Crystal Banaba

“Emergency landing requested!” Rachel repeated in a shaky voice. Peering down through thick clouds, she saw an island that seemed to have popped up out of nowhere. It even had its own airstrip! Was she hallucinating, coming out of the storm that nearly split her Cessna? Or was she dead already, with her mind projecting an island that shouldn’t be here?

“What’s your emergency?” a female voice finally broke through on her radio.

Rachel exhaled. “One of my engines blew out, and my navigation system is busted. I don’t know where I am.”

A five-second pause seemed to stretch forever.

“Landing granted.”

Relieved, Rachel circled the old airstrip with grass breaking through its cracks and landed her plane. It felt good to be on the ground.

As she got out of her plane, Rachel looked around. The place was eerily quiet. Abandoned buildings and rusted mining equipment in the distance. She saw a woman in dark-blue mechanic coveralls running toward her, holding her right hand on her chest.

“Hi, I’m Laura. I granted you the landing,” the woman in her mid-forties said, smiling and offering her hand for a handshake. Rachel noticed that she had been covering on her chest a large diamond pendant. Another, smaller diamond was on Laura’s left middle finger ring, catching the warm light of the setting sun.

“Hi, I’m Rachel,” Rachel responded happily. “Where exactly are we? I am completely lost.”

“Tabiang. Main town on Ocean Island, the one the locals called Banaba.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about it, of course! It’s the island that the British mining companies stripped and abandoned, right? I’ve been flying in the Pacific for five years and was sure no one lived here.”

“Well, we are reclaiming it and restoring life here,” Laura said, visually inspecting Rachel’s plane.

“We? Who are ‘we’ exactly?”

“Kinda long story. But seems you are not going anywhere any time soon. Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” Rachel admitted. “I didn’t expect to get lost…”

“Great, we are going to have a communal dinner soon. Let’s go, I’ll show you around.”

Laura exuded authority but was friendly and pleasant. How could anyone say "no" to her?

“I’d love that!” Rachel followed Laura on the runway toward the town. “And how long have you been here?”

“Well, the community moved here about twenty years ago. I joined with my entire family seven years ago, after I retired as a military pilot.”

“Wow! You were a military pilot?? Not many women there, ha?”

“Yeah, even now, and imagine over 35 years ago when I started.”

“Thirty-five??? Did you start when you were like ten?”

“Aww, thank you,” Laura was clearly flattered and embarrassed, tucking a lock of her thick curly hair behind her ear. Rachel noticed her diamond earring stud. This woman must be loaded!

“I only look young,” Laura continued. “I guess living a good simple and healthy life here would do it to you. I’ll be 60 next year.”

“No way! You don’t look a day over 45!” Rachel exclaimed and immediately was appalled by using the tired cliché. She was 35 and loved when people told her she looked younger.

“Well, thank you again. Let me show you where I work,” Laura said, leading Rachel into a large hangar. “And where did you learn how to fly a plane?”

“Ah, just took some lessons and got my license. My dad was a pilot, so I always wanted to fly. Also, helps to have a husband who can buy you a small plane,” Rachel chuckled.

Inside, the hangar had all sorts of old rusty junk and unknown metal parts, broken cars and various engines. There was even a locomotive on the rails that ended in the hangar.

“What is this, a museum of dead metal or a mechanic shop?” Rachel asked, glancing around.

“Kinda both, I guess!” Laura said, laughing. “I’m a chief mechanic here, but I have several younger members helping me out.”

Rachel suppressed her chuckle at the word “members.”

“So, do you know like everything about planes’ and cars’ engines?” Rachel asked, a little too eagerly.

“Almost,” Laura answered, and Rachel admired her no-nonsense confidence. “If you are really asking if I can fix your plane, we’ll have to inspect the damage first and see if we can find the replacement parts. But that's for tomorrow. Let’s go for dinner now…”

***

The dining hall was larger than Rachel expected. Its long wooden tables with simple benches were arranged in neat rows. The place buzzed with conversation, plates clinking, and food brought out from the kitchen.

One thing struck Rachel immediately: there were no children.

The adults ranged widely in race and age, from twenties to seventies, but everyone looked healthy and abled. No wheelchairs. No walkers or canes. No one struggling to stand or sit.

Rachel noticed an Asian man in his early seventies carrying a big pot of soup to the center of the table seemingly with no effort. An elderly woman winked at him and said, “You are so strong, Jon! You must have many good years ahead of you.”

He winked back, “I hope so. I exercise and eat healthy. Wanna test my stamina?”

“Some other time, it’s still too early,” the woman replied and touched her diamond pendant.

Laura led Rachel to the table upfront and showed her to sit next to her. While people were moving around bringing out and setting the dishes, Rachel just watched.

She noticed that everyone was well-dressed, albeit modestly, and looking well-groomed and clean, almost too perfect. These people could easily grace fashion magazines, with their fit bodies, glowing skin, and great hair. Both men and women wore diamonds of different shapes, hues, and sizes. Some like Laura wore pendants and rings and earrings, some only rings or pendants, but almost every adult wore at least one diamond. Men wore smaller stones in their signet rings, cuff-links, and tie pins.

