Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Strain

MARK WILLIAM HALL, M.D., SAT IN THE TIGHT rear seat of the F- 104 fighter and stared over the top of the rubber oxygen mask at the file on his knees. Leavitt had given it to him just before takeoff- a heavy, thick wad of paper bound in gray cardboard. Hall was supposed to read it during the flight, but the F-104 was not made for reading; there was barely enough room in front of him to hold his

I hands clenched together, let alone open a file and read.

Yet Hall was reading it.

On the cover of the file was stenciled WILDFIRE, and underneath, an ominous note:

THIS FILE IS CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET.

Examination by unauthorized persons is a criminal offense punishable by fines and imprisonment up to 20 years and $20,000.

When Leavitt gave him the file, Hall had read the note and whistled.

"Don't you believe it," Leavitt said.

"Just a scare?"

"Scare, hell," Leavitt said. "If the wrong man reads this file, he just disappears."

"Nice."

"Read it," Leavitt said, "and you'll see why."

The plane flight had taken an hour and forty minutes, cruising in eerie, perfect silence at 1.8 times the speed of sound. Hall had skimmed through most of the file; reading it, he had found, was impossible. Much of its bulk of 274 pages consisted of cross-references and interservice notations, none of which he could understand. The first page was as bad as any of them:

THIS IS PAGE 1 OF 274 PAGES

PROJECT: WILDFIRE

AUTHORITY: NASA/AMC

CLASSIFICATION: TOP SECRET (NTK BASIS)

PRIORITY: NATIONAL (DX)

SUBJECT: Initiation of high-security facility to prevent dispersion of toxic extraterrestrial agents.

CROSSFILE: Project CLEAN, Project ZERO CONTAMINANTS, Project CAUTERY

SUMMARY OF FILE CONTENTS:

By executive order, construction of a facility initiated January 1965. Planning stage March 1965. Consultants Fort Detrick and General Dynamics (EBD) July 1965. Recommendation for multistory facility in isolated location for investigation of possible or probable contaminatory agents. Specifications reviewed August 1965. Approval with revision same date. Final drafts drawn and filed AMC under WILDFIRE (copies Detrick, Hawkins). Choice of site northeast Montana, reviewed August 1965. Choice of site southwest Arizona, reviewed August 1965. Choice of site northwest Nevada, reviewed September 1965. Nevada site approved October 1965.

Construction completed July 1966. Funding NASA, AMC, DEFENSE (unaccountable reserves). Congressional appropriation for maintenance and personnel under same.

Major alterations: Millipore filters, see page 74. Self-destruct capacity (nuclear), page 88. Ultraviolet irradiators removed, see page 81. Single Man Hypothesis (Odd Man Hypothesis), page 255.

PERSONNEL SUMMARIES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM THIS FILE. PERSONNEL MAY BE FOUND IN AMC (WILDFIRE) FILES ONLY.

The second page listed the basic parameters of the system, as laid down by the original Wildfire planning group. This specified the most important concept of the installation, namely that it would consist of roughly similar, descending levels, all underground. Each would be more sterile than the one above.

THIS IS PAGE 2 OF 274 PAGES

PROJECT: WILDFIRE

PRIMARY PARAMETERS

1. THERE ARE TO BE FIVE STAGES:

Stage 1: Non-decontaminated, but clean. Approximates sterility of hospital operating room or NASA clean room. No time delay of entrance.

Stage II: Minimal sterilization procedures: hexachlorophene and methitol bath, not requiring total immersion. One-hour delay with clothing change.

Stage III: Moderate sterilization procedures: total-immersion bath, UV irradiation, followed by two-hour delay for preliminary testing. Afebrile infections of UR and GU tracts permitted to pass. Viral symptomatology permitted to pass.

Stage IV: Maximal sterilization procedures: total immersion in four baths of biocaine, monochlorophin, xantholysin, and prophyne with intermediate thirty-minute UV and IR irradiation. All infection hafted at this stage on basis of symptomatology or clinical signs. Routine screening of all personnel. Six-hour delay.

Stage V: Redundant sterilization procedures: no further immersions or testing, but destruct clothing x2 per day. Prophylactic antibiotics for forty-eight hours. Daily screen for superinfection, first eight days.

2. EACH STAGE INCLUDES:

1. Resting quarters, individual

2. Recreation quarters, including movie and game room

3. Cafeteria, automatic

4. Library, with main journals transmitted by Xerox or TV from main library Level 1.

5. Shelter, a high-security antimicrobial complex with safety in event of level contamination.

6. Laboratories: a) biochemistry, with all necessary equipment for automatic amino-acid analysis, sequence determination, O/R potentials, lipid and carbohydrate determinations on human, animal, other subjects. b) pathology, with EM, phase and LM, microtomes and curing rooms. Five full-time technicians each level. One autopsy room. One room for experimental animals. c) microbiology, with all facilities for growth, nutrient, analytic, immunologic studies. Subsections bacterial, viral, parasitic, other. d) pharmacology, with material for dose-relation and receptor site specificity studies of known compounds. Pharmacy to include drugs as noted in appendix. e) main room, experimental animals. 75 genetically pure strains of mice; 27 of rat; 17 of cat; 12 of dog; 8 of primate. f) nonspecific room for previously unplanned experiments.

7. Surgery: for care and treatment of staff, including operating room facilities for acute emergencies.

8. Communications: for contact with other levels by audiovisual and other means.

COUNT YOUR PAGES

REPORT ANY MISSING PAGES AT ONCE

COUNT YOUR PAGES

As Hall continued to read, he found that only on Level 1, the topmost floor, would there be a large computer complex for data analysis, but that this computer would serve all other levels on a time-sharing basis. This was considered feasible since, for biologic problems, real time was unimportant in relation to computer time, and multiple problems could be fed and handled at once.

He was leafing through the rest of the file, looking for the part that interested him- the Odd Man Hypothesis- when he came upon a page that was rather unusual.

THIS IS PAGE 255 OF 274 PAGES

BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE THIS PAGE FROM A HIGH-SECURITY FILE HAS BEEN DELETED

THE PAGE IS NUMBER: two hundred fifty-five/255

THE FILE IS CODED: Wildfire

THE SUBJECT MATTER DELETED IS: Odd Man Hypothesis

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CONSTITUTES A LEGAL DELETION FROM THE FILE WHICH NEED NOT BE REPORTED BY THE READER.

MACHINE SCORE REVIEW BELOW

Hall was frowning at the page, wondering what it meant, when the pilot said, "Dr. Hall?"

"Yes."

"We have just passed the last checkpoint, Sir. We will touch down in four minutes."

"All right." Hall paused. "Do you know where, exactly, we are landing?"

"I believe," said the pilot, "that it is Flatrock, Nevada."

"I see," Hall said.

A few minutes later, the flaps went down, and he heard a whine as the airplane slowed.

Nevada was the ideal site for Wildfire. The Silver State ranks seventh in size, but forty-ninth in population; it is the least-dense state in the Union after Alaska. Particularly when one considers that 85 per cent of the state's 440,000 people live in Las Vegas, Reno, or Carson City, the population density of 1.2 persons per square mile seems well suited for projects such as Wildfire, and indeed many have been located there.