The next morning, Jonathan met the helpers the king promised him for the first time.

Not one of those had magical powers or relatives with magical powers, and no one was noble, not even the scribe. This, Jonathan thought, was likely not by accident.

They convened in a large area on the school grounds, it even had a roof. No walls, but that was easily fixed if it became necessary.

As soon as everyone was there, Introductions began.

The carpenter, Mr Timothy Lignum, was an older man, at least forty years old, who seemed to find the project interesting.

Marcus Aurum was a goldsmith, a good one in fact. He did not really think about the challenge and seemed to be disinterested in everything.

The last person, who would form his core team, but not the least, was Scribe Julius Atramento. He was a young man, barely in his twenties if Jonathan's guess was correct, but he seemed competent and had an open mind. Like the carpenter, he was ready for work, in fact, he seemed downright enthusiastic about the project, even if it was designed to put him out of his job, which Jonathan found strange.

Not unwelcome, but strange. One would assume that people would not try to abolish their main source of income and also be happy about it!

After the introductions were over, Jonathan began to speak: “So, we have two tasks to fulfil. The first task is to produce paper. I will come back to the specifics later, but the second task is arguably more important, even if somewhat useless without paper or replacement material. That second task is the production of a machine called, at least in my world, printing press. The name is descriptive but unimportant for now. Back to our first task. The production of paper is possible on a massive scale, and it should be pretty easy to make it economically viable, but we must first find out how to produce the stuff. I do not know the specifics of this. I will tell you what I do know and then we need to experiment. I do not think that we will succeed on the first, second or even fifth try. There is too much that can go wrong. So let’s begin with the things I know about paper production for absolute certainty. I know that modern paper is made almost entirely out of wood, processed in a way I do not know. Practically every sheet of paper besides that is produced out of old paper, in a process we call recycling. The next thing I know is that paper is normally decoloured, but I do not know if that is an aesthetic choice or a necessity. I also know how the process of producing paper is called, or at least how a part of it is called. It is called to draw paper. Another thing I know is that you need a special sieve to do that. I once had a small paper making set for kids, an experiment that is not dangerous at all, you understand, and I will try to use that knowledge to create the sieve. What we use as base materials is sadly not applicable, because that set used paper scraps as the base material. Another thing that I know for certain is that we need to use water. The base materials must be dissolved, or at least as near that, in water. Also, after we drew the paper, we need to get the fluid out of the mass. Pressure will be used for that, out of several reasons, as well as time. Now we come to the things where I am not entirely certain. The first of those are the base materials. I have read somewhere that even textiles were used for a time, but they fell out of favour for a reason unknown to me. I think the fibres are important in the base materials, so we should look for materials with those, but I am not certain. I am certain that they must be pre-processed in some way, but I do not know how exactly. What I have with me,” Jonathan reached into a pocket of his robe and pulled out a small piece of unused graph paper: “is not the thing we want to achieve. It is something that was developed at least centuries after what we need and want to achieve. But it will give us a starting point, and maybe someone has an idea after seeing the real thing.”

He gave the sheet of paper around and continued speaking: “But keep in mind that we only need a cheap to produce material on which you can write. So if you manage to find that, even if it is not paper, I am happy and I am hoping that you will be, too.”

The others agreed and then Jonathan continued: “Marcus Aurum, your task will be to produce the sieves. Timothy Lignum will help you with the frame. Julius Atramento, you will help me think about how the rest of the process should look like, and what machines we need." After this, they all went to work.