Working alone in the autopsy lab, Burton makes a series of mistakes
that he later attributes to stress. In his first experiments, he places
a live rat in a cage directly next to the rat that was exposed to the
deadly bacterium. He places a series a correspondingly more porous filters
between the two cages until the live rat eventually dies - meaning the
bacterium was able to penetrate the filter. He thus determines the size
of the organism. His next experiment tells him that the bugs in the corpse
are harmless, but bugs in the air are deadly. Burton devises an experiment
that leads him to conclude the organism is inhaled, and that the clotting
of the blood begins within the lungs and radiates outward. He then injects
a several rats with different levels of anti-coagulating drugs and exposes
each of them to the organism. Those with highest amount of AC drugs in
their blood took the longest to die. He then turns his attention back
to the original rat and monkey and performs his autopsy on them. He find
nothing unexpected, the organs containing blood are rock hard. Although
he cannot find a factor that interrupts the clotting process, he knows
their must be one because two people survived this bacterium.
In his narration, Crichton reveals the two crucial mistakes Burton makes.
The first is relying on the evidence indicating the lungs are the crucial
point of entry instead of following his initial hunch to check on blood
flow to the brain. The second is his failure to autopsy the rats that
had been injected with the anti-coagulating drugs. Burton does not realize
his mistake for almost forty-eight hours.
Dr. Hall looks over the computer tests results indicating that the baby's status is completely normal, while Peter Jackson has several health problems. The most puzzling of his problems was the acidic pH level of his blood. Hall goes down the tunnel, into his suit, and wakes Peter Jackson to ask him a few questions about his daily regimen. Jackson reveals that he's been in several hospitals before because of his recurring stomach ulcers. Instead of opting for surgery, the old man had been solving the problem by downing a bottle of aspirin and chasing it with sterno (slang: cheap hard liquor). After their conversation Jackson goes back to sleep and Hall goes off to a conference.
Meanwhile, in the delta sector of the building Captain Arthur Morris
runs system checks of the facility's communication networks. Unbeknownst
to him, a sliver off paper from the roll within the telex printer box
becomes lodged between the striker and the bell. This prevents the telex
from receiving any new outside messages. Because it was a mechanical error,
none of the system checks were designed to pick it up, and no one noticed
for some time. Due to this mishap, Project Wildfire is temporarily cut
off from the outside world.
The end of this chapter highlights one of the major themes of the novel:
that despite taking the most extreme precautions imaginable, human and
machine error can occur and jeopardize the outcome. There are simply too
many possible variables to anticipate every action and reaction. This
will be an idea that Crichton returns to in Jurassic Park, where
he calls it chaos theory.
The team meets in the cafeteria to discuss their individual findings while
downing their pills and drinks. Burton reports on his experiments, and
Hall relates his conversation with Jackson. Stone and Leavitt then lead
the other two into the morphology lab, showing them the dividing process
of the organism. Hall speculates that they could be looking at an entire
colony, rather than just an individual organism. Stone begins to scrape
more tiny samples away from the cluster, sending some for Burton to place
under the spectrometer, and another for Leavitt to use in the AA analyzer.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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