by Norman Oro
The other major capital outlay was, of course, for the new Allen field generator. Conceptually, a generator designed to send a 180 pound human being for five minutes wasn’t much different from the one sitting in his study three thousand miles away in Pasadena, CA. The major difference was the amount of power running through its circuits. In that sense, the project’s timing was fortuitous given recent advances in solid-state technology. New components such as the transistor would keep the generator’s size manageable and its circuitry cool. Nevertheless, Dr. Rys estimated that perhaps as much as five percent of the energy from the reactor and up to fifty percent of the space set aside for the scaled-up field generator would be dedicated to keeping it from overheating.
Another item on his agenda was contingency planning. Namely he foresaw needing safeguards against mission-related hazards. He worried most about introducing potentially lethal pathogens into an environment that hadn’t evolved any defenses against them. He spent a few days meeting with government physicians and epidemiologists going over situations that he felt the project might face. Chlorine bleach probably sufficed for the time being, but they agreed that he’d need to eventually implement more rigorous protocols.
The final and arguably most important part of his budget was for personnel. He estimated needing a team of about twelve people once the power plant and field generator were operational. Physicists and engineers would comprise most of the staff. Given the unknowns and what had happened during his initial experiments with the Allen field, Dr. Rys also budgeted for a couple of physicians with at least one surgeon. Subject to background checks, he requested and was granted complete autonomy in terms of whom he could hire and for what.
As the long week drew to a close, Dr. Rys had a very clear idea of what the project required in terms of infrastructure and operations. Armed with improved estimates regarding the resources he’d need, he spent his final day in Washington going over his updated proposal with Undersecretary Scott. In the undersecretary, he’d not only found someone who could navigate the capital’s sometimes murky political waters, but also an advocate of considerable intelligence and experience. Although his revised budget came in at $110 million, Undersecretary Scott noted how unpredictable developing any new technology could be, and advised appropriating the original $150 million instead. Seeing the expression on Dr. Rys’s face, he then pointed out that any unused funds would be returned to the federal coffers once the project ended. Seeing the parallels with his earlier decision regarding the power-rating for the new field generator’s reactor, Dr. Rys agreed.
When he voiced his concerns regarding the threat posed by potential biological hazards and how the budget might be used to address the issue, Dr. Rys was surprised to learn that the undersecretary had already considered the matter. He was even more surprised to hear his proposed solution: Repurpose an abandoned government facility originally built for another project. It was codenamed “Firewall” and had been tasked with developing countermeasures to an Axis chemical or biological attack on the United States during World War II. In addition to Firewall’s research facility, an entire town in the California desert had been constructed to house its personnel. Of course, an attack fortunately never took place and the research had since been transferred to various civilian departments. However, the facility was still there, and probably could be modified to suit Dr. Rys’s work. It was in a town northeast of Los Angeles County called Pueblo. Dr. Rys thanked the undersecretary and told him that he’d evaluate the site once he returned to California.
He was just about to leave when Undersecretary Scott mentioned that his project would need a codename itself. Taken a bit by surprise, Dr. Rys replied that he hadn’t given it much thought and requested the undersecretary’s advice.
“How about calling it the US-395 Interchange? It’s one of the highways we have slated for upgrades over the next few years. A portion of it runs near Pueblo.”
To Dr. Rys’s ears, it was brilliant. The name was so utilitarian as to call no attention to itself.
“Agreed. The US-395 Interchange it is.”
During the flight home, Dr. Rys pored over a box of files the undersecretary had given him about Project Firewall. He also drafted a timeline for building out US-395. By the time he arrived in Pasadena, it was late in the evening and he found his wife in the kitchen. He gave her a kiss, sat down and went over the week’s events.
The good news was they probably wouldn’t need to move. The network of friends and acquaintances they’d built over the years would remain intact; and they wouldn’t have to adjust to life in another city. The bad news was that they’d probably start seeing even less of each other. If the project site was where he thought it would be, he estimated the commute would take around three hours one way. It was difficult news for him to deliver. His long hours doing research were already straining his marriage. They talked into the early morning; and though he left the door open to moving the family out to Pueblo if his wife wanted to, they eventually decided to stay in Pasadena.
Despite his grueling week in Washington, Dr. Rys didn’t sleep well. Mostly he thought about US-395. He was awake well before sunrise, had breakfast with Abigail and then drove out to Pueblo. Since it was mid-November, the desert weather was very mild, making the three hour drive seem shorter than it really was. In addition to the box filled with archived project files, Undersecretary Scott also gave him an address, directions and a set of keys for the Firewall research facility. Apparently, during the course of the war and since its conclusion, Pueblo had grown into a town unto itself with residents who were largely unaware of the work the government once did there.
