The Andromeda Evolution, Page 3

  If asked, he would respond that his most complex command assignment was the parenting of four preteen girls alongside his wife, a research scientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Denver.

  At home, Stern’s voice was only one among many. At work, however, he spoke for over three hundred million American citizens.

  In his first-day briefing packet, Stern had been informed of twelve high-priority ongoing top-secret projects of extreme significance to national defense. Among them was something called Project Wildfire, created in the aftermath of the Andromeda incident of some fifty years before. Wildfire had seemed like an innocuous footnote compared to the ambitions of the Chinese and the astonishing amount of unaccounted-for nuclear material that had been lost in orbit. Yet during his tenure, no other project had been a bigger thorn in his side.

  Dealing with the Andromeda microparticle had gone from a purely scientific undertaking to a secret arms race with the sort of global repercussions not encountered since the height of the Cold War. As a result, Project Wildfire had grown to consume a disproportionate amount of resources. It had become a gargantuan feat just to hide its dozens of subprojects from the public view, costing billions of dollars and millions of man-hours.

  All of it weighed heavily on the general.

  In a later interview, he described the job as “feeling like Atlas, crouched there alone, holding the planet in my arms—and nobody knows what I’m protecting them from or why. Not even my girls.”

  Among the classified downstream projects, the existence of Eternal Vigilance was peripheral at best. Serious fear of another spontaneous mutation from the Andromeda microparticle had evaporated over time. Instead, what was most important were the possibilities of intentional weaponization by enemies of the state.

  In typical human fashion, attention had turned away from the wondrous contemplation of extraterrestrials and settled squarely and mundanely on the countries (allies and not) who had inevitably learned about the deadly version of the microparticle called AS-1, and its plastic-eating cousin, AS-2.

  Both varieties had proven to be dangerous in their own ways.

  Upon inhalation, AS-1 was almost always immediately fatal. The relatively benign AS-2 variety, which had evolved spontaneously in the heart of the Wildfire laboratory, had shown itself capable of lingering in the upper atmosphere, turning most plastics into dust—a development that had set back the US space program by decades. It also made AS-2 samples freely available to any nation with the scientific acumen to go up and collect them.

  No other varieties of Andromeda, natural or manufactured, had been detected—though not for lack of trying.

  And now, the call Stern had been dreading for years had come from an utterly unexpected direction—not from his agents scrutinizing the China National Space Administration, or the spies sent to investigate disease outbreaks around the world, or even from a certain secret clean room still buried under a cornfield in Nevada.

  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 (A
GE: 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.

  S-OP-001

  Acknowledged, sir. Dossier approved and . . . the mission is live.

  [typing sounds]

  S-OP-001

  Enlisted liaisons are being dispatched now to retrieve our field team. You are advised to report to local command and control to assume overwatch duties. Good luck, sir.

  0–10 GEN

  Roger that. And thank you.

  S-OP-001

  Sir?

  [brief pause]

  S-OP-001

  Sir. If you don’t mind my asking. Off the record . . .

  0–10 GEN

  Nothing is off the record. You know that.

  S-OP-001

  Well then, on the record, but between us.

  0–10 GEN

  All right. Shoot.

  S-OP-001

  Why James Stone?

  [long pause]

  0–10 GEN

  It’s just a hunch. Nothing more.

  [end transmission]

  Conservative estimates from the DC-based Nova America think tank conclude that Stern’s hunch likely saved three to four billion lives.

  Day 1

  Terra Indigena

  There is a category of event that, once it occurs, cannot be satisfactorily resolved.

  —MICHAEL CRICHTON

  Emergency Debris Avoidance Maneuver

  TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT MILES ABOVE EARTH, Dr. Sophie Kline floated quietly in a nimbus of her own long blond hair. It was just after 6:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time—the official time zone of the International Space Station, as a compromise to accommodate Mission Control in both Houston and Moscow—but her blue-gray eyes were wide open and alert. This early, both of her fellow astronauts were still in sleep cycle, and the observation cupola was shuttered, empty, and dark—the only sound a faint whirring from the Tranquility module ventilation systems.

  It was Kline’s favorite time of day.

  She punched a glowing button, and the hull began to whine as the exterior cupola shutters rose. The gentle glow of Earth’s surface lit the interior of the module, and Kline enjoyed the usual thrill in her stomach. She loved the feeling of being alone and suspended, looking down on the planet from on high. It gave her a sense of utter superiority, as if everything below were a part of her own creation.

