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Stories from the Verse
In Verse Proportion
Chapter 85: Slade 196
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 201
“Do birds use, what would you call it, maybe scent? A liquid that smells nice that you apply to yourselves to make yourselves smell nice.”
Slade had an idea to move forward toward his internal combustion engine, and he knew the history well enough to be able to take a small step, so he asked the engineering professor about this.
“Oh, hens use it; not so much cocks.”
Slade nodded. “How do they apply it?”
“Well, it comes in bottles, and I think they put a bit on a finger and then dab it on select places.”
“You don’t spray it.”
“Spray it? How would we do that?”
“Get me your plumbing team, and we’ll start working on a perfume sprayer. Just leave the ones working on the control for the central heat.”
It took a few minutes to gather them, and then Slade was uncertain how to explain this device. He decided to use the chalkboard, and began by drawing a large “T”.
“You’ll have to excuse my artwork,” he said. “Hopefully this will be good enough. I’ve drawn this so you all can see it. The one you’re going to make is going to be tiny compared to this--not as big as my thumb,” and he held up his thumb so they could see it. “These are pipes, very small ones, and they connect there like that. Now,” and he drew an awkward but large bottle at the bottom, “here we have a sealed cap with the pipe running down into the liquid inside the bottle. We can do it with water for the experiments, but we’ll be using this with a lot of liquids, starting with scent. The trick is, when you blow air through the top pipe, it creates a low pressure inside that pipe and so liquid is forced out of the bottle up the pipe and into the stream, so we get a mix of air and water coming out the opposite end of the pipe. We’ll push the air with a tiny bellows or maybe a bulb, if you can create such a thing,” and he drew a small oval at the right end of the T. “This creation will let hens spray scent lightly on themselves.
“The principles here are going to be important. Once we have this working we can adapt it to manage the fuel/air mixture in an engine, and this concept of faster moving air creating low pressure will eventually enable you to make machines that fly. But first we have to create the perfume sprayer, and revolutionize the scent industry. Questions?”
“Yes,” one bird asked. “Why does it work?”
Slade shrugged. “You’ll have to ask your physics professor that one. I only know that it does. Anyone else?”
There were no other questions, so Slade concluded, “Get to work. I’ll be back in a couple days to see whether you’ve got a prototype.” Then, placing Shella’s hand in the crook of his arm, he escorted her out of the room and over to the dining hall.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #448: Inventive Versers. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
