Майкл Крайтон: The Andromeda Evolution

The call had come from Eternal Vigilance.

Ensconced in his private office at Peterson Air Force Base, Stern had at first reacted to the emergency notification from Colonel Hopper with mild annoyance. Although false positives would normally be eliminated before reaching him, his assumption was that one had slipped through.

Dismissing an incongruous screensaver of kittens shooting rainbows from their mouths (a gift from his youngest daughter), the general accepted Hopper’s information push. As his screen flooded with images of the anomaly, he leaned back in his chair with fingers knotted over his stomach and closed his eyes in frustration.

“Colonel Hopper. What is this?” he asked.

“I have a theory.”

“You have a theory. I’m late for my lunch. Since the promotion, they’ve got my days regimented into ten-minute increments. There are only so many of these increments in one day. You are occupying one now. I would rather it be occupied by a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich.”

“Yes, sir. Did you see the trajectory?”

“I see a static object in the jungle, Colonel. There is no trajectory.”

“On April tenth of this year, the Tiangong-1 Chinese space station fell into destructive reentry and disintegrated. That anomaly is perfectly equatorial, and directly in the debris trajectory of the fallen station. You may recall the incident was code-named Heavenly Palace.”

General Stern sat up abruptly.

“We can’t confirm what the Chinese were experimenting with on that space station,” Hopper added.

“But we have a pretty good guess, don’t we?” responded Stern, the data on his screen.

This problem had just moved into a sphere of his thinking that outranked meals. It was an area that concerned not only national defense but the defense of the species.

The general’s mouth moved as if to speak, and then it closed.

“Good work, Colonel. We’ll take on your feeds and any information you’ve collected. I’m . . . why, I can’t believe I’m saying this . . .

“I am now issuing a Wildfire Alert.”

IT IS A little-known fact that human logistics experts have not independently planned or executed a major military endeavor for the United States of America since early in the Vietnam War. Every operation, from single-element transports to coordination of an entire operating theater, is at least partially computer generated under the umbrella of a sprawling and complex collection of algorithms known as automated logistics and decision analysis (ALDA).

In this aspect, the Andromeda response was no different than any other complex military response—it was machine generated.

Given General Stern’s initial data, ALDA activated the Percheron supercomputing cluster located in the chilled depths of the Air Force Research Laboratories beneath Wright-Patterson AFB in western Ohio. Kicking or delaying thousands of other lower-priority computing threads, ALDA connected to a massive, constantly refreshed data set of personnel and resources, coming back with a full mission loadout within fifteen minutes.

Yet even with its unprecedented level of processing power and data, ALDA had always been wisely deployed with an 80/20 rule—which holds that an algorithm should be depended upon to reach only 80 percent of the solution, with human common sense and intuition applied to the final 20 percent.

In this case, General Stern saw no technical flaws with the default loadout, which read as follows (still in partial machine code):

PROJECT WILDFIRE V2—CREW DOSSIER

NIDHI VEDALA, MD-PHD(AGE: 42)

Wildfire Clearance (FULL)

Designated : Command, 001 ***

Location : Massachusetts, Amherst >>> Travel Duration: ~12H ***

Specialization : Nanotechnology; materials science; Andromeda Strain: AS-1, AS-2 ***

Misc : Leadership quality; domain expert ***

HAROLD ODHIAMBO, PHD(AGE: 68) ***

Wildfire Clearance (ACADEMIC) ***

Designated : Lead Field Scientist, 002 ***

Location : Nairobi, Kenya >>> Travel Duration: ~15H ***

Specialization : Xenogeology; geology; anthropology; biology; physical sciences; . . .

Misc : Broad knowledge base ***

PENG WU, PLA Air Force, Major (AGE: 37) ***

Wildfire Clearance (PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC JOINT ALLIANCE) ***

Designated : Field Scientist, 003 ***

Location : Shanghai, China >>> Travel Duration: ~18H ***

Specialization : Taikonaut; soldier; medical doctor: pathologist ***

Misc : Combat training; survival training; possible domain knowledge [REDACTED] ***

ZACHARY GORDON, US Army, Sergeant First Class (AGE: 28)

Wildfire Clearance (PRELIMINARY) ***

Designated : Field Medic, 004 ***

Location : Fort Benning, Georgia *** Travel Duration: ~14H ***

Specialization : Ranger elite light infantry; battalion senior medic ***

Misc : Trauma surgeon ***

SOPHIE KLINE, PHD(AGE: 32)

Wildfire Clearance (NASA) ***

Designated : Remote Scientist, 005 ***

Location : International Space Station *** Travel Duration: N/A ***

Specialization : Nanorobotics, nanobiology, microgravity research ***

Misc : AS-1, AS-2 EXPERT ***

*** END DOSSIER ***

Stern paused at the inclusion of Major Peng Wu, a Chinese national who normally would have been excluded as a security concern. Then he shook his head, cracking a wry smile. The ALDA algorithm was relentlessly logical yet had often proven itself capable of nonintuitive decision-making. Given the situation with Heavenly Palace, it was a stroke of genius to bring in a Chinese military candidate who had been waiting, preapproved, in the Wildfire candidate pool.

Peng Wu was not just any taikonaut—she had actually participated in the first manned voyage to the Tiangong-1 space station. Stern knew she wouldn’t divulge any Chinese military secrets—they’d already tried discerning that—but her knowledge of what had happened up there could still save lives.

At this point, General Stern’s only duty was to give a verbal confirmation. However, a final exchange took place in the seconds before the go order was passed on—both upward to the president of the United States and down to the enlisted men and women immediately dispatched to execute first steps.

The following is a partial transcript of the last-minute exchange between General Stern and one of his most trusted officers:

< . . . >

0–10 GEN

Strike the last field candidate. I have a replacement.

S-OP-001

Zack Gordon? Are you sure, General?

0–10 GEN

Send Stone.

S-OP-001

I’m sorry, sir?

0–10 GEN

James Stone. Out of Palo Alto. You’ll find him on the standby list.

S-OP-001

[short pause] Sir, do you mean the son of Dr. Jeremy Stone? From the first Andromeda incident? This guy hasn’t got the clearance. His prep work is also out of date. I believe he was always a tangential candidate, too special-purpose.

0–10 GEN

I know. Send him anyway.

S-OP-001

There will be a delay while we wait for his security clearance.

0–10 GEN

Understood. Scramble my personal C-40 transport and go get him. That’ll help mitigate the delay.

S-OP-001

[long pause] You were close friends with Dr. Jeremy Stone, weren’t you?

0–10 GEN

Your point?

S-OP-001

I’m just afraid . . . you should consider the optics on this.

0–10 GEN

Listen, son. It’s not your career on the line. I’m invoking directive 7–12, citing top-secret situational knowledge that must remain opaque. My voice is my clearance, and I am General Rand L. Stern.