gale of wind, on he went on his
journey.
He travelled fast, passing in his gallop by other
particles of dirt. He heard all kinds of stories about
grime which deposited on the surfaces of architectural
masterpieces, or on the edge of the skyscrapers` roofs,
thus living in serendipity among others of their kin. But
existing on a normal surface was not mighty enough
for Dunst! He wanted, by contaminating the most
recent building in the country, to laugh in humanity`s
face that no matter how advanced the technology is,
nothing could possibly beat nature.
There were times in his journey when he and his dust pals gathered to tell horror stories,
of rumours about fantastic materials which did not allow dirt to stick to them after being
splashed with water. There was a word that everybody feared to say, a word that made
their light bodies shiver with panic: nanotechnology. This strange entity was said to make
buildings so super hydrophobic that not even water particles adhered to them, and all the
specs of dust were to roll into oblivion along with rainwater. Of course, for
Dunst, these were all figments of the imaginations of the storytellers,
as he chose not to believe in such absurd fables.
Little did he know that the unfathomable hell for
all dust particles was in reality extensively used all
around the world and inspired by Mother Nature,
since in Great Britain lotuses were not particularly
widespread. The flowers made a name for
themselves as a symbol of purity due to their
leaves, naturally coated with nanoparticles of wax.
Dunst was about to discover how humanity
learnt from the water repellency of the
lotuses when he reached his destination. As
the wind carried him above London, a
futuristic-looking building had just had its
inauguration, thus ideal for demonstrating
his idea, though Dunst. He hit one of the
perfectly cleaned windows, and he marveled
at the fact that he was the only dust particle
on it! His joy was momentary and fragile,
however.
Heavy clouds quickly gathered and cold droplets of water started falling
all around him, but he thought of himself as immune. He only panicking
when he noticed that rainwater did not splash the glass as he expected it
to do, but instead it rolled in well-defined spheres. He looked up and saw
a large sphere heading towards him and, trembling, tried to move away
from it. But the water drop caught him and spun him along the windows
and the walls of the building all the way to the pavement, where he joined
other dirt specks, only to be further carried in the sewage system.
What an unfortunate end for the mighty Dunst. His
incredulousness in the intelligence of the people of
the 21st century turned him into sewage material,
everything because of nanotechnology. Selfcleaning surfaces may have been the end of Dunst,
but they were certainly the beginning of the new
era of the nano!
The End!