My handwave is that it's not necessarily our periodic table.
It actually can't be—even if we go by Steel's more cautious calculation of 115 agents minus the transuranics, in 1979 there were (a) 106 elements in the periodic table according to the Royal Society of Chemistry's interactive time sink (b) including the transuranics. It can't be a one-for-one match because they have more. It's just still a bit weird to have it linked to the periodic table rather than to chemistry more generally.
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It actually can't be—even if we go by Steel's more cautious calculation of 115 agents minus the transuranics, in 1979 there were (a) 106 elements in the periodic table according to the Royal Society of Chemistry's interactive time sink (b) including the transuranics. It can't be a one-for-one match because they have more. It's just still a bit weird to have it linked to the periodic table rather than to chemistry more generally.