  This small daily ritual (confessed in a personal flight journal salvaged after the incident) might seem arrogant, but it was simply a dream of freedom.

  As it was, Kline was floating in the windowed cupola with her paralyzed legs bound tightly together with Velcro straps to keep them out of the way. It was only in these quiet moments of weightlessness that she could almost forget the searing cramps and spasms that writhed through her devastated muscles.

  Sophie Kline had not been able to walk since she was six years old, so she had chosen to fly. She was tall, despite her disability, and as she focused on the cupola window, her striking eyebrows and gaunt cheeks lent her a predatory appearance, softened only by a smattering of freckles across her nose and forehead.

  Her path to the stars was so unlikely as to almost satisfy Borel’s fallacy. When Kline fell and broke her right arm at the age of four, her parents assumed she was simply clumsy or unlucky. Only one was true. At the hospital, an attentive pediatrician noticed that the little girl had a concerning tremor.

  The incredibly unlikely juvenile amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (JALS) diagnosis came at the age of five, with the degenerative disease attacking her relatively newfound ability to walk. Sophie began her life in a wheelchair, though she had no intention of ending it there. With an almost inhuman resolve, particularly for a child, she had set her ingenious mind and iron will to escaping the bounds of gravity.

  She had succeeded.

  Every reputable doctor had predicted she would be dead by the age of twelve. Instead, she had persevered, taking advantage of each new medical advance, and eventually become a world-renowned scientist and an American astronaut.

  Kline found that the chronic pain in her muscles nearly disappeared in microgravity, and her wasted body wasn’t a disadvantage the way it was on earth. In constant free fall, she was as physically capable as any astronaut. More capable, in fact, since she did not have to worry about the muscle-wasting effects of weightlessness.

  Thus, using only her arms, Kline turned her body to face the circular porthole in the center of the viewing cupola. Six trapezoidal panes of glass splayed radially out from it—the largest window ever put to use in outer space. Beyond, the face of the planet slid past, surprisingly close. Today, she saw an endless jungle vista—a dense landscape of treetops twined with gleaming rivers that looked to Sophie like the wriggling trace of neurons.

  It was a view that absolutely should not have been there, and the sight of it indicated that a serious emergency had occurred during sleep cycle.

  Internal ISS video footage showed Sophie Kline muttering in disbelief, frantically scanning the computer monitors ringing the neck of the cupola. Physiological monitoring logs reported her heart rate elevating as she took hold of two slender blue handr
ails and pulled her face to within inches of the central porthole. The terrain scrolling past below would have been utterly unfamiliar to the seasoned astronaut.

  Like the other two crew members on board the ISS, Kline’s body was instrumented with wireless physiological sensors. Unlike her crewmates’, however, Kline’s monitoring extended further—at one-second intervals, her mind was being read. As a teenager, Kline had been implanted with a Kinetics-V brain-computer interface (BCI) at her own insistence, so she could continue her college courses via computer as the disease progressed through her nervous system.

  The BCI device was a golden mesh of thousands of wires, soaked in a biocompatible coating to prevent foreign body rejection, and sunk into the jelly-like surface of Kline’s motor cortex. Upgradable via radio, the current software iteration employed a deep-learning algorithm to map the electrical activity of neurons in Sophie’s brain to actions in the real world. The unique interface linked Kline mentally to the ISS computer systems—an almost telepathic connection.

  Kline realized that the ISS had undergone a severe trajectory change. Such an event could only signal imminent disaster, and it should have been a cause for panic. Indeed, her outward reaction to the unexpected terrain had been consistent with surprise and shock. However, routine monitoring of her brain implant’s data stream showed that Kline’s predominant state of mind was an alpha brain wave varying between 7 and 13 Hz—a state of nonarousal, relaxed alertness in the face of mortal danger.

  It was a small discrepancy that would go unnoticed until much later.

  Kline opened a comm channel to Houston flight control and requested information from CAPCOM.

  The initial response was static.

  A lot had happened during the astronauts’ sleep period, beginning at precisely 23:35:10 UTC when, under the auspices of General Rand L. Stern, the USSTRATCOM Command Center issued an emergency notification to ISS Mission Control in Houston.

  USSTRATCOM advised of a likely close approach of the ISS to multiple red threshold objects. Such notifications were fairly common, as the command center is tasked with monitoring any object in low orbit with a diameter larger than one and a half inches.