With Jeremy helping, Medness got the recalcitrant mold to pop together just before Norm returned and asked, “How long do you want them stazed for?”
Medness looked up and said, “An hour.”
Norm said, “Okaay… Um, there’s no harm in stazing them for too long, like a day. But if you don’t manage to get the exterior, more permanent parts stazed in an hour it’ll be a lot of hassle to have to start all over again.”
For a second, Jeremy thought Medness was going to snap at Norm, but then he gave a quick nod and said, “Make it two hours.”
Norm plugged in the stazer and hooked it up to a laptop. He plugged his ID card into it and held out a couple of cables, saying, “Jack these into the first one you want stazed.”
Jeremy took the cables, resisting the urge to ask which cable went into which socket. He was glad he had when it was immediately obvious which one fit which opening. Once he’d plugged them in, he turned. Norm was keying some long strings into the laptop. Jeremy said, “First one’s ready,”
Norm nodded and hit enter.
Jeremy heard a rising whine and a snap.
Norm said, “You can plug up the next one.” He started keying in more character strings.
Jeremy unplugged the first mold and started plugging up the second one. He looked at Medness who wasn’t doing anything but watching Norm. Jeremy asked, “How soon can we remove the mold?”
Norm said, “Right away. You ready with that second one?”
“Yup.” Jeremy heard another whine and snap. As he started unplugging the second one, he said, “Dr. Medness, sounds like you could take the mold off the first one and inspect the Stade.”
Medness started a little as if he’d been daydreaming, but he turned to the first one and started pulling off the tape that was holding the mold together.
In a few minutes, all their temporary interior Stades were done. Norm stood, “Let me know when you’re ready to do the others.”
“Wait!” Medness said, “We need a place to put these while we’re setting up the others.”
Norm pushed the biggest one off the table. It floated slowly down toward the floor.
Jeremy thought, It wouldn’t fall at all if a couple of pieces of the acrylic hadn’t been incorporated into it!
Norm smacked it and it arced over one of the boxes their molds had come in and started slowly floating down into it. He looked up at them and said, “They’re Stade. You can’t hurt ’em. Just need something to keep them from sliding all around the room.”
Medness said, “But they’ll get dirty…” he stopped himself and said, “No, they won’t. Sorry. Dirt won’t stick to them.” He turned to Jeremy. “Let’s go get the rest of our molds.”
Walking away, Norm said, “Take some of the molds you’re done with back out to your truck so they won’t be in everyone’s way.”
Medness glared at Norm’s back. Norm couldn’t know he’d been glared at, but Jeremy bet he’d assume it’d been done.
Jeremy picked up a couple of the mold shells they were done with and started for the door.
They had one of the two major half-shells of the main outer mold laid out on the table when they realized they had a problem. The stickum was on the wrong ends of the spacers that would hold the temporary Stades positioned inside the outer molds. They were peel off and stick-on spacers the fabricator provided and were intended to become part of the final Stade. Unfortunately, the stickum was on the concave ends of the spacers that would be against the convex temporary Stades—and glue would not stick to Stade.
The first thing Medness did was to start checking the specifications he’d sent the fabricator, aiming to blame the error on the manufacturer. Jeremy thought that was pointless since they didn’t want to have the fabricator correct the error even if it was a manufacturing mistake—because they didn’t want to have to drive back down to Charlottesville after they got replacement spacers. And, even if they did, their temporary Stades would’ve vanished by then so they’d have to start the entire stazing process again.
So, Jeremy went over to ask Norm if anyone else had made their mistake in the past and, if so, how they’d dealt with it. It turned out the mistake was common enough that Staze had some double-sided stickies to fix it with. When Jeremy got back with the stickies, Medness was no longer cursing the fabricator’s name, likely having discovered the error was his own. They installed the double-sided stickies and fitted the temporary Stades in where they belonged, then put the other half-shell of the mold on it.
Norm came over and stazed the rest of their stuff to last a year—which he said was the limit for the free research stazings the company was performing. Just as they finished taking the outer molds off, Seba showed up, looked over the assembled Stade, and wished them well with achieving fusion. Jeremy thanked him. As he and Norm walked away, Medness turned to Jeremy and said disgustedly, “Now we’ve got to wait an hour and ten minutes for the temporary Stades to go away.”
Jeremy considered pointing out that if they’d stazed the temporary ones for an hour as Medness had wanted, they’d only have had ten minutes to spare—which Jeremy thought would’ve been cutting it a little close. Instead, he said, “We don’t have to wait here for the temporary ones to go away. It’s apparently routine. We could start home and let them disappear on the way.”
“What if we have to come back because something went wrong?”
Jeremy shrugged, “We can stop and check the Stades an hour and ten minutes into our trip. If there’s a problem, which seems unlikely, we turn around then. If there’s not, we’ll be a
