The Andromeda Evolution. Michael Crichton
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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.
Without any means of control, the Tiangong-1 fell into a decaying orbit.
Thermal readings from multiple spy agencies determined that life support had been shut off, with the surface of the station as cold as the space around it. Abandoned, the station continued to orbit the earth for several years, engines offline and radios silent.
On April 10, 2018, the scant air particles percolating in the upper atmosphere finally managed to drag the station into destructive reentry. The metal cylinder was ripped to superheated shreds by atmospheric friction, reduced to a flaming confetti that rained down on the planet below—directly above the primordial jungles of the eastern Amazon.
Thus, the entire effort ended in a brief streak of light and heat.
The failure would likely have been deemed harmless were it not for a single, final bit of information. During the continuous monitoring of the space station—from launch, to resupply missions, to its last fiery reentry—operatives had noticed something the Chinese space agency never mentioned publicly.
The last crew of three taikonauts had never emerged from the Tiangong-1.
BARELY FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE A JUNGLE CANOPY that itself soared a hundred and fifty feet high in places, a Sikorsky H-92 Superhawk helicopter thundered over shivering trees. The gray metal chopper was streaked with jungle mist, nose jutting out like the beak of a predatory bird. In its wake, bands of monkeys hooted in the treetops and colorful birds took startled flight.
James Stone didn’t remember falling asleep.
Even with the thudding of the rotors in his ears and the vibration of the window glass on the rolled-up jacket he was using for a pillow, he’d had no trouble nodding off.
Later, when every detail of his life was declassified and dissected, splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines, it became well documented that Stone had the ability to fall asleep anywhere, at almost any time—to “turn off,” to use the parlance of soldiers.
James had been able to do this since he was a little boy.
Part of it must have been out of sheer necessity. Young James spent his childhood accompanying his famous father—the Nobel Prize–winning polymath Dr. Jeremy Stone—on his scholarly travels around the world. Well dressed and soft-spoken, little James seemed nothing like his loud, impatient father. Together they were an odd couple, circumnavigating the globe every few months as Dr. Stone delivered lectures, attended scientific talks, and toured various international scientific projects.
James very rarely saw his mother, Allison, after his parents were divorced near his ninth birthday. And although the two were so obviously different from one another, Stone’s father was clearly dedicated to ensuring that the boy learn something new every day of their never-ending travels. Today, this type of roving education is called world schooling.
Yet according to private interviews that were not splashed across the tabloids, there was another reason that Stone had become very good at falling asleep—it was because he so frequently woke up in terror, his skin crawling with the cobweb remnants of a singular nightmare. This time, aboard the Sikorsky, would have been no different.
In recovered cabin