Humulone
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 0.05 nm. About 70,000 end to end would span the width of a human hair.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Humulone. An “alpha acid” to brewers.
- Height
- 1.2 nm, standing up.
- Weight
- 0.60 zeptograms
- Origins
- The yellow dust in the glands of hop cones.
- Habits
- Boiled, its ring shrinks by one carbon. That’s the bitter in beer.
- Weakness
- Sunlight, after boiling: it decays into the smell of light-struck beer.
- Associates
- Two near-twin brothers, cohumulone and adhumulone.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked HOPS in the freezer at HQ.
of them in an ounce of hop pellets, give or take.
Hops vary. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Humulone, No. 81. 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.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.