With one eye on the Shovel and Burn bozos (wish I had more pics to toon of THEM!), I ventured deeper into the caverns that formed the base of the JoyTech smokestacks. There were maybe a dozen pools in all, some bubbling, some still.

I’d already guessed that this must be some sort of geothermal energy project. Halogen lights were strung up along the ceiling like someone had put time and effort into setting them up like that. Each pool was equipped with pipes and sensors going in and out.

Actually, they kind of reminded me of Aurora there, in that white hospital bed, all hooked up to machines and tubes.

The other thing I couldn’t help but notice was this rumbling noise, and a vibration coming from beneath me. I figured there must be levels below this one, but then, at the far end of the cavernous area, I came to a truck supporting some kind of machine. I can only describe the machine as looking a hell of a lot like a drill, only small and futuristic, like something out of Armageddon (lame ref, I know!).

I was still staring at the drill when the GeoTherm team clocked in. All of a sudden, a sliding metal door at the far end of the cavern opened, and a team of science-types in white lab coats spilled in, arguing noisily amongst themselves.

Not wanting to waste the element of surprise, I ran at them, reaching into my jacket as I did. Suddenly, I had six scientists calming pointing handguns at me.

Now I know why the Shovel and Burn guys are so jumpy.

I skidded to a stop in front of the group, producing from my pocket one very scared white lab rat.

That got their attention.

“Where did you get that rat?” One woman demanded, and then they were all talking very loudly, firing (excuse the pun) questions at me and arguing with each other. Who in their right minds would give these people guns, I wondered.

Then one man’s voice stood out among all the others. “On the ground!” he was screaming. “Get on the ground!”

Ah crap.

Mrs. Brisby began scrambling up my arm towards my pocket. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let these scientists take me down, or get their hands on Mrs. Brisby. I needed answers, but how could I fight six hysterical people with guns?

“Hit the dirt!” yelled the guy who watched too many movies. He glared at me fiercely through his safety goggles.

I shook my head, “Can’t do it.”

That’s when I got shot in the foot.

I’ve been messing around with Toon Video a bit more, and I turned one of my recent comics into a mini-movie. I’m actually kinda surprised by how well the tooning software works with videos I’ve made myself.

Check out the part near the end where I’m swinging up onto a narrow platform. That’s one of my favorite ways into JoyTech.

Unfortunately, after a couple days of trying to forget about it, the question of what JoyTech is doing here in Ring City is back in my head. I’m gonna call Aurora about it right now. She’s the expert on all this emissions control stuff.

The music in the video is by Stefan Ternemar. Check out his MySpace.

Here’s another full comic. Images tooned, as always, by Toon-Photo!

Okay, maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s an almost anti-planet-friendly hysteria building up in Ring City right now?

I don’t know if it’s because people like to argue, or because they don’t want to change their lifestyle, but more and more I’m hearing “global warming doesn’t exist,” and “there’s no proof that we created the holes in the ozone layer,” and “looking for alternative fuel sources is a waste of time.”

No kidding!

In Ring City, first it was this “recycling doesn’t work” thing, and now there’s all the trouble surrounding the JoyTech plant. All in the space of a week. WTF?

Some background: When all the towns and cities that got surrounded by the Ring Road became the Western Conurbation Area a,k.a. Ring City, there was all this green space in the middle that divided a few of the bigger cites, and only had a few small towns (or ‘neighborhoods’ as they’re now called) in it.

I live in one of those towns.

The Conurbation Council originally promised that all the green space would become protected parkland.

Then the JoyTech Global Improvement Company came to town.

They bought up a huge chunk of land between my ‘neighborhood’ and the urban center across the Blood River, and built the plant, outbuildings, and sprawling parking and warehousing areas surrounding it.

So much for green space, and so much for clean air.

The JoyTech plant belches black smoke 24/7, viololating “every CO2 emissions standards law in existence,” according to Aurora. Standards which, Jerry is quick to point out, are already pathetically low.

The point of all this is to say that Aurora has somehow miraculously mobilized this big protest, planned for tomorrow in front of the JoyTech plant, and we just found out that there’s going to be a counter-protest to protest Aurora’s protest!

They say the air quality in the area hasn’t gone down, and that the original protesters are just left-wing nutjobs that are trying to destroy the industries that built this country.

It seems like everybody is missing a simple truth here: the planet is fragile. Our ecosystem is not indestructible, and the nicer we are to it, the longer it will take care of us.

Show me all the facts and statistics in the world to prove that a problem doesn’t exist, you’ll never convince me that what we’re doing to the ecosystem is without consequence.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I’ll be going as my regular self, because something tells me they’ll have some thugs on crowd control that might recognize my mask.

As usual, all the photos in this post were tooned using Toon-Photo.

Nothing good ever lasts. That stupid old saying is true, isn’t it? Every time you think something’s going to be different, it’s not. Every time you think someone’s going to change, they don’t.

Every time you’re convinced that the evil multinational corporation you’ve been trying to take down is going to do something good for a change, they wriggle out of it.

No rest for the wicked. Not even the toonified wicked.

The Conurban Council formed this special committee that was supposed to be in charge of independently overseeing quality control at the JoyTech recycling center, but as it turns out, there is no quality to control.

What the special committee found inside the center was a big warehouse filled with boxes. Nothing like the pictures supposedly taken by the Daily Ringer when they did a big editorial on the place.

Predictably, JoyTech blamed the whole thing on the same ‘independent contractors’ that were supposedly at fault for the Blood River dumping. Said contractors have managed to disappear, unnamed and without penalty.