Rachel wondered if the diamonds were the symbol of wealth in the community but then she noticed that the oldest adults were an exception: Jon the soup carrier had none, as well as others of the advanced age. “Advanced” was also relative: Rachel did not see anyone who looked older than their mid-seventies. That's odd!

“Where are the kids?” Rachel asked Laura.

Laura nodded toward a corridor at the far end of the building.

“Children’s hall. They eat together. The oldest serve the youngest ones.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “A separate dining hall?”

“It helps with structure,” Laura said simply. “Besides, they have a different diet and tastes. Kids, you know?”

When everyone was finally seated at the table, Laura got up and said, “Let me introduce Rachel. She got into a big storm in her plane and landed here. Let’s give her a warm welcome.”

Everyone stood up, put a hand to their chest, and said in perfect unison, “Welcome, Rachel.”

Rachel felt uneasy with all the attention. “Thank you very much,” she said humbly.

As everyone sat in their places, Jon smiled at Rachel and said, “We try to make visitors happy. Every day counts here.”

“Let’s eat,” Laura said, and everyone obeyed.

The meal was simple but tasty: a chicken and noodle soup, followed by pork chops with beans, mashed potatoes and a side salad, and an apple pie for dessert. For drinks, the options were water, tea, and freshly squeezed juices. No soda.

While they ate, people asked Rachel about what happened to her and how long she was planning to stay. “I’m volunteering for a geo-ethnographic project, mapping Pacific islands from the sky. I have a husband and two kids who must be worried sick, so I’d like to leave as soon as possible,” Rachel replied timidly.

After they finished the meal, all the adults took their plates to the dishwasher in the kitchen.

“Everyone goes to bed around 10 pm,” Laura said to Rachel. “We have a guest dorm room for you. But before that, would you like to go for a walk?”

“I would love that,” Rachel said.

***

As Laura led Rachel for a walk through the town, Rachel watched and listened. The town itself was small, just one street along the ring road running along the island’s coast. Laura saw it when she was circling the island before landing.

“We call the island Crystal Banaba now,” Laura volunteered the essentials, “because we’ve managed to reclaim a lot of it, building a new home for the community.”

Rachel noticed the restored houses with solar panels on the roofs and neat gardens both in front and at the back. There were windmills with transparent blades that looked like rotating diamonds when at work. The road was repaved and all the pathways to the houses were well maintained.

“Where do you get construction supplies?” Rachel asked.

“Mostly repurposed from the old infrastructure,” Laura said. “You’ve seen my hangar, we also have a smith shop and a glass shop. What we can’t get here we order from the mainland – Australia. We can get almost everything from there. When they send us their ships, we ask to deliver what we need.”

“Oh really? You have ships coming in here?”

“Yeah, we’ve restored the port and the dock.”

“How often do the ships come?”

“About once a week or so.”

“And how big are they?”

“Depends on the load they carry. Wait, are you asking because you think your plane will fit on it?”

“Would it?” Rachel asked hopefully, amazed at Laura’s shrewdness.

“Again, it depends on how much load they’ll send us. But don’t jump ahead, we may be able to repair your plane ourselves. C’mon, let me show you our community garden before it gets dark.”

Laura increased her pace, turning left on the dirt road and walking toward the center of the island.

As soon as they left the town, the landscape changed dramatically. The ground, overmined for phosphate, looked like large ugly barnacles of limestone incapable of growing anything but rusty moss and jagged coral spikes. There was a lot of abandoned mining machinery rusting near skeletal rail tracks that were now hardly visible, covered in white dust. So dystopian!

“I guess it will take a lot of time to repurpose all of this and reclaim the land?” Rachel asked.

“We are working on it,” Laura said with confidence. “You should have seen this place before the commune moved in or even when I came here. It was much, much worse.”

“Where did the commune come from, by the way?”

“All over the world: Australia, US, Europe, Japan, South Africa. There’s a lot of diversity here.”

“I’ve noticed,” Rachel said, “But what’s their story? How did people come together?”

“Most of the original founders were frustrated environmental scientists, medical doctors, and climate refugees. Some teachers, lawyers, and even philosophers. They wanted to find a place for the community that would use human ingenuity to restore what other greedy humans had destroyed. Banaba was perfect for this. We are developing and perfecting the technologies that help our community to thrive, in harmony with nature. That way, we become better humans as well.”

Rachel stopped in her tracks. What they reached was such a stark contrast with the barren land they just walked on that she needed to take a breath. They faced two large fields, on the right – wheat that was almost ready to harvest, and on the left – high corn. Where the fields ended, an orchard of fruit trees started. The fields were cut through with irrigation lines.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

“I’d say,” Rachel admired the scenery. “Where do you get your fresh water?”

“We have our own solar-powered desalination plant. But this is not all. Let’s go to the orchard.”

As they walked through the field, Rachel noticed how rich the soil was. It might as well be a different planet from the over-extracted land they just walked on.

