Simon was a desk jockey for Petrochem, although he never made much headway. He jumped at an opportunity to impress his bosses by coordinating the illegal disposal of some hydrogen fluorine. When that went went up in smoke he found himself being made the scapegoat for the resulting disaster. Lucky (?) for him, another company decided they could use someone like him who knew where some of the Petrochem bodies were buried, and extracted him from the potentially deadly situation.