There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery - Neal Stephenson

Ted has normal-people teeth because he is old and grew up before this part of the world got Facebooked. After that, the people with education fled to places like Ames, Des Moines, Iowa City. Which includes dentists. A few mainline churches used to run charity dental clinics where you could get a bad tooth pulled, or whatever, but those are being chased away by these people.

See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,

Apparently these three had left half of the surviving population of China seriously pissed off at them, as well as making mortal enemies with a rogue, defrocked Russian organized crime figure. In their spare time they had stolen money from millions of T’Rain players, created huge problems for a large multinational corporation that owned the game, and, finally — warming to the task — mounted a frontal assault on al-Qaeda.