Accompanied by Donna Jones, a lawyer for SunRay Farm, Jonathan Fitzman testifies before the Senate Committee in the “Heath Cliff Disaster Hearings.” Fitzman is instructed to use the word “situation” rather than “disaster.” Jones repeatedly declares that there is no evidence Biolene was involved in the situation. Fitzman, voluble and physically restless, thinks it’s impossible that his ergonyms could be responsible. Ergonyms in the Biolene solution are alive, but a combination of other substances keeps them from reproducing. He still maintains that if the Biolene were spilled, the other substances would evaporate, exposing the ergonyms to oxygen and killing them. Fitzman’s new project is to keep fuel tanks in cars warm in the winter so that people driving Biolene-powered cars “don’t have any difficulties” (116).

Fitzman earnestly testifies that he never intended to harm anyone, and had he known that the ergonyms were dangerous, he wouldn’t have introduced them to the world. Senator Haltings suggests that because ergonyms divide so rapidly there must be mutations—and perhaps a mutated ergonym could survive in oxygen. Fitzman agrees but argues that mutations are defective copies and generally don’t live. Haltings speculates that given the huge number of ergonyms in a gallon of Biolene, if one mutant ergonym survives, it will immediately begin to replicate.