Day 57: Arts and Crafts Room (third shift)

[toxicspiderman]

They hadn't handed him a cane this morning, and they'd been right.  His knee was healing.  It ached, but it held his weight.  Going out to the greenhouse and standing on it for a few hours was a bad idea, though.  If it gave out on him tonight, what would he say.  "Sorry, dudes, a bunch of tomatoes were more important.  Like actual tomatoes."  That sounded stupid in his head, so he'd stay indoors.  

His hands itched. For something to do. Metaphorical sense, not a rash.  Volunteering for KP would be a) pointless, b) not fix the standing-up problem, and c) suck, so he didn't.  It was almost worth trying just to see the expressions on  the goons faces, but the slim possibility that they'd take him up on it outweighed the chance to look under the mask Landel/Aguilar had put on the place by day.  

Instead, he limped over to the craft room and hassled them into bringing out the tray labeled 'Paul Quincy'.  Expressionless surprise was a funny expression.  You could tell new cops by it.  A little widening of the eyes, an absence of fidgeting for a few seconds.  The old ones weren't surprised by anything.  These guys had expected him to try and shoot the place up with a set of safety scissors or something.  Not to pull out craft supplies and ignore them completely, except for a glance or two at their initial reactions.   

A Zodiac wasn't much more than an inflatable pool raft with a big fucking motor on the back.  Put enough power back there and you could make one out of a brick.  No grace, but it went like he'll.  S.T. liked them. 

The boat that was taking shape on the table was of a different lineage.  About the right size for G.I. Joe to take his  entire platoon along when he went canoodling with Barbie while Ken was off on a business trip, it was long and slim.  Right now it was indistinguishable from a dinosaur-model ribcage, given that he'd started at the spine -- oops, keel -- and worked up.

[Free]

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[tightsofmight]

At first, Peter wasn't sure what Sangamon was getting at. Then he traced the imaginary figure of Jessica Rabbit in the air and Peter squawked in horror. "No! I mean - aside from the obvious!! Geez, dude!" He shrunk down in his seat and shielded his eyes with a hand at his brows. That did nothing to hide the striking resemblance his face was making to a piping bowl of tomato soup.

Was he offended on his behalf, or Jessica's? Because if Sangamon was implying that she was mannish then he was off the hook. In a fashion. They were identical in the face, true, but she had boobs (sorta). And hips (if you squinted). And Peter himself had a manly...strapping frame. Nothing girly about him. Surely no one would ever mix the two up. Even if Jessica got a hair cut.

Peter took an errant wisp of bangs between his thumb and forefinger, examining the length compared to his brow. Maybe he should get one. Just in case.

His nose wrinkled in response to the glue about the same time as the man beside him started tearing up. Now they wore matching stinkfaces. Peter's, however, was at least half genuine, seeing as how his many efforts at retaining the institute's collective insanity were the day's featured laughing stock yet again. "Well - come on, I was only trying to do the guy a favour. He bought it, didn't he?" Peter was downright peeved by now. Sangamon needed to leave this place and take his confounded logic and reason with him.

"What's wrong with the twin thing? I like the twin thing. I'd believe it." Peter shrugged. "Okay, maybe not, because for it to be a boy and a girl combo the only option would be dizygotic twins, and so they would just look like a regular brother and sister rather than anything identical. But not many people think about that. Or know it. And we can pass it off as that odd time when siblings really are impossible to tell apart. Why would anyone question it in the first place?"

Augh. Just. Whatever. Peter's face found a new home in his hand. "You know what, dude? I'm really sick of talking about myself. There is no happiness here. Can we scrap this topic? What is your life like? You've...read about me in some capacity, and I know nil about you. What's fair about that?"

[toxicspiderman]

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."