After hearing his story, strongly disapproving of his son's choices and discussing the situation with Carol, Tom agreed to lift Richard's punishment, even though very reluctantly.

The boy counted the minutes until the following Saturday, when he expressed renewed enthusiasm for his rock collection and left for the factory as soon as the first rays of sun peeked over the horizon. He was so eager to see what the plant did in his absence that the half hour walk only took him twenty minutes.

In his enthusiasm to get to the factory floor as soon as possible, he almost ran straight into the evaluation committee, assembled for the purposes of finding a solution to the plant problem, and, just as importantly, figuring out how was it possible for it to happen?

“#*%&!” Richard said to himself, peeved that his secret weekend kingdom was overrun by non-compliant zealots. “Can't they do this during the week, why did they have to take over my time?” he mulled, resentful. First his dad was putting the stops on him, and now this!

He found a good place to hide, where he knew nobody would think to look, and tried to make the best of the unpleasant situation by trying to find out more about what the research unveiled so far. In his irritation, he almost failed to notice the change in scenery, which could only be described as breathtaking by any human soul.

The plant seemed to have matured by now, and the bright chartreuse of its young foliage had softened to a deeper, less saturated green, that gleamed with a coppery and tungsten sheen as the morning sunshine passed through it. The plant swirled and weaved around the pipes, just floating around them, touching them only at the penetration points, dispersing main branches into a profusion of metallic stems and then reuniting them, like a large river at an estuary, all the while surrounding the glossy islands of the control valves, flow meters and y connections, presenting them to the stunned observer like high end jewelry stores display expensive gems on velvet pillows. There were no visible signs of corrosion anywhere on the pipes, no water spots, no discoloration, no salt deposits, every component sparkled. It looked as if both sides of this unbelievable bio-mechanical forest had been installed together very recently, and carefully designed not to interfere with each other any more than it was absolutely necessary.

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