The Count Wizard of The Land of Three-Dimensional Printing
AM Survivor #17
In the Kingdom of Industry, where rivers of grease flowed beside mountains of iron ore, and smoke and the clatter of machines filled the air, there existed a most unusual enclave.
It was called the Land of Three-Dimensional Printing, and it was ruled by a Count-Wizard named Addifar Manufaric.
Addifar was no ordinary count. His diadem was not of gold but of intricately braided polyamide fibers, extruded by his own hands. His scepter was a dispensing tube for biodegradable biopolymer, and his cloak was sewn from fabric made of recycled PET bottles.
His castle—or rather, his workshop—did not stand atop the highest mountain, but lay hidden in the heart of a magical forest, where trees bore pellets made of algae and flowers dripped resin.
Addifar was an Inventor, a Wizard of Matter.
He could conjure everything out of nothing. His hands, always stained with beetroot dyes and turmeric, turned visions into reality.
For him, the greatest treasure was not coins in a vault, but the scent of a freshly printed object from wood flour, or the sight of a structure growing inside a printer like a magical plant in accelerated time.
His land was famous for its wonders: printers that released the fragrance of vanilla instead of smoke, materials that composted themselves after serving their purpose, turning into fertilizer for roses, and objects so beautiful they seemed stolen from a dream.
People traveled from the farthest corners of the Kingdom of Industry to marvel at the works of Addifar Manufaric.
Engineers from the Blades of the States gawked in disbelief at gears made of mycelium, harder than steel. Architects from the City of Concrete admired models of bridges made of cane sugar that could support the weight of their own doubts.
Addifar, standing in the glow of fluorescent lights powered by a turbine with printed blades, told them of a vision of a world where every object was born from the earth and returned to the earth without leaving behind a scar.
He enchanted. He seduced with vision.
His speeches at great guilds and fairs were like spells—listeners left with a spark of hope in their eyes and faith that the future would be beautiful, clean, and… printed.
But every kingdom has its sad secrets. And the secret of the Land of Three-Dimensional Printing was that its Count… did not want to grow up.
Addifar Manufaric loved only the Beginning—the birth of an idea, the thrill of experiment, the awe of the first imperfect prototype.
All the rest, all that “adult” alchemy of management, was for him like a bitter potion he would never swallow.
When Messengers from the Tax Office knocked at his workshop doors with scrolls covered in complicated tax formulas, Addifar hid among his printers. He pretended not to hear the knocking and whispered to his loyal assistant, Photopolymeric:
“Tell them, Photopolymeric, that the Count-Wizard is busy. That he is working on a new material… made of rose petals and drops of morning dew! That is far more important than their stamps!”
Photopolymeric, whose soul was as orderly as an accounting ledger, could only sigh. He managed all the “boring” side of the kingdom. He dealt with officials, paid the tribute to the Fire Guard for protection against sparks from heated nozzles, and tried to impose order on the chaos Addifar called “creative freedom.”
Deadlines? Addifar thought them an invention of petty minds.
When a client from the Seaport waited for a shipment of eco-friendly boat parts, the Count-Wizard, instead of overseeing production, would suddenly decide in the middle of the night that those parts could be printed from… sea salt!
And he would vanish into his lab for three days, leaving the order in limbo. His people, the subject-printers, walked around helpless, not knowing what to do. They waited for the Count’s commands, while he played with salt.
Managing people? To Addifar, people were walking, breathing sources of inspiration, not resources to be assigned tasks.
He convened councils that turned into festivals of ideas. Everyone could speak, dream, spin plans. But when it came time to decide what to do with Mr. Blacksmith’s overdue order from the Valley, Manufaric would suddenly notice an unusual cloud shape outside the window and declare that it must immediately be designed in 3D.
People loved him for his childlike joy, but also felt frustration, for the Land of Three-Dimensional Printing, though wondrous, trembled on shaky ground. There was no steady stream of gold to pay the wire workers, electricians, and suppliers of magical powders.
Addifar always had a choice: sit down with Photopolymeric over the monthly balance sheet, or travel to the Grand Convention of Inventors in Silverhold.
The choice was obvious.
He packed his newest, freshly printed marvel (say, a self-watering algae flowerpot) and set off. At the convention, he was a star. He returned with medals, applause, and dozens of new, fantastic ideas he wanted to implement immediately.
Photopolymeric, greeting him, had no joy in his eyes—only fatigue and a pile of unpaid bills.
One day, no less a figure than the Great Baron von Industrie himself arrived—a tycoon from the Kingdom of Industry.
A stiff man in a frock coat, with shoes that gleamed brighter than any printed surface.
He came with a concrete proposal: he wished to order a massive shipment of special eco-packaging for his products. It was a chance for stability, for prosperous years for the entire land.
The Baron sat in the throne room, which doubled as a sample warehouse, and laid out strict requirements: deadlines, specifications, quality control. Addifar listened for a while, but soon his gaze followed a butterfly that had flown in through the window. The butterfly’s wings bore an extraordinary structural pattern.
