They fill grain elevators with nitrogen now. Used to be that the dust from the grain, you know, would explode sometimes.

Really?

Yeah. So they fill the silo with nitrogen to displace the oxygen so it can't combust.

Damn. It exploded. They exploded. That had to be something to see.

I don't guess the farmer liked that too much though. That's the thing. His livelihood, sitting in a silo somewhere, and your hired man goes in there to do something, smoking, and foom-your silo explodes. Though I guess the hired man really gets the rawest deal.

I guess so. Explodes.

Yep. Any kind of dust can explode and burn if you make it fine enough.

Really strange. I see the firemen.

They have a long truck and they go over to the farm. They ring the little bell on the truck and people get out of the way. The people have no idea that Farmer Brown's silo just went off like an eighty foot Chinese firework.

Was it a wheat elevator?

Does it make a difference?

Well, maybe it would smell like baking bread. No, there wouldn't be any yeast or milk.

True. So it just smells like scorched flour. And the cows are nervous now. They could be next, to their minds. They aren't smart enough to realize that the thing went up because it was full of dust. They think they are in mortal peril. They were, but only because of flying shrapnel of silo metal. It cuts limbs off trees.

It's an abstract chainsaw blade. Unfocused. Arbitrary. Wreaking meyhem instead of doing a specific job. But fundamentally similar.

Brilliantly observed. The internal combustion engine of the woods tool is composed of a series of small explosions. This power is transferred into cutting power of the sharpened blades on the chain. The silo explosion powers small shards of tin or aluminium or whatever they make the things out of.

And now everything smells like scorched flour. But the people know something happened. They could hear it.

The barber could hear it. He looked around. His scissors made a V.

His scissors always make a V.

But in this particular instant they made a V in a static manner. Usually the V changes. But right now he perks his ears up. His scissors pause in mid-cut. Hair falls on that thing he puts on the customer.

That lead thing?

No, you're thinking of the thing dentists put on you to keep the x-rays away from your gonads. But the dentist heard it too. Only no hair fell on the lead thing, and nothing stopped making a dynamic V and made, for a second, a static V in the dentist's office.

The dentist didn't care?

No, he looked up and contemplated also, but he wasn't using scissors.

Dentists don't cut things?

Well, they might, but not with shears.

Or chainsaws.

I certainly hope not. They primarily use drills and shiny pointed, cold metal instruments.

But oral hygene is important.

I realize that. I don't want to tarnish the image of dentists, I just wanted to say that dentists use the lead things, but when they have to cut things, they don't use shears.

But what then?

A dentist is a Doctor of Dental Surgery, so it must be a scalpel. But just how often do they need to cut something while dentisting? Not very often I imagine. Teeth are very hard.

Cutting is very easy?

No, not "difficult". "Hard". Like ice or steel. Teeth are hard like that.

So if a silo full of teeth exploded, it would be very dangerous?

That wouldn't happen. Teeth do not form dust. So your hired man could go in there smoking like the remains of a silo explosion and nothing would happen to him, because there would be no dust to burn.

So farmers could prevent silo explosions by filling their silos with teeth?

That would be a bad idea. If the silo was full of teeth, there would be no room for grain. The farmer's livlihood would be destroyed even without an exploding silo, because grain is his livlihood. That is why they use nitrogen and not teeth, because nitrogen leaves room for the grain.

Everything makes sense now. Good night.

Good night.