6 - Wait, what?

"It's an.. oven?" Elizabeth said, turning the statement into a question half way through.

"Very good, Elizabeth. It is indeed an oven." said Mr. Riggs, looking down over her shoulder at the completed machine.

"But, it's enormous. Why is it so big?" asked Elizabeth, staring at the device that she had spent two days constructing on the workbench in front of her.

The oven was quite large, and a bit strange too, Elizabeth thought. It didn't look anything like a normal oven to her. It was made almost entirely out of glass, for one thing. For another, it was shaped very strangely; it was a rectangular box nearly six feet long, about two feet wide, and nearly two feet tall. The large glass panes that made up the walls of the box were joined together at the edges by metal fasteners that ran the length of each side, securing each firmly to the other. The pane closest to Elizabeth, one of the side panels, hinged open along the top, folding neatly up and over onto the top pane. It had little soft pads along its edges to prevent the two pieces of glass from touching each other when in the open position.

The box of glass sat atop a shallower metal box which housed long heating elements that ran back and forth along the bottom length of the oven. Thin, baffled concave sheets of metal rested above the heating elements on brackets, and a rack that, also ran the length of the oven, rested even with the bottom of the glass box on its own brackets above that.

"What's it for? Cooking, like, five turkeys at once?" Elizabeth asked, a look of puzzlement on her face.

"Hah! Well, I suppose that one could use it for that, Elizabeth." Mr. Riggs answered, chuckling.

"But, this oven is actually designed to cook girls." he finished, looking satisfied.

Elizabeth looked back and up at her teacher oddly, her puzzled expression deepening. If Mr. Riggs had said what he had just said several years earlier, to Elizabeth or any other student in her situation, he would have probably received a very different response from them. The world was changing, however, and had changed already in many ways. A student of several years before might have backed slowly to the door, then run screaming out of it as fast as possible. Or perhaps they might even have laughed, assuming that what their teacher had just said to be an absurd joke. Elizabeth, however, did not respond like that.

"That's.. a little strange." was all she said, one eyebrow raised as she eyed her teacher.

"Well, like I said before, it's just something of a hobby." replied Mr. Riggs.

"Cooking girls?" asked Elizabeth.

"Hah, no. Well, not yet, anyway. I meant that designing ovens that can cook girls is my hobby." said Mr. Riggs. "This is the first time one of my designs has made it past the drawing board, though. I'm curious to see how it works."

Elizabeth nodded, taking in the information that, while her teacher apparently spent his free time thinking up devices to cook girls, he hadn't actually cooked one, yet, fairly calmly. She then asked another question.

"Why?"

"Why do I want to see how the oven works? Well, I'd just like to know whether my design is sound or not." said Mr. Riggs. "Something that looks good on paper might not seem nearly as good, or even practical, once actually built."

"No." said Elizabeth, shaking her head. "I meant why do you want to cook girls?"

"Oh." said Mr. Riggs, surprised. He looked like he hadn't ever even considered the "why" of his hobby before. It took a moment for him to respond.

"Well, I guess because girls just look like they would taste quite good." he replied, with a shrug. "And it's a fun little problem to think about, I suppose. It's rather more interesting to try to figure out the best ways to cook up girls than turkeys."

"I suppose that's true." said Elizabeth, conceding the point.

"Anyway, let's see if the thing even works first, shall we?" said Mr. Riggs, eagerness creeping into his voice. "Go ahead and plug it in."

At his prompting, Elizabeth picked up the plug that she had wired into the base of the oven during the previous afternoon and inserted it into one of the power outlets along the edge of the workbench. Mr. Riggs then turned the temperature knob to "Low" and placed his finger above the power switch.

"Well, here goes.." said Mr. Riggs, and flipped the switch to the ON position.

Something bright flashed inside of the metal portion of the oven, at the same time as a loud crackling pop sound came from it, and all the lights in the building went out.

"Hmm." said Mr. Riggs in the darkness, around the sudden smell of ozone and scorched plastic that filled the room. "I think that there may have been a flaw in the design or construction."

Light suddenly emanated from Elizabeth's hand, the glow of her cell phone's screen dimly illuminating the room in a faint, bluish hue. It was joined a moment later by a much stronger white light coming from a small LED flashlight on Mr. Riggs' key ring.

"Um.. do you think it was my fault?" Elizabeth asked, looking worried. "Maybe I didn't put it together right."

"It's possible, of course." replied Mr. Riggs.

"But it might be my fault, too. Perhaps I didn't design the wiring correctly. I'm not an electrician, after all." he continue, placatingly, after seeing a guilty expression flash across his student's features.

"Nothing to worry about, Elizabeth. I didn't expect the thing to function flawlessly the first time. I'll just go and reset the breakers. You can go home, if you like." said Mr. Riggs, smiling in the gloom. "You did a fine job both yesterday and today. How about we take a break tomorrow afternoon? We'll try to figure out what we did wrong on this thing after school on Monday, hmm?"

"Uh, okay, Mr. Riggs. I'll see you tomorrow in class then." said Elizabeth, who moved slowly towards the door to the rest of the classroom, picking her way carefully in the darkness. More light entered the back room after she left, the reflected late afternoon sunshine coming through the class's large windows picking out a very pleased Mr. Riggs, who stood in the semi darkness, grinning widely, patting the glass top of the oven with possessive pride.