question:  What do the jumbled clay strips represent?
context: Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction November 1959. Miss Abercrombie smoothed her smock down over trim hips and surveyed the other patients working at the long tables in the hospital's arts and crafts shop. Two muscular and bored attendants in spotless whites, lounged beside the locked door and chatted idly about the Dodgers' prospects for the pennant. Through the barred windows of the workshop, rolling green hills were seen, their tree-studded flanks making a pleasant setting for the mental institution. The crafts building was a good mile away from the main buildings of the hospital and the hills blocked the view of the austere complex of buildings that housed the main wards. She stopped behind a frowning, intense patient, rapidly shaping blobs of clay into odd-sized strips and forms. As he finished each piece, he carefully placed it into a hollow shell hemisphere of clay. The flying fingers continued to whip out the bits of shaped clay as the patient ignored the question. Thaddeus Funston continued to mold the clay bits and put them in place. "Atom bomb." I thought you said an 'atom bomb.'" That shows real creative thought. A tall, blond patient with a flowing mustache, put one more dab of paint on his canvas and stood back to survey the meaningless smears. At the clay table, Funston feverishly fabricated the last odd-shaped bit of clay and slapped it into place. With a furtive glance around him, he clapped the other half of the clay sphere over the filled hemisphere and then stood up. At the clay table, she carefully lifted the top half of the clay ball and stared thoughtfully at the jumbled maze of clay strips laced through the lower hemisphere. He stood there unmoving until a ward attendant came and took his arm an hour later to lead him off to the patients' mess hall. The sun set, darkness fell over the stilled hospital grounds and the ward lights winked out at nine o'clock, leaving just a single light burning in each ward office.
output:  Wires and circuitry from a bomb
options:  Thaddeus' way of labeling his creation  Wires and circuitry from a bomb  The discarded clay from his process  Rivers on a globe of the Earth