“The biggest challenge for us was to make the land arable again,” Laura said.

“And how did you manage to do that?”

“Well…” Laura hesitated, “we make our own compost.”

“C’mon, how much compost would this need?” Rachel said skeptically.

“We make ash-based compost at industrial scale,” Laura replied. “Well, here we are, our pride and source of food, the community garden.”

What opened before Rachel’s eyes could easily be described as paradise. The lush terrace garden had all sorts of crops and grains, vegetables, berries, mushrooms, and herbs arranged with almost scientific precision.

“We plant them so that they don’t suffocate but rather complement each other. Help each other grow and ripen, just like us humans,” Laura said with tenderness. She led Rachel through the garden, showing her most exotic and common plants growing next to each other. “In this climate, we can have 3-4 growing seasons and grow virtually anything.”

An avid gardener herself, Rachel was deeply impressed. It was getting dark, so Laura suggested they should go back.

When they approached the town, Rachel pointed at a building that stood out. She noticed it before because it looked like one of those new wave churches or hospitals, made of steel and glass with a dome. But instead of a church cross it had a diamond on top of it.

“What is that?”

“That’s our crystal completion facility,” Laura said and immediately added, “Now, let’s go set you up for the night.”

Laura took Rachel to a guest room in a restored mining dorm. It had a comfortable bed with linen sheets, a work desk, a closet, and its own bathroom. One thing it lacked was the internet connection or a mobile network. Rachel couldn’t let her husband know that she was alright. She tried to explain to Laura that Evan must be freaking out, but Laura couldn’t help. Apparently, the only way for them to communicate with the outside world was through the radio.

Rachel took a quick shower and went straight to bed. She immediately fell asleep, exhausted by the day’s events and impressions.

***

In the morning, Rachel woke up to find a note slipped under her door, “Breakfast’s at 8. If you oversleep, go to the kid’s dining hall, they’ll have food. I’ll catch you later. – Laura.”

Rachel checked her watch. It was 9 am. She tidied up and decided to skip breakfast to go to the hangar. Perhaps Laura was working on her plane.

As she walked through the town, she saw lots of kids on the playground in the park. They were happy to slide and ride various contraptions made of wood and metal. With no plastic or padding, the playground looked like it came from the previous century. Next to the playground, adults of advanced age were practicing Tai Chi and yoga. Under the perfect sunny weather, so idyllic!

Passing by the church-like building, Rachel noticed that its door was open and stepped inside. She found herself in a large semi-circular space, with pews radiating from the front stage. Sunlight pouring in from all windows and quiet ambient music created a beautiful calm atmosphere.

There was a group of about 20 people at the front, all wearing white, huddling around an elderly woman. Laura, wearing a long white robe, was presiding over some ritual. She took the woman’s hands, looked her straight in the eyes, and asked, “Grace Blairdane, are you choosing completion willingly and in clear mind, under no coercion?”

Laura looked around and was surprised to see Rachel sitting behind the family. She quickly recovered, though.

Grace nodded enthusiastically, smiling radiantly. “I affirm that I enter this completion willingly, in clear mind and free from coercion.”

“Please sign your expressed will here,” Laura showed at a page in a large white book with an elaborate diamond clasp.

Grace signed. The family gathered around her to give her what felt like a long hug sending her on an exciting adventure. They were all happy, clapping and dancing. Laura moved to sit with Rachel.

Then two men took Grace by her arms and led her through a beautiful diamond-encrusted door to another room.

Suddenly, a toddler broke out from the family and shouted, “Where’s nonna going?” running after Grace. His mother ran after him, picked him up, and said, smiling through happy tears, “Nonna has gone to a beautiful place, honey.”

“Yeah, where did his nonna go, Laura?” Rachel asked, trying to make sense of what she saw.

“Grace has completed her Crystallization Ceremony. She chose transcendence while still strong, clear-minded, and no burden to the community,” Laura said, overcome with joy. Then she put her hand to her diamond pendant and added, “Just like my parents did.”

Rachel was struck by a sudden realization. It all made sense to her now: the diamond fetish, the ash compost, the absence of frail elders. Shocked, she covered her mouth and uttered, “You kill your elders… and turn them into diamonds?”

The family turned around in indignant shock. Laura grabbed Rachel’s hand and quickly led her outside.

“I knew it was too early for you,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t kill our elders. We send them off without pain, by choice, and in full awareness. Most societies try to prolong life at any cost. We believe in something different here, dignified transcendence.”

“And how exactly do you do it? Lethal injections?”

“Of course not! We are not barbarians! We give them carefully measured sleeping tincture and they simply drift away.”

“Call it whatever you want, it’s still euthanasia!” Rachel screamed.

“Listen, you don’t have to accept this right now. I understand it takes time to get used to the idea that nothing is wasted here. Not land, not life, not even carbon. Ashes to crystals. If you live with us, you'll understand.”

Ashes to crystals!

“I don’t want to! I just wanna go home!” Rachel cried.

“You can do that too, no one will keep you here. First ship out. Just sign an NDA and you are free to go.”