Teenagers. They were so easy to piss off. Mention anything to do with sex, their own appearance, or any implication they might care about anyone related to them, and they rolled up like a porcupine that had been kneed in the balls. A sullen, retrograde progression.
Retrograde motion was when a planet appeared to move backwards in the heavens, confounding primitive astronomers who constructed elaborate theories as to how that would work and still keep themselves at the center of the universe. Just like teenagers. Then a few heretics put out an eccentric theory and, like all geeks, refused to budge more out of scientific devotion than any practical purpose. The fact that they Earth revolved around the sun wouldn't have practical implications for centuries. The baroque orreries with layers that would make a Spirograph shit its pants would have handled astrologers and ship captains until the twentieth. S.T. knew the type. Hell, on a few subjects he'd been known to be a little stubborn himself. So long as his pronouncements on The Harbor didn't endanger Fish Friday, the Pope didn't give a fuck about sludge in the Mystic or wanna-be Satanists making a spectacle of themselves. So he and the Pope were cool. Dolmacher might be be in trouble, but he had the pasty jowls of an intractable Lutheran as floppy, wriggly armor.
There he went, thinking about that asshole again. Damn. And Peter hadn't asked about his supervillain's idiot henchmen. He'd asked about S.T. And Sangamon Taylor, having attained the mythical state called adulthood, didn't mind talking about himself.
"Eco-activist. I go out in a little boat and get people fired." It was almost never the right people, but that was life. "Not whalers. That's a different crowd." He grinned. Boone had jumped ships, but he'd always been more of a generalist. S.T. stuck to the pollution beat. "We hold corporations responsible for the toxic shit they slip into everything." He spread the last smear of epoxy over the end of a spar and held it down. "Take this stuff. Could be a dozen carcinogens in here. A tube here and there isn't going to kill you unless you eat it. And once it dries it's pretty safe. We think. Which just means no one has proved a connection yet."
(The health hazards of Bisphenol A, a major component in epoxy resin, would take another two decades to render this statement prescient instead of paranoid. In the interim, it would also be a major component in reusable water bottles, the kind whose sale tracked the dawning of a nascent environmental consciousness across the nation, one that necessitated bottles for carbon-filtered water as a yuppie status symbol rather than the province of duck-squeezers and hikers.)
He hadn't ever busted a glue factory, but there was always tomorrow. "The problem isn't the glue. It's the other crap -- plasticizers, hardeners, color-coding." Peter was a Chen nerd. He'd figure it out. "The reagents they use to make it. Somewhere there's a plant with a pile of excess hydrocarbons and a bottom line to meet. Probably a river nearby. You do the math." His grin grew wider. "And when they succumb to greed, I'll be there with a test tube and a few bags of quick-set cement. Maybe even made at the same plant."
no subject
Retrograde motion was when a planet appeared to move backwards in the heavens, confounding primitive astronomers who constructed elaborate theories as to how that would work and still keep themselves at the center of the universe. Just like teenagers. Then a few heretics put out an eccentric theory and, like all geeks, refused to budge more out of scientific devotion than any practical purpose. The fact that they Earth revolved around the sun wouldn't have practical implications for centuries. The baroque orreries with layers that would make a Spirograph shit its pants would have handled astrologers and ship captains until the twentieth. S.T. knew the type. Hell, on a few subjects he'd been known to be a little stubborn himself. So long as his pronouncements on The Harbor didn't endanger Fish Friday, the Pope didn't give a fuck about sludge in the Mystic or wanna-be Satanists making a spectacle of themselves. So he and the Pope were cool. Dolmacher might be be in trouble, but he had the pasty jowls of an intractable Lutheran as floppy, wriggly armor.
There he went, thinking about that asshole again. Damn. And Peter hadn't asked about his supervillain's idiot henchmen. He'd asked about S.T. And Sangamon Taylor, having attained the mythical state called adulthood, didn't mind talking about himself.
"Eco-activist. I go out in a little boat and get people fired." It was almost never the right people, but that was life. "Not whalers. That's a different crowd." He grinned. Boone had jumped ships, but he'd always been more of a generalist. S.T. stuck to the pollution beat. "We hold corporations responsible for the toxic shit they slip into everything." He spread the last smear of epoxy over the end of a spar and held it down. "Take this stuff. Could be a dozen carcinogens in here. A tube here and there isn't going to kill you unless you eat it. And once it dries it's pretty safe. We think. Which just means no one has proved a connection yet."
(The health hazards of Bisphenol A, a major component in epoxy resin, would take another two decades to render this statement prescient instead of paranoid. In the interim, it would also be a major component in reusable water bottles, the kind whose sale tracked the dawning of a nascent environmental consciousness across the nation, one that necessitated bottles for carbon-filtered water as a yuppie status symbol rather than the province of duck-squeezers and hikers.)
He hadn't ever busted a glue factory, but there was always tomorrow. "The problem isn't the glue. It's the other crap -- plasticizers, hardeners, color-coding." Peter was a Chen nerd. He'd figure it out. "The reagents they use to make it. Somewhere there's a plant with a pile of excess hydrocarbons and a bottom line to meet. Probably a river nearby. You do the math." His grin grew wider. "And when they succumb to greed, I'll be there with a test tube and a few bags of quick-set cement. Maybe even made at the same plant."