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All the scrapmetal was pretty large; other kleptomaniac adventurers must have raided this pile. That or the wind blew all the small pieces away. Either was equally plausible.
The scale required further compulsive investigation. I stepped onto it; the noise of stressed old gears rang over the steam and wind as the needle jumped to life. 114 pounds. Thank you, Uberbobian "we just ate yesterday" diet.
"Fawriel, write down my name and 114. Then weigh yourself," I commanded.
"Wait, why?" he asked, baffled.
"It looks like the lock on the dome has some kind of weight combination," I explained, "it clearly didn't have to do with the number of people on each plate."
He nodded, pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and stood on the scale. "125 'lbs'." He proceeded to explain my hypothesis to the rest of the group, who went along with it too.
Araches next. "121"
L33tz4n. "135. I th1nk it's the tail."
Fooruman stepped out of the canoe so I could put it on the scale. "40".
Uberbob was strenuously dragging a massive piece of metal with him. "426, including inventory. Man, I really gotta lay off the... whatever I last ate."
Lastly, Fooruman dramatically lept onto the scale. "It says... NOTHING!"
"Fooruman, you can't weigh nothing." I looked at the scale, which read 0 lbs. "Okay, how do you weigh nothing? Shouldn't you... er... float around?"
"You see, my good doctor," he began, "I do have a weight. A grand weight, the likes of which you have never seen, felt, or even tasted. However, I also have a negative mass. In most scales, with the exception of metric, these two measurements negate eachother."
"Fooruman, that doesn't make any sense."
"I've actually been breathing helium. I usually sound like James Earl Jones."
"Fooruman, that doesn't make any sense eith... bah, forget it." I snatched the paper from Fawriel. Its final reading was:
Shuriken - 114
Me - 125
Araches - 121
L33tz4n - 135
Fooruman's Canoe - 40
Uberbob - 426?
Fooruman - ?
I quietly wondered to myself how a scale that evidently goes over 430 could be read down to the pound.
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