Now the recycling center is closed until further notice, and the worst news is that everybody in Ring City is jaded about recycling now, like they think that because of what happened, recycling doesn’t work!

Yes, let’s just let the city turn into a bit toxic waste dump. It will look pretty, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland kind of way.

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last few days. I decided to get out of town for the weekend, do some camping, and hide my freaked-out head.

Not very superhero-like, I know, but I figured it was a good idea to disappear until the heat died down a little.

I took my car because it’s probably the last time I’ll drive it before I sell its gas-guzzling ass.

I thought when I got my license and the car a couple of years ago that my life was complete. Then, I could never have guessed where I’d be right now.

Camping was alright. I hiked to the base of Mount Tar, where Jerry used to take me when I was little.

I spent all Saturday getting up the mountainside, only to find a condo development going up to the west, and to the north, a really spectacular view of some heavily deforested land!

Not the landscape I remembered.

I did see about eight eagles circling the mountain around me, which was amazing. I never knew they flew in groups. Apparently, it’s called a convocation of eagles when they all fly together like that.

If you’re life ever seems crazy or overwhelming, I highly recommend climbing a mountain.

Seeing the eagles made me feel really optimistic, because eagles used to be endangered. In the 1950s, there were less than 1000 left in all of the US. But we stopped hunting and poisoning them with DDT, and now there are over 100, 000 across the country, and they’re off the endangered species list.

I figured that kind of means that even when things are really bad, it is possible to fix the problem, and make the future better, instead of worse.

And believe it or not, things kept getting better from there. I thought I might come home to a mess, but when I got back yesterday, Jerry was all cool, and he said Aurora had dropped something off for me.

It turned out to be a copy of the school paper, except we don’t have a school paper, or we didn’t, until yesterday.

Aurora started it, I guess, because her name is on the front page under editor-in-chief, and all the photos are toonified, and who else would do that?

It’s called the Ring High Righter. And the very first front-page headline:

VIGILANTE RECYCLER EXPOSES JOYTECH BLOOD RIVER DUMP!

I guess on Friday, when I was mysteriously absent, some JoyTech thugs showed up at school asking a bunch of questions about the ‘vigilante recycler.’

Aurora asked them if it was true that the recycling was actually being dumped in the river, and they dragged her off and questioned her the whole day!

I haven’t talked to her yet, but the scene must have been bad enough to get her to start a school paper, and report the whole thing on the front page!

I don’t know if anyone will take the report seriously yet, but I’ve had a stupid grin on my face ever since I saw it. Did I ever mention that Aurora is the most perfect, wonderful person on the planet?

Yeah. She is. She’s perfect, and anything can be fixed.

Another night hauling trash out of Blood River.

Didn’t sleep. I was a zombie all day at school, but through the haze, I could hear people talking. They had heard about the garbage piles in front of the recycling center, but everyone thought it was just random.

Random. Two nights in a row.

Of course.

The Daily Ringer called it “a test of JoyTech’s ability to handle high-volume drops.”

They did call the anonymous source of the garbage a “vigilante recycler,” which makes me feel a bit better. Weird thing is, I’m not actually depressed that no one sees what’s going on yet. I kind of figured this would take more than a couple nights of work.

Plus I’m totally sleep-deprived. During free period, I actually pulled my mask out of my backpack and put it on. What could I have been thinking when I did that. I was standing by myself by the bleachers, and Aurora was a little ways away, talking with New Guy and a bunch of people.

Only Aurora saw me, but she took a pic, tooned it, and emailed it to me. Which is saying what?

Anyway, point is, I slept a bit since then, not feeling so crazy. Back to the trenches tonight. It’s Wednesday, which means JoyTech will probably be dumping at the Ridge, at the same time that I’m cleaning up their mess a mile downriver.

Ha.

I keep thinking about Chad Pregracke. The work he does with his non-profit, Living Lands and Waters, forces people to see the things they want to make disappear.

When I was looking at the Living Lands and Waters stats of things they’ve pulled out of the Mississippi, I couldn’t believe the stuff that people thought they could disappear by throwing it in the river – beds, fridges, cars – and that’s just the stuff people actually dump in the river. It doesn’t count all the crap that ends up getting randomly washed downstream.

What Chad does that’s real superhero style is not just clean up the river, but bring the garbage and the waste back into the light, where we can see the consequences of our actions.

When I was researching him and what he does last week, I never expected to find myself in a situation so much like his, but here I am.

I might not be able to single-handedly clean up Blood River, but I think I can get this party started.

Just to remind myself that I’m not crazy, I hiked up the river after school. About a mile and half past the Ridge, I came across this bend in the river that’s really slow and lazy. The banks were literally packed with garbage. Check out this toonified photo of the mess.

I guess JoyTech didn’t research their dumpsite very well.

At first I thought the best thing I could do was find a way to clean up the river, but no matter how much I do, JoyTech’s just going to keep dumping, or find somewhere else to hide their mess, which means I’ve got to stop it first, clean it up second.

And to stop it, I’ve got to expose the situation. Unfortunately, I don’t think getting everyone to hike down to the bend in the river with me is going to do the trick. Not because they wouldn’t care. Because they wouldn’t follow me down to the river.

The only way I’m going to prove to Aurora, and to everyone, that JoyTech is dumping in Blood River is by coming up with some tangible evidence.

I’m gonna talk to Jerry. Like I said, he’s been working on some stuff.