“You see, Baron,” Addifar suddenly interrupted, leaping from the throne, “all of this is so… stiff. Look at that butterfly! Its wings! If only we could print packaging with the same iridescent shimmer! I must study it! Photopolymeric, entertain our guest! I’ll be right back!”
And he ran off, leaving the Baron stunned and Photopolymeric devastated. Baron von Industrie left the land muttering about wasted time and shameful treatment.
Word of the incident spread quickly. Other nobles, who had already viewed Addifar with skepticism, ceased to take him seriously.
Orders dwindled. Gold drained from the treasury.
Photopolymeric, night after night, grayed while trying to patch holes in the royal budget with accounting magic—but even his magic had limits.
One stormy night, as wind battered rooftops of chipboard houses and wire fences threatened to collapse, Photopolymeric stood before Addifar. Not as a faithful servant, but as a sage who had seen the approaching end.
“My lord,” he began, his voice trembling not with fear but with sorrow, “your land falters. Your subjects hunger not for bread, but for stability. Your printers are silent, for there is no money for materials. You can conjure matter, O Great Manufaric, but you no longer conjure the future. A Count-Wizard must sometimes set aside his polyamide crown and take up a pen to sign decrees. He must sit on his throne not with a dispensing scepter, but with a payroll ledger. Otherwise… otherwise all will be lost. And your vision of a beautiful world will die before it is born.”
But Photopolymeric’s warning, like a raindrop on a hot pane of glass, evaporated upon contact with the Count-Wizard’s fevered mind.
Addifar looked at his servant with innocent surprise. “Lost? My dear, how can a vision be lost? Visions are immortal! And those… those bills?”—he waved at the pile of scrolls—“They are but dust on the surface of true beauty. You’ll see, as soon as I finish with this butterfly, everything will change!”
And he turned his back on his fate, immersing himself in designing a nozzle to mimic the insect’s wings. Photopolymeric stood silent, then, with a head full of bitter thoughts, left the chamber. It was his last attempt.
The fall came not with a crash, but with the hiss of a dying printer nozzle
First the wire workers and electricians left, unpaid for months. Then the suppliers of magical powders quietly withdrew, cutting the land off from raw materials. Factories, once temples of innovation, fell silent.
The machines that had once made wonders were now draped in dust, while only the wind whispered through corridors, carrying the sad rustle of abandoned dreams.
The last to close the castle gates was Photopolymeric. He came to Addifar, who was absorbed in the intricate sketch of a leaf vein, intended as a model for a new, lightweight lattice.
“My lord,” he said softly, “the treasury is empty. I cannot even pay the guards. The last printer has left. I… I too must go. Count Scrapmount has offered me a position overseeing his warehouses. It is work. Honest and paid.”
Addifar did not even look up. “Ah, yes, yes. Then go, Photopolymeric. One must be practical. I am on the verge of a breakthrough…”
Bowing deeply, the faithful servant left the castle, and the echo of his steps faded forever in its empty halls.
And so Addifar Manufaric was left alone
His kingdom shrank day by day, until it was reduced to a single grand chamber of the castle, which he still called his workshop. The rest fell into ruin, plundered by thieves or swallowed by the growing wild forest.
The Count-Wizard did not even notice when misery slipped into the castle and took its place at his side. His PET-bottle cloak became rags. His polyamide-fiber diadem cracked and was tied back with string. The great printers stood like mute statues, for he could not afford even the cheapest pellets.
In their place, he built small, primitive devices of his own, powered by hand cranks, spitting out trivial, worthless trinkets from mud, clay, and grass.
He lived in poverty, though he never saw it so. For him, it was still “creative asymmetry.”
He ate what he found in the forest or printed from edible pastes—pale, tasteless things that barely sated his hunger. Nights he spent by candles of beeswax he molded himself, still experimenting.
He designed ever more marvelous materials that never saw daylight. He drew plans for machines that might have changed the world, on the backs of old, unpaid invoices.
He did not see that his kingdom was now only four walls full of phantoms. That he was a ruler without subjects, a wizard without an audience, an inventor without a world that wanted his inventions.
So he sat in his lonely palace, among the ghosts of his unfulfilled visions, always experimenting.
He was an eternal child who refused to grow up, and for that refusal he paid the highest price—he condemned himself to live in a beautiful, but entirely pointless and abandoned fairy tale. A fairy tale of which he was the sole creator, the sole inhabitant, and the sole, entranced listener.
And the echo of his laughter, as he proclaimed another “breakthrough,” bounced from the walls and died in silence, finding no ear that wished to hear it.
this is, by far, one of the most creative and well writen tale in a very long time. And look that I had create a version of the poem "The raven", from Edgar Allan Poe, but talking about a 3D printer. I have a neck for this sort of thing, and I really enjoyed reading this tale. Shame it sounded to be not far from reality... )