Quote Originally Posted by Wraith View Post
I must admit, while I have utter confidance that Manticoran is quite straight-faced in his reason for being unable to play, the phrase "there's an emergency at the reactor which I have to be there to solve" does conjure up all sorts of heroic and impressive images.
Bioreactor. There's a difference.

What Manticoran makes in his bioreactor is probably proprietory, hence why I didn't ask.

The reason why it's a work emergency, is that the conditions inside a bioreactor which are perfect for the microorganisms they want, are also generally perfect for microorganisms they don't want, thus you end up with a microbial war of genocide inside the reactor with the engineered critters (which are generally innocuous) versus wild-type critters which have defences.
Given that bioreactors can be tens of litres in size, having that much growth media teeming with something like C.botulinum or S.aureus is going to be a major health hazard. If it were infected with something like anthrax, the CDC and Homeland Security are going to take a sudden and extreme interest in Manticoran and his company.

Even if it weren't something hazardous, it's a significant chunk of time and money for the company to flush and clean the reactor vessel then restart the batch.