Once upon a time, about now, in a parallel universe there was a dentist. He was an ordinary, but innovative, dentist.
One day a travelling salesman came and knocked on his door. Being a polite man our dentist heard the salesman out. This salesman was selling shrink rays and at an affordable rate. With adventure coursing through his veins our dentist decided to risk it. So he haggled the salesman down a bit and bought himself a “genuine, once in a lifetime opportunity” shrink ray.
The machine produced a ray. Our dentist found a block in his workshop and illuminated it with the shrink ray. The block tried its best. It quivered, it shook, but, alas, it did not shrink.
Our optimistic dentist did not despair. Rather he sat down and had a cup of tea. In fact he was mildly surprised. He had not really expected the machine to do anything at all, but the block had responded. It had shaken and quivered: it had done something. As our dentist sat sipping his hot tea he thought. Being an innovative man he had read a little popular science and a lot of popular science fiction. So as he sipped he supposed that it could not be that hard to make the machine work.
So began an epic saga of evening experimentation. He tinkered and tightened. He fixed and fidgeted. He turned and twisted. One day he managed to make the block vibrate more, on a later day, less. Then he managed to cause the block to rumble rhythmically. He exulted in his progress, but then he caused his block to disintegrate. “No matter” declared our determined dentist, “I have another block and another evening!”
Unperturbed our inventive dentist tinkered on. Finally after half a year he made a break through: He set the settings on the machine and shone the ray on the block and with a sudden noise the block went POP. Our dentist jumped in surprise and hastily turned off the machine.
As our thoughtful dentist considered this pop the magnitude of the achievement struck him. “Ah ha!” he exclaimed. With a crafty smile he reasoned “Ah ha, if I can pop a block but not quite, then it will have grown. And if I can grow a block then if I do it backwards I will have a shrink ray!”
Armed with this reasoning our delighted dentist bought a bottle of champagne and called his friends. While they did not understand what he was on about they still drank his champagne and enjoyed his excitement, egging him on to do more.
Our dentist carried on with his tinkering. While he went through many more blocks, he eventually manage to not pop a block resulting in a grown block. Success! Well, almost, backward success!
Our dentist was elated yet hungered for more. Being a conscientious man he carefully took detailed notes of how his machine was configured so as to grow a block. Then he again launched into vigorous tinkering and testing to try and reverse this configuration: to un-grow his block.
For many months he only managed to regulate the rate of growth. The block would not shrink, it only grew as did the number of large blocks crowding his house. Occasionally our dentist had to restore his machine to the popping state to clear up some space. He usually threw a party when he did this.
Now our dentist’s friends were getting excited with him: growing and popping blocks with a ray is quite an achievement. But secretly his despair was growing and his dreams of a shrink ray were on the verge of popping.
One day our desperate dentist lost it. He turned all the dials to full and tightened all the lenses to maximum, set the block, and hid behind his workbench. He flicked the switch half expecting to pop off the roof of his house but instead of the deafening POP there was a sharp sucking noise “whhip”.
Our cautious dentist peeped over the edge of his table and there was his block: gone! “But it did not pop, what had happened?” thought our bemused dentist. So he placed another block, hid behind the workbench peeping over the top and flicked the switch.
His block was there and then it was not. But it did not rapidly expand into oblivion. It shrank! This called for more recording and celebration with disappearing blocks.
Our dentist was on the cusp of his goal. He marched on down the long road of invention marked by the dust of self sacrificial blocks and splattered with the drops sweat and tea. But the at the end of the road awaited a shrink ray and eventually he arrived.
Now our triumphant dentist had a shrink ray and a growth ray. Now the fun could begin in earnest.