But he carried with him different laws of physics. The Patagonians caught European physics like smallpox.
It spread through their population on rays of light, propagating through the mirror network.
The diffraction limit changed under their feet. Under their feet, in-front of their eyes.
Physics pox.
Compensating, they lowered the mirrors closer and closer to the library, trying to see. But the diffraction limit got them, the mirrors smashed on the carved rocks of the great library into a million pieces. And they smashed on the roads up and down the country, and they smashed in the towns, and they smashed in the villages, and the Patagonians reverted to small villages and hunter-gatherer communities, and the pools of powdered silica, powdered glass that we can still find all over that region, that’s all that’s left of the great library and the mirrored spheres of Patagonia.
de Isla never realised what he had done, what he had caused, and besides, he was killed by his men on the way back, and the records – although kept – were mostly not publicised for the inglorious story they told.