At a midnight conference, Stone sees that the team is exhausted and suggests that everyone starts getting more rest to avoid making careless mistakes. There's no hurry, he argues, since the bomb has been dropped on Piedmont. Since the team has recently discovered a new life form, Leavitt suggests that they contact the army requesting a code name for the bacterium. When the group transmits the message from the telex machine, Burton notices the hundreds of sheets of incoming messages stacked behind the printer box. He tears off the message advising the Wildfire team that the President decided not to drop the bomb on Piedmont. The team realizes that sector one has not been notifying them when they a MCN transmission is received.
Minutes later, Stone is talking with the head of the President's science
advisory committee in Houston. The advisor tells him about the Phantom
plane crash and how the hoses in the cockpit suddenly disintegrated. Stone
tells the advisor that the national guardsmen around Piedmont will soon
start dying from the disease and requests that the team be notified as
soon as that happens. After handing up the phone, Stone tries to look
through the past messages, but there are too many to look through all
of them. He gives up before he comes across a message concerning the death
of an Arizona highway patrolman.
Stone is convinced that the decision to not to drop the bomb has endangered
many other lives. Yet, it has been two days since the first deaths, and
no other deaths have been reported in the area. It is another hint that
the bacteria is somehow changing.
Stone and Leavitt look through the data from the amino-acid analysis machine. Test results indicate that both the black rock' and the green spot are made up of the same elements which compose most life on earth - hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, etc. But when they view the results of the amino acid tests, the two scientists are shocked to find none of the proteins or amino acids that provide the building blocks for life on earth. If the organism had no enzymes, it must have learned to evolve in a different way from life on earth. This meant the wildfire team was dealing with an alien organism. Analysis and neutralization would take much longer than they had originally anticipated.
Back in the morphology lab, Stone inspects a cross-section of the green fleck sample under the electron microscope. When the image comes up on the screen, Stones sees a perfect six-sided hexagonal figure with other interlocking hexagons on all sides. The organism looks exactly like a crystal. Leavitt hypothesizes that it is this specialized crystalline structure which allows the organism to separate all the various chemical reactions which would normally be handled by enzymes and amino-acids. Stone and Leavitt discuss the possibility that what they are looking at could be a messenger pod sent from another planet, designed to eventually communicate back to the home base. They decide to order x-ray crystallography tests.
Meanwhile in the observation room, Dr. Hall talks to Peter Jackson about
the final night in Piedmont. Jackson mentions that the baby's last name
is Jamie Ritter. The whole town was familiar with his crying late at night.
The old man explains that everyone in the town suddenly came running out
of their houses, as if the disease was driving them mad. That's why many
of them committed suicide. Besides the army van, Jackson claims the only
other car to drive through town that night was Officer Willis, of the
Arizona Highway patrol.
Jackson's comments that the bacteria drove everyone mad start to reinforce
the idea of the brain as a point of exploration.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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