When he arrived, he was first struck by how the town felt. If he had to describe it, he would’ve said Pueblo was Hometown, USA. There was one long avenue that ran through its heart, which was comprised of a public square and a verdant community park. Its tree-lined streets were uniformly clean and well-tended. This was the polar opposite of the broken-down, neglected and largely abandoned former government town he’d envisioned. When he arrived at the address the undersecretary had given him and stepped out of his car, he found himself at the local post office. Thinking there’d been a mistake, he walked around the block a few times before finally stepping inside.
The address he had indicated the facility was below ground level. Trying not to come across as being too lost, he discreetly asked someone in the post office for the stairs and was directed to a door at the end of the lobby. He pushed at the entrance and found steps on the other side. Dr. Rys went back to his car, got the heavy cardboard box containing Firewall’s archives then descended a seemingly endless flight of stairs until he reached a windowless metal door. It was locked. After going through several keys he’d been given, he finally found one that worked. He turned the knob, pushed the door open and was greeted by a rush of fresh air. Groping with his left hand for a light switch, he found one and flipped it. What appeared to be fluorescent lamps immediately came to life, revealing an immense auditorium. At its center was an imposing block of metal that was the size of an office building. As he walked towards it and rounded one of its corners, he saw its entrance was rectangular and resembled a massive vault door. Setting down the box with the Firewall archives, he tried turning the wheel at the door’s center, but it wouldn’t budge. Built into it was a dial numbered 0 to 99 for entering a combination. The door itself was labeled “252”, which for some reason sounded familiar. Looking through the project archives, he found a page full of hand-written numbers beginning with those very digits, 252. There were no dashes or spaces on the page. There was only 252 followed immediately by a string of numbers, one after another, filling up the entire sheet. He spent hours trying to open the door using different sequences of numbers from the page to no avail. Dr. Rys then looked through the project files again trying to find anything that could’ve possibly been the combination. He found nothing.
Looking at his watch, he saw it was already 3:30pm. He’d promised to take Abiga
il and their sons out to dinner and a movie that evening, which gave him about a half hour to work with. He was just about to leave and go upstairs to try calling Undersecretary Scott when he saw a bundle of transparencies in the project files. One transparency was made up entirely of little tick-marks. When he’d first seen it the day before, he figured it was a worksheet from an old overhead presentation that’d been accidentally archived. However, when he set the transparency over the page with the numerals, he saw that the ticks crossed them all out except for ten sets of two-digit numbers. Dr. Rys spun the ten numbers into the combination lock and was rewarded with the hissing sound of air escaping from inside the vault.
He turned the center-wheel. Despite what felt like some form of mechanical assistance coming from inside the facility’s walls, he nevertheless labored to pull the heavy door open. He walked inside to find a gleaming, though bare metal room. On the other side was an identical door, but set inside what appeared to be a thick glass or Pyrex wall reinforced with metal mesh. The room was empty except for a heavy binder on the floor. Inside the binder, he found a map to the complex and descriptions of each of its rooms including combinations for its doors. The binder also included detailed notes and diagrams describing the facility’s countermeasures against chemical and biological hazards.
Dr. Rys took the binder, placed it onto the box of files that Undersecretary Scott had given to him, stepped outside of the vault, closed the door behind him and headed for his car to go home. That night, he took his family to see The Day the Earth Stood Still. After they got back, he stayed up until early in the morning reading about the large metal building he found in Pueblo. The Firewall project team called it the “chamber”.
What he read amazed him. It was as though someone had reached into his mind and created a facility specifically designed to set his every worry regarding mission-related hazards at ease. The chamber had several layers of countermeasures to neutralize even the hardiest pathogen. The next day, he called the White House physicians and epidemiologists he’d met earlier, and confirmed that the capabilities described in the binder were more than adequate for anything the project could conceivably run across. Unintentionally almost tailor-made for US-395, the chamber wouldn’t need much in the way of modifications. The facility already had an emergency operating room built into it; and even its immense underground water-tank could probably be converted into a particle detector for research purposes. Dr. Rys then called Undersecretary Scott to thank him for his recommendation and to let him know that the facility in Pueblo was more than sufficient. The undersecretary replied that he was glad to hear it and then began speaking with him about funding for the project.
Starting that Tuesday, Nov. 18th, Dr. Rys would become the director in charge of the US-395 Interchange project administered out of the undersecretary’s office. Checks and a charge card were on their way. Despite the oversight that Undersecretary Scott had in the organization chart, Dr. Rys was essentially given free rein to use his $150 million budget as he saw fit to further his research with the caveat that a new administration would soon be in the White House. That meant there was a chance that funding for US-395 could be discontinued. He personally felt that was very unlikely and would do what he could to prevent it. Until then, President Truman ran the executive branch and Dr. Rys was to proceed with all due haste.
