The Winged Witch 8/15

Jennifer Jane followed him along several corridors until they reached an office that reminded her of the occasions when she’d gone to her dad’s work place. Long tables with short dividing screens, provided individual work stations. Computer screens similar to those she was familiar with at home, occupied each space, while there was still enough table room left over for drawings to be spread out for discussion.

“We have special scanning cameras which will produce a three dimensional image,” explained Sam. “The comlink will do the same job when necessary, although not to the same standard as the full size unit. The image is downloaded into the computer which then produces a series of points that can be used to recreate the subject in three dimensions.”

He left the drawing office and a few minutes later led her into a room smelling of chemicals.

“This is where we make up the materials that are going to be used to make the object. Usually these days we make things from plastic, but we can synthesise most materials and produce something that will be acceptable in whatever place we intend to sell the item. We were rather puzzled in your case to find that you used human teeth for those little carved vases. So we assumed that for some reason teeth are a valuable resource in your series of worlds and went ahead using the same material. The raw material has to be in solution form for the reasons you’ll understand when you see the next department!”

The next room she was shown along the corridor was full of very complicated looking electrical equipment. Containers of various sizes were available on shelves that lined most of the wall space, while a single computer stood on a table in one corner. Overhead there was a complicated linkage system that looked rather like a giant spider. Thick electrical cables hung from this and trailed across the floor to large wall sockets, while thinner wires were lying across the table attached to the computer.

“The solution of whatever raw material we happen to be using, is put in a container under the laser heads up there,” said Sam pointing towards the ‘spider’, “the computer controls its movement, focussing three beams onto one point in the solution. The heat at the point of focus solidifies the material locally and the scanning process builds the model. When it’s complete, we lift the finished model from the liquid, dry it off and pack it. Technically it’s complicated, but the production is very simple in the mechanical sense.”

“I think I’ve heard dad talk about something similar in our world,” said Jennifer Jane, “but as far as I know it’s only used to make models to check that the drawings of a complicated object are correct.”

“Do you mind if I ask you why on earth you use teeth as a raw material?”

“Do you believe in tooth fairies?” was the rather astonishing reply.

“Of course not, I know some parents tell the story to their children when they’re getting they’re adult teeth, but there can’t be any such thing really!”

Sam’s voice faded as he watched the girl’s face break into a broad grin.

“In my world there really are tooth fairies! The teeth used to be collected and put into pet food tins to feed dragons. You see dragons need bone to produce the flame necessary to protect their hoard of treasure and that way they didn’t have to eat people. Then it was discovered by accident that not only did dragons like eating coal, but it also allowed them to produce flame without having to eat bones.”

Sam was looking a bit dazed and occasionally muttering under his breath words like, “hoards of treasure? Pet food tins?”

“Of course that left us with a problem,” continued Jennifer Jane, “the tooth fairies couldn’t suddenly stop collecting children’s teeth, otherwise there’d be a lot of unemployment amongst the fairies and a whole world full of disappointed children. It also meant that the system used to distribute the teeth didn’t work any more and there was a huge surplus of teeth building up. That’s when we had the idea of producing carvings from teeth to try and get rid of the surplus. We had a lot of problems at first, then one of the witches remembered a spell that would combine the teeth into a large seamless lump, that allowed good quality carvings to be made. Unfortunately the fairy who was supposed to produce the ideas for the carvings wasn’t very imaginative. That’s the point where you came into the story and now nobody knows what to do next.”