"Okay. Introduction to graphs." Cam appears a simple coordinate plane on the paper. "This line represents what's called an independent variable, something that changes and affects other stuff as it does - such as in this case number of this kind of coin in existence -" Tickmarks for one, two, three. "And then the other line represents whatever thing is changing in response, that you want to track, such as the value of the coin... does it happen to be a convenient fraction of any of the coins that's currently enjoying a fixed value?"

"I guess it's around half of this one?"

"Okay!" So he marks the Y axis accordingly. "When there was just one how much was it worth relative to that kind?"

"If you took its initial value and its current value together it'd be worth twice as much as that kind."

"- oh, uh, this dot here means it's - I might need to explain decimals. Unless you already have ways of representing partial things? I didn't get literacy with this language when I was summoned so I don't know."

"We have the words for halves and thirds?"

"Okay, I can write it as fractions instead -" He whites out the .5s. "So I'd write 'one half' as a one over a horizontal line over a two, because it's one of two parts of a whole, and one third as a one over a three, and so on. And you can also write ones over fours, or sevens over twenty-threes, or whatever you want, but this graph is not quite that sophisticated." Half and quarter marks appear.

"Okay, then.,.. it would've been worth one and a half, before you made one. And maybe a half and a third, when there were two of them."

"- a half plus a third?" Cam asks, marking (1, 1.5).

"Yeah."

"Five sixths," says Cam, adding more tickmarks and placing a dot. "Now it's half, you said?"

"About half, yeah. I think it's actually a little bit more."

A dot slightly higher than the half tickmark appears. "Now if I connect these three dots with a line -" A curve appears. "- I can guess how much it might be next time I make one." Line appears faintly extended toward the x-axis 4 position. "Let's see if I'm right." Coin!

" - about a third as much the reference coin, now."

Cam marks that! "Not too far off."

"I think - I'm not sure yet and we should graph more of them but what it feels like is - when there's one it gets a bonus for being unique, and then not counting that bonus you'd have a curve, only it's about to level out near the value that the things will have when there's thousands of them."

"- but surely these aren't in fact unique, they're just unique locally? Actually it's a little odd you don't have any duplicates to start with, I guess people don't carry much cash..."

"Unique in this court, or maybe unique in faeryland. I think things we can't get at don't matter much. If you dropped those in the ocean I'm sure they'd stop affecting anything."

"Huh. - I wonder if bills with different serial numbers distinct only in that way would count as unique."

"I don't know. .... we could test it."

American dollar bill and a fresh graph.

The universe thinks that this object is not very valuable. "I think the paper'd be worth more without the markings."

"Maybe it's because it's fiat and the issuing government is not nearby."

"That might do it."

Does the system like solid copper pennies?