🌻 The Clive Saga — CHAPTER 24

Clive and the Environment

“Kid, that big chunk of glue and wood you’ve got on the lathe — you call it epoxy? Just how are you going to control all the shavings and dust? You know that stuff isn’t going to break down like normal wood dust and shavings. You could have just stayed with all wood and saved the environment — and me. I’ve got a few of those static‑cling shavings in places I don’t want to talk about. You better make sure I get cleaned up when you do damage control and handle all the other waste.”

“Listen, Clive — oops, I mean El Zorro. I’ve been doing the best I can to control the dust and shavings, vacuuming them up instead of letting them decompose like normal wood shavings. They end up in my reusable vacuum bag and are emptied into a trash bag to be handled with the rest of the trash. I know that adds plastic to the landfill, but at least it’s controlled and part of the rest of the plastic that ends there. That’s my best option according to AI.”

“Kid, you have to know you can’t depend on AI to give you the right or necessarily the best option. You need to trust but verify.”

“Well, El Zorro, since ‘trust but verify’ is one of my slogans — learned from my old boss many years ago — you can believe I did some thinking on the problem before I asked AI. And Copilot is going to be reading this since I have it look over all our conversations to see if there are any insights I’ve missed. So that’s one organic, two inorganics, and one post‑mortal reviewing my workflow. If you have ideas on handling the mess…” I’d be happy to throw a drop cloth over you whenever you’re producing dust. Would that make you feel better? You wouldn’t have any shavings chafing your private areas, and it would make for a peaceful time for me to boot — no post‑mortal entity trying to tell me what to do every chance it gets. That’s a win‑win if I ever heard one.”

“Kid — if you dare try covering me up with a tarp, you will not appreciate what El Fuego Caliente will do. Once he gets a bit angry, things are going to get very hot very fast. Take my word for it, Kid — it won’t be pretty.”

“All right, El Zorro, I’ll leave you al fresco — and your little dog too.”

“Great, Kid, you’re finally listening to the one person best able to help you out. Now about this chunk of epoxy and wood you spent a good part of the day working on — well, El Fuego could have done a better job turning it than this. It’s pretty with the colors you introduced, but you’re going to end up with a pretty paperweight. Shouldn’t you be making something useful?”

“This is my first attempt — have you heard you need to walk before running?”

“Kid, this is more like crawling.”

“We’re done here, El Zorro. I can spend some time with people who actually like me instead of with you.”

“Not here to mollycoddle you, Kid. My job is to turn you into a real man.”