Chapter 15 Worrying Yet Experimenting

The next morning they awoke to face their worrisome day. They agreed to go their separate ways for the day, and when returning here to Geodon's home for dinner in the evening, to each produce a written note that would hopefully suggest content of possible now-missing memories of recent events. Part of the message was identical for each of their notes, and the other part was different.

That evening, back at Geodon's house and having dinner together, Geodon brought up the subject of possibly missing memories. Comparing notes and reading the messages they had left for themselves, they concluded that probably no memories had been lost regarding their adventure in the lava tube etc on the most recent trip to the lake vacation facility. That was a relief, except that it did not explain the previous happenings. Did they need to walk past the town prison to make it happen? Neither was willing to try that experiment right now; no doubt events would make that happen soon enough anyway, since nearly all paths in town went past that round tall tower.

Their best guess was that it had to do with the sensation of being stuck with a pin or hit by a spark, and that it took awhile to do its work on them, minutes maybe. Maybe a recorder of their electrical static charge would show a sudden jump when being hit by the tiny thing. Or maybe it was a pellet with a substance in it, such as a nano-molecule that had to replicate in the body enough to have significant effect. Or the prick might just be like a "load" command while somehow a larger field was being surrounding the person, causing the person to absorb the larger complex electrical field. Whatever it was, neither of them had been taught in formal education about it. They both new through their lifetime of experiences, that the fact that formal education had not taught them something, did not mean that it did not exist, not at all. The formal education was a good start on knowledge; but learning had to be a lifetime process, new things were always happening. And some things might be just too puzzling for formal scholars researching things, and research was usually funded through grants from businesses hoping to gain something that would make them profit as a result of research findings, and mysterious somethings were not a likely source of revenue for businesses, thus those things got no research done to solve them. Except for the investigative businesses, perhaps, which were likely to be looking into new ways to snoop on people and their doings, and be able to influence people to change their behavior instead if driven by profit motives, was by power motives.

They would need to arrange an experiment where one of them would take a walk past the prison and return here, and compare notes with whoever had stayed here at home. It was a one-shot experiment; erased memories seemed permanently erased; and so the person taking the walk would be at risk of forever losing part of what they were discussing here; neither of them wanted that. They devised a way to record the pin-prick-spark sensation, by turning over an item in the pocket immediately after the sensation; upon return here, inspection of the orientation of the item in the pocket would give that data point.

And yet also they could guess that most likely the very fact of their experiment would become seen by the perpetuator of the phenomenon, thus knowing exactly where the two stood on the issue; and it was likely to be a hoarded secret by the perpetrators, and might become even more dangerous to them, no longer content to be just seeking moneymaking ideas and products to grab.

Also they were getting weary of the whole subject; it was not fun at all. Maybe if they could enlist somebody who enjoyed complex games of predatory behavior on other players, they might enjoy the subject; but neither of them knew anybody that they trusted and might be interested in exploring it. So they decided to just make a sign at the doorway saying to check their own pocket when coming home, to see the orientation of the object, and if it was upside down, to read the sealed envelope attached below the sign. Then resume their life as it was before. Except of course, clearly without the cabinet business that apparently had been of major importance to them, up to a few days ago.

Geodon still had the one remaining ultrasonic generator, and had been able to remember it was used to trigger the latching of adhesion molecules mixed in with the black sand. And that he had been interested in using it to make even smaller detail objects, by using the more finely pulverized particles produced at their vacation home on the cave shards. Could they make a dinner spoon that way? Currently a dinner spoon had to be made out of metal, and metal was very expensive, having to be tediously extracted industrially from the basalt of which this planet consisted. It took a lot of solar power to extract enough of the metals that were used for making eating utensils, and there were indications that some of the metals in that alloy slowly leached into the person eating with them, metals that were toxic when sufficiently taken into the body over a long time. If they could make a spoon out of essentially raw lava obsidian, it might be better and cheaper than the metal ones.

Geodon seemed to almost know how to make molds, and soon had figured out how to make a mold for a dinner spoon, using his personal metal dinner spoon as the prototype shape. Then he coated the surfaces of the mold with lubricant, to keep them from sticking to the casting material. Then they put some of his mix of black sand, pulverized basalt shards and adhesive, squashed them into the mold halves, placed the ultrasonic generator on the mold which transferred the vibrations through to the slurry in the hollow between the two halves. Then he pulled the two halves apart, and removed the object; it looked like a dinner spoon indeed, although it was black and had some rough edges around the edges where the two parts of the mold met; it was more obvious on a small object of finer detail like a spoon was. It was also much lighter in weight that the metal one. Was it strong enough to use? He handed it to Nansella to do the testing.

She found that it indeed was durable, surviving normal eating stresses on a spoon. She then dropped it on the hard floor, and it survived that test, finally she threw it at the hard wall; it bounced off and landed on the floor intact. washing it again, she used it for eating something, and it still worked, although it still had that scratchy edge around it. She had almost hoped that it would break, due to that scratchy edge.

