  My tablet has a separate GPS. The point I'm making is that multimode devices aren't all that hard to make in our own world. And we actually don't have access to a perpetual energy source, or to indestructible materials. Nor do individuals in our world have the ability to change the molecular architecture of materials. With all those things, the AoL could easily have made multimode devices to put ours to shame. No reason the Glass Columns can't be one such.  