Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Evolution

The Russians were first, managing to push the Salyut 1 space station into orbit by 1971—only four years after the Andromeda incident. The United States attempted to catch up two years after that, but the Skylab launch was compromised by the “benign” plastic-eating strain of Andromeda still lingering in the upper atmosphere. During Skylab’s initial ascent, exposure to the AS-2 plastiphage resulted in a partially disintegrated heat shield, spewing debris that severely damaged the station.[fn1]

Skylab lasted six years. The Mir space station lasted longer, at ten years. Both failed to achieve their secret goal of studying Andromeda in microgravity. As it turned out, the problem was too big for one nation to solve alone—even a superpower.

In 1987, President Reagan called for the creation of an International Space Station, a joint venture between the Soviet Union and the United States, with more partner countries to come. Eyebrows went up around the world, as the Russians and Americans made for strange bedfellows. Privately, both nations were motivated by a mutual fear of allowing the Andromeda particle to go unstudied.[fn2]

Even then, a permanent space station was only the first step.

It was not until 2013 that the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module arrived (disguised as a Cygnus automated cargo spacecraft), and docked to the nadir port of the Harmony node at the front of the station. Its activation coincided with the beginning of Dr. Sophie Kline’s scientific missions to the ISS.

The top-secret module was born in the depths of the original Project Wildfire facility beneath Nevada, constructed entirely by sterilized robotic arms. Those robots were teleoperated by on-site workers who were themselves in an ISO Class 1 clean room. The final laboratory enclosure was completely self-contained and launched aboard an Antares-5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on January 17, 2013.

Once docked, the laboratory module constituted the only biosafety level (BSL) 5 containment facility ever created, much less placed in orbit. The Wildfire microgravity laboratory was self-irradiated every four hours with high-intensity ultraviolet light, and it contained no breathable atmosphere. It was instead pressurized with a combination of noble gases—odorless, colorless, and with virtually zero chemical reactivity. The cylindrical space inside the laboratory module was phenomenally clean and sterile, precisely because it was unoccupied.

There were only two potential organisms on board, and they were what the module had been built to study: material samples of the extraterrestrial microparticles known as AS-1 and AS-2.

The interior of the module had never been touched by a human being, and never would be. Every aspect of the laboratory’s functioning was remote-controlled via radio contact from outside. And this was exactly why Dr. Sophie Kline had been the first astronaut with ALS deployed to the International Space Station.

The wasting effects of Kline’s disease had made her the perfect recipient of a brain-computer interface at a young age. Years of training with the interface had given her the ability to control most computers as naturally as breathing—a crucial ability while handling highly dangerous samples through a remote connection.

Though there had been other operators, only Sophie Kline could control the Wildfire Mark IV laboratory module with her mind.

WITH GENERAL STERN’S orders to report to the laboratory module still ringing in her ears, Kline hesitated for one moment. Her left eye twitched almost imperceptibly as she activated the muscle groups necessary to communicate with her personal computer, which activated a monitor along the lower wall of the cupola.

A real-time camera feed of the Kibo science module appeared. There astronaut Jin Hamanaka, apparently also alarmed by the change in trajectory, was busily checking propellant levels on her laptop. On a feed of the Zvezda service module, the cosmonaut Yury Komarov was outside his sleep station, calmly stowing his gear and preparing for an exercise routine during the hour window before morning conference.

Kline watched both feeds carefully. As far as she could tell, the other astronauts were not panicking or behaving erratically.

Pushing herself backward, Kline floated away from the cupola and “up” toward the exit in the ceiling. As she floated away, she watched the sprawling rain forest hundreds of miles below. The vista was already rotating away, replaced by the Atlantic Ocean as the station continued its eastward orbit.

In another time, the young Sophie Kline would have been abandoned to a sanitarium, immobile and forgotten—assuming she survived her childhood. The sole reason she had transcended gravity was humankind’s ever-growing mastery over nature. Looking down on the planet from the perspective of a god, trapped in a body that refused to obey her orders, she was acutely aware of this fact.

But—as history has proven time and again—in the hands of human beings, increasing power is increasingly dangerous.

THE COALITION OF COUNTRIES THAT FUNDED THE International Space Station (and hoped to share in its discoveries) had neglected to include one of the largest and most ancient civilizations in the world—a proud and capable nation with the strength to develop its own competing effort to study Andromeda.

Alone and forced to act unilaterally, the People’s Republic of China inevitably set out to do just that.

Suspicion, distrust, and competitiveness had fractured the international effort to understand the Andromeda Strain. Although the AS-1 microparticle had proven that it would kill any human with equal savagery, no matter their ethnicity, the vagaries of politics blunted what could have been a united response. And that enmity came to a head with the creation of a new space station.

The Tiangong-1, whose name meant “heavenly palace” in Chinese, was launched on September 29, 2011. It was an auspicious date for both travel and grand openings, according to the astrological predictions of the Chinese zodiac calendar, the Sheng Xiao. After a successful launch, the station was placed into orbit at a slightly inclined attitude of nineteen degrees—a trajectory that coincided perfectly with regular resupply launches from the Chinese Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Hainan Province.

Although the launch had not been advertised, American spy agencies watched intently and continued to monitor the station until its premature demise.

The end occurred in 2013, only two years into the multibillion-yen effort, when China suddenly announced that the project was over. Authorities there officially hailed Tiangong-1 as an “unmitigated success for the China National Space Administration and the Chinese people.”

However, around-the-clock observation from a series of earth-based imaging assets revealed a narrative very different than that of the official reports. It seemed Chinese Mission Control had lost radio contact, including telemetry, with their station.