Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rever Space Station
Joel first blew something up when he was six. One of his action figures. He strapped the poor bastard to a rocket and launched him into space. The launch failed, of course. He never made it to space. Blew up well before breaking atmosphere and fell back to Earth in the form of hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic.
Joel’s fondness for explosions was largely discouraged by his parents and teachers and all other adults, but he never stopped pursuing it. It was one of the things that made him a target for other kids. They thought he was a freak, that he was going to build a bomb and blow up the school. They never understood that it wasn’t about the excitement of the explosion for him; it was the excitement of understanding why the explosion occurred and