She asked Geodon if there was anything that could be done about the scratchy edge. He took the spoon and rubbed the scratchy edge against a block of basalt; it took some pressure and perseverance but he got the edge ground off of most of the spoon, including all of the bowl of the spoon. Then he asked her to repeat her endurance tests to see it that had weakened the structure significantly. And the spoon survived the test. It looked like they had a new product to offer people; would people like it? The black color was not so appealing as the shiny metal spoons, although it had a shiny but black surface. the light weight was also unfamiliar to a hand that had always known a specific inertial mass of an eating spoon.

Nansella then asked if the spoon would be as easily cleaned as a metal one, over a long period of time, would it remain able to be completely cleaned. Would bacteria multiply on it differently than on the metal eating utensils. It would take some time to do that kind of testing.

So they made three more of the spoons, and ground off the scratchy edges as had been done with the first one. They were both going to carry a spoon in a pocket, with the spoon's bowl facing downward; it would be the object to turn over quickly upon feeling the mysterious pin-prick phenomenon. The other two spoons they would use for their daily eating meals.

With this success so far, Geodon made a similar mold for a table knife using a metal table knife as the reference shape; and also a table fork. Only the outside of the fork's tines needed to be scraped smooth. They were then eating with entirely eating utensils made out of artificial obsidian.

A week later they also had cups and dinner plates made the same way. One problem with it all was that on the precast dinner table of the cast houses made of black sand, the eating utensils, plates and cups were all the same color as the table, nearly invisible, so only the food they contained was clear to the eye. In fact that seemed like a feature that could be a selling point, because it invited the culinary artist to make more interesting creations that contrasted with the black of the table and containers.

But it all looked different; just plain different. It was a bit of a jolt to the person accustomed to meals where the plates, cups, and eating utensils were shiny metal on the black tables. Nansella made an appointment with the store in town that sold the new cabinetry, asking them to provide a table for her to show a new product. The people in the store seemed to remember her as the original provider of the cabinets, and thanked her for them, and saying they were glad it was a thriving business in town, the making of the cabinetry. She fended off the compliments, since she did not actually remember providing them with the cabinets along with Geodon, as well as a bit miffed that the manufacturing of their created cabinets was going on with no profit to themselves. So she quickly changed the subject to her new products. She set out the bowls and plates of the colorful food she had prepared for this demonstration, set several places with cups and eating utensils, knife, fork, spoon for each. Then she invited the store owner and sales folks to sit and have a meal as her guest; she was a good cook too. The store staff looked at the strange table with the almost invisible containers on it, but then sat down at the places Nansella had set, and she watched the reactions as each of the picked up the black spoons that were so much lighter in weight than the metal ones with which they were accustomed. But soon they were all enjoying the fine luncheon she had prepared. When they had finished, Nansella then asked it they would like to sell all of these things; and they could sell them at half the price of conventional eating equipment. The store owner was thoughtful for awhile, then said the items could be sold at twice that amount, but if that is the price arranged, it was a good deal for them. They put in an order for a thousand of each item; but Nansella said they could not deliver them at that rate, could only do a few sets a day at best. They would make as many as possible and the store could see how well they sold; they would then compare notes and determine what to do next. It was a done deal; the store owner wanted to buy the full set of dishes and utensils here on the table and insisted on paying ten times the asking price, as a bonus and to help with speeding up manufacturing of more of them. Nansella did not refuse; it was helpful as their extra savings in the bank was dwindling again. Walking past the now worrisome prison tower, she kept in mind the spoon in her pocket, what to do with it if she felt the sting sensation. But she did not feel one, and when she got back to Geodon's house, he checked in her pocket, the spoon was still oriented as it was when she left. And when she related her demonstration of the new items and subsequent immediate sale of them and receipt of orders for more of them than they could imagine making in any reasonable time soon; it appeared that she had not experienced the mysterious memory thing. And she said she did not remember the feeling of getting stung along the way.

They spent the next few days making several full sets of the eating table items to supply the store, hoping a half dozen of the sets would make the store content for awhile. But then a knock on the door; it was the store owner; Geodon and Nansella then showed the store owner their manufacturing setup and explained how the items were made, so as to convey how tedious it was to do, and why they were not providing a lot more of them more quickly. The store owner was surprised that it was done so simply and easily, and yet it indeed was a time consuming process, labor intensive. We have lots of you retired folks here, and maybe we can get them to pitch in and make these things too. Can you just make more sets of the molds and provide us the materials?

Geodon was running low on the small size particle basalt, and it would need to be provided in abundance if a larger scale manufacturing were to be done. It looked like an opportunity to make another trip to their lakeside vacation home, and this time they would take sand up and bring back full pails of pulverized basalt.

He carried the pails of sand, and she carried the picnic basked of food, along with the cold weather gear under the food, lest others wonder why the strange clothing for an outing. She also had a note to themselves under the first layer of food in the basket, asking to check the orientation of the spoons in their pockets, when they arrived up at their cave. And off they went, headed to go past the town prison's even more foreboding tower that seemed to watch them as they walked by; they must have some weird criminals locked up in there, he remarked to her, as they went past.