The first strip came out bent like a leaf held over a flame.
Iven lowered it into Neri’s hands while Hesh kept the upper duct on its two physical props. The strip’s outer skin had warped away from the inner water channel. Along one edge, mineral dust had baked into a hard gray cake. Beneath that cake, the little drainage teeth had disappeared entirely.
“Not just cooling,” Neri said.
“No,” Iven replied.
He turned the strip toward the lamp. Its inner face carried dozens of fine grooves. A moving film of water had once crossed them, catching suspended dust before draining into the dirty return. The overlapping leaves had divided hot and cooler air, passed heat into circulating water and taken particulates out of the boundary between them.
A climate wall, not a row of cold plates.
Hesh looked at the grooves.
“My cleaning brush never reached that side.”
