I had to call Jerry for a ride home from the trailer park because I couldn’t walk. My foot had swelled up roughly to the size of child’s party balloon.

Me and Meegan made a plan to meet up once my foot got better and investigate what JoyTech was doing experimenting with geothermal energy. Then she made me go wait at the top of the road because she doesn’t agree with using gas-powered vehicles for transportation. I told her it was bio-diesel, but she didn’t care.

Anyway, I made it home. It wasn’t hard to convince Jerry that the hospital was not the answer. And I even made it up to my room without having to answer too many questions. Then I did a bit of research on geothermal energy.

The big environmental conspiracy theory when it comes to geothermal power is that using it too much will cause the core temperature of the earth to go down, eventually causing our planet to spin off its axis or stop spinning, or something else equally science fictional and dubious.

More realistic problems related to the environment are things like:

- The destruction of ecologically important areas, like the Coal Mouth Hot Springs.

- The use of toxic chemicals, and the release of dangerous and toxic emissions during the process of extraction.

- The potential for depleting a source of geothermal energy to the point where it is destroyed.

It’s not a perfectly renewable resource, especially when it’s being used heavily - for example, by a plant, as a opposed to a private home.

And I’m not just after JoyTech for doing this, or for taking Meegan’s ancestral land. The reason I found out about the geothermal thing in the first place is because I knew JoyTech was keeping a secret about something.

If geothermal is part of positive future, why would a company that loves to brag about their ecological stewardship cover up the existence of a geothermal site with smokestacks that do nothing but emit smoke from burning garbage???

It makes no sense. I’ve got to get back on my feet and get more information.

THE THROTTLER, as she calls herself, took me back to her place. She lives with her grandma at a trailer park just up Blood River from the JoyTech plant.

She berated me the entire time for complaining about my foot, then she handed me over to her grandma, who rips off my shoe, pulls the slug out with a pair of pliers, then pours about an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol over the hole.

And the whole time I can’t even wince without the grandma saying sharply, “nothing broken, boy!,” and THE THROTTLER muttering insults at me for being, in her words, ‘a huge puss.’

To top it all off, somehow this chick gets her hands on Mrs. Brisby, and that traitorous rat just lies in THE THROTTLER’s lap like she just died and went to heaven.

So I’m lying on this family’s kitchen table, trying to catch my breath, and then suddenly my savior/captor is firing questions at me. “Why do you wear a mask?” “Why were you at JoyTech?” “Why did you attack the scientists?” “Why don’t you carry a weapon?”

I finally proposed a trade-off. I’d answer her questions, if she’d answer mine.

So check out these little factoids:

Turns out THE THROTTLER, whose real name is Meegan, is part of this tiny “non-recognized tribal nation” of American Indians that used to live in the area where the JoyTech plant now resides. They were politically autonomous until the whole Conurbation thing happened, and then they slipped under the Conurban Council’s radar, which is how JoyTech was able to buy their land.

The only thing Meegan’s tribe had going for it (her words!) were these Coal Mouth hot springs, that were originally discovered when the tribe sold the land to a mining company. But when the hot springs caverns were unearthed by digging, the tribe got all pissed off, said the land had some spiritual value or something, and took it back.

They were able to do this because all the miners had been hired by the mining company from the tribe, so they just kind of revolted. Meegan’s pretty proud of it. Her grandfather was one of the leaders or something. (Check it out: she let me toon his pic!)

Even since then, they’ve been sort of guarding it and keeping it a secret. No one knew about it because it never got put on a tourist map or anything, but apparently, JOYTECH knew about it, because they booted Meegan’s tribe off the land (literally, like, with giant booting machines), and set up some experimental geothermal lab down there.

Now, according to Meegan, her tribe’s been petitioning the Conurban Council to get their land back, to no avail, and the kicker is that they can’t even get it listed as an ecological preserve or anything, because no one knew about it in the first place. Again, according to Meegan, the whole area was covered in indigenous species of plants and animals that are on the brink of extinction, but JoyTech has all the power now and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

Sound familiar? How do they get away with this stuff?