Chapter 10 teaser: MacGyver’s heart was racing as if he’d been running a marathon, but the sweltering day suddenly seemed icy. He gripped the edge of the rough worktable they’d set up for him, trying to force the shaking to stop, feeling a splinter from the mangy wood digging into his palm. He was shivering as if an arctic breeze had slammed into him.
There were almost too many possibilities, too many choices. MacGyver looked at the collection of chemicals in front of him.
I could just about grab any two at random, dump ‘em in the same container, and get a reaction. If it didn’t burn or sizzle or explode, it’d release toxic gases.
When I was a kid, one shining Christmas my dad gave me my very first chemistry set. I can’t remember much else that happened that whole winter; the only thing that mattered in the whole world was that Mister Einstein Little Chemical Laboratory – okay, really it was a Lionel-Porter Chemcraft set, but that’s not what my mom called it. Especially when I started out, Christmas afternoon, by immediately blowing up a perfectly harmless shoebox.
My grandpa didn’t say much about the bangs and flashes, just, “Careful, Bud. It’s a lot easier to knock things down than to build ‘em up again.” But a couple weeks later, in the middle of a lesson on fly-tying, he told me all about dynamiting fish. In gruesome detail. I got the message.
Harry was right, of course. It’s funny how I ended up spending way more time learning how to keep things from going boom – bomb disposal is all about taking apart the puzzles, seeing where someone’s urge to destroy is going, and stopping them from getting there. I didn’t like the military and I didn’t like Viet Nam, but I loved the work and the challenge and the feeling that I could save lives by thinking my way to safety – safety for me, my buddies, and whole villages of innocent people.
Creation oughta be easier than destruction. How come it’s harder?Follow the link for the full chapter:
Chapter Ten: Complex-Compound Or, to begin at the beginning:
Chapter One: Present Imperfect
