Ethylene
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.02 nm. A medium apple is about three hundred million times wider.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Ethylene. Also goes by ethene.
- Height
- 0.24 nm. Six atoms, all told.
- Weight
- 0.047 zeptograms
- Build
- Two carbons, double-bonded. Flat as a sheet of paper.
- Habits
- A ripening apple makes more of it, then works on the neighbors.
- Known for
- A plant hormone that’s a gas: the first gas messenger ever found.
- First seen
- Ancient fig growers gashed figs to ripen them. This was why.
- Record
- Stripped street trees bare near leaky gas lamps.
- Caught
- By a Russian botanist whose peas grew sideways in his gassy lab.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked APPLE in the fridge at HQ.
of them given off every hour by one ripe apple, give or take.
Apples vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Ethylene, No. 53. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
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