Morrison and Williams also take their seats, across from from April and Pippi at the conference table, and Yang gives them a few more seconds before getting started. 

A picture of Ernst Stavro Blofeld appears on the screen, complete with with white Persian cat. "When you think of what a villain is, you probably think of this," she says. "Or this." the screen changes to a picture of Dr. Evil, finger by the side of his mouth. "Or even this." Dr. Evil was replaced with a picture of Thanos. "But," she says, picture changing to a stock photo of young and photogenic multicultural people in suits, "in fact, they look like this." 

"They look," she continues, ignoring April's expression, "like everybody else." 

"The reason that they look like everybody else is because 'villain' is not a state of mind or a value judgement. It's a job title." She presses another button on the remote, replacing the stock photo people with a slide with the words "What Does It Mean to Be a Villain?" in yellow, on a blue gradient background. 

As Yang continues the presentation, she explains that villains are not bad people, and not evil people. What they are, is professional disrupters: the people who look at systems and processes; find the weak spots, loopholes and unintended consequences of each of them, and then exploit them, either for their own advantage or the advantage of their client base.

These activities, she goes on to explain, are neither inherently good nor bad in themselves -- their "goodness" or "badness" was entirely dependent on the perspective of the observer. 

Disrupting the existing systems, though it may have temporary negative side effects for those who depend on them, often leads to innovation and stronger systems, leading to long-term improvements in the lives of the public-at-large. 

"So, is the information to propaganda ratio here going to improve at any point?"

"The reason why we give this presentation," she says, looking thoughtful, "is to give people a framework to think about the term, a framework for how to think about what we do here. The 'propaganda', as you call it, is the point." She's frowning a bit, brow furrowed. 

"Okay, well, I already knew that this is a volcano crime lair run by smooth-talking corporate types who like to feel good about themselves, so the presentation so far has been a bit wasted on me."

"If I could continue my presentation?" Eve says, looking slightly impatient. 

Morrison shakes her head. "Actually, let's not. The presentation is for people who have already bought into what we do here. April's having a much harder time buying into any of this, to say the least. She's at least partly only going along with this because it's the safest place for her to be at the moment. And deciding to be a lumberjack is still a close second." She smirks a little at the last bit. 

"Not a great thing if she's supposed to be the boss," Williams mused, reaching for one of the cardboard water bottles in the center of the table. 

"Yeah, I can't say I'm impressed by the pitch so far. I feel like living in a log cabin would be more fun."

"I think..." she says. "I think a more practical demonstration would be in order. Well, sort of practical." She turns to April. "How do you feel about going for another walk to see a little bit more of the island?" 

"Sure. Why not." To Pippi, "You coming?"

In answer to the question, Pippi steps up out of her seat, hops to the floor, and rubs herself up against April's shins, before taking a step back, clearly ready to follow. 

"This is the Chac Four," Morrison says, a short hike later, pointing to a shipping-container sized object that stands on its own concrete pad outside a lab complex. The top of the object has a bunch of tubes on top of it, all pointing up towards the sky.

"...what does it, uh, do?"

"The Chac Four -- that's the Mayan god of rain, by the way -- is the fourth iteration of a laser-based rainmaking machine that Regenwolke Systems -- one of your uncle's smaller technology companies -- is making for Mayland-Gibson under a subcontracting deal." 

"Does it work?"

"It does! You point the lasers up there at the clouds, it ionizes the water molecules in them and that helps develop rain, or something to that effect. It works well enough that we're on the fourth version of the thing. The first version of it was the size of the barn and not particularly portable. This version is small enough that it can be trucked around to where clouds are. There's one tooling around West Texas now."