Government construction teams arrived in Pueblo that Tuesday to begin work on the new power plant. Once it was fully operational, over ninety-nine percent of its 150 MW of electricity would go to US-395. Estimates indicated that the remainder would be more than enough to power the town’s homes and businesses. Also, based on geological surveys conducted for Project Firewall, it turned out that there was a water table several hundred yards underneath the project site. Dr. Rys immediately modified the new field generator’s design to take advantage of it for cooling purposes. The result was a device that would be just over fifteen feet tall, take up an area about the size of a baseball field and be comprised mostly of heat-sinks cooled using conduits fed by the underground water table just beneath it. That Friday, he worked with the engineers assigned to building out the project to make certain the nuclear reactor would integrate seamlessly into the generator it was designed to power. After discussing his updated specifications, they gave him an estimate of three years to excavate the field generator site, build a steel enclosure around it and integrate it into the new reactor’s power grid. Once the enclosure was ready, Dr. Rys estimated it’d take at least an additional year to actually build the device, and he began ordering parts for it that week. Because most of the new field generator would be rushing water, he codenamed it the “Maytag”.
Interlude
The three subsequent years of construction went quickly. By December 1955, Dr. Rys had given the keynote address opening Pueblo’s new state-of-the-art nuclear reactor and had built a solid working relationship with the new undersecretary for transportation, Louis S. Rothschild. Once President Eisenhower’s administration transitioned in, Dr. Rys learned that US-395 would in fact keep the funding it had secured under President Truman. No administration wanted to go into the history books as the one that lost American leadership in developing possibly the greatest technological breakthrough since the wheel. As for the new field generator, the enclosure that would eventually house the Maytag was completed months ahead of schedule. It was an impressive feat of engineering: a steel room sixteen feet tall that could hold a baseball field and sat over a quarter of a mile underground. All of the parts needed to build the new generator were manufactured and ready, stored in a high-security warehouse. 1955 ended with Dr. Rys personally installing the power-coupling that would eventually link the nuclear reactor to the Maytag.
1956 was a year of long hours spent driving to and from Pueblo, building the field generator. Dr. Rys worked six days a week that year, taking only Sundays off to spend with his family. Fortunately, the strain wasn’t as great as he’d originally feared. That was mostly because his boys were quickly becoming men. Pedro would begin his first semester at UC Berkeley in the fall. Juan had researched each of the armed forces, speaking with recruiters and veterans; and would be enlisting directly into the United States Army as soon as he graduated from high school. Dr. Rys was proud of both of his sons and could only wonder at what they’d go on to accomplish. As for his marriage, with Pedro and Juan soon leaving home, he and his wife began talking about her possibly restarting her career. Abigail had set aside her personal ambitions to raise their family, but had always wanted to return to academia. She’d had informal conversations with administrators and professors from local universities, and had already received encouraging responses from UCLA, Pomona College and Caltech. Despite the changes that their sons’ departures would bring, the future seemed very bright.
Team
The Maytag’s electrical and mechanical systems were completed in late February 1957. As expected, using solid-state components significantly lessened the amount of space the generator required, as well as the risk it ran of overheating. In fact, without solid-state technology, building the new field generator would probably have been close to impossible. The final step was to have a team of engineers assemble the Maytag’s cradle and install conduits connecting the device’s heat-sinks to Pueblo’s underground water table. With the last piece of infrastructure almost in place, Dr. Rys turned his attention to recruitment.
Including himself, he estimated needing twelve people altogether. He’d hire three physicists. Two would be generalists well-versed in particle physics and the third would be a quantum mechanics specialist. Three engineers would be on staff, one mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer and a nuclear engineer. He planned to recruit a specialist in applied mathematics to round out the technical team. Dr. Rys also needed to hire at least two physicians. Ideally, one would be an infectious disease specialist and the other a surgeon. Since he firmly believed that a diversity of viewpoints produced better decisions, the final two slots were for people witho
ut technical backgrounds. First, he’d recruit a historian, an expert on the history of science and technology. Having worked at Los Alamos during World War II, he was convinced that certain technologies needed to be developed with an eye towards their impact on society, and that the field generator was such a technology. In addition, the historian would keep a record of US-395 so the team and eventually perhaps others outside of the project could learn from their experiences. Second, he’d hire an administrator, essentially a generalist whose principal job would be to oversee operations.
Dr. Rys decided from the outset that his main recruitment criterion would be temperament. He needed a team that was built to last. Anticipating long hours, he knew that burn-out could be an issue. Consequently, he needed people who could weather adverse conditions, while still maintaining a collegial and respectful work environment. Another key factor was, of course, intelligence. Since the field was so new, he needed a lot of intellectual horsepower to advance it as quickly as possible. As for the technical staff, he intended to recruit a mathematician and physicists who were comfortable with having different points of view. The way he saw it, he was already on the team; there was no need to hire himself again. The engineers would also need an independent streak in order to find ways, conventional or otherwise, to turn ideas regarding things like research devices and facility upgrades into reality. Given his network of contacts from his years at Caltech, he didn’t expect too many problems finding his scientists and engineers.
