Applied Biology
The newest division and the one with the fewest publications, because it has spent four years answering questions from the third floor that no biologist has been asked before, and answering them, and being authorised to proceed anyway.
I want to say something about the word enhancement before the department gets its paragraph, because the department will use the word carefully and I am not going to. A man is a machine that was built without a drawing. Every other machine in this building has a drawing and can be improved from it. The purpose of Applied Biology is to draw the drawing.
Two of the three programmes are described on this sheet. The third is described in one paragraph, by agreement between the department and my office, and the paragraph is the last one before the fine print. You will know it when you get there.
Programme One — Human Enhancement
The gels enhance a man. That is not a metaphor: a volunteer on propulsion gel is faster than any man on record, and a volunteer on repulsion gel can reach a ledge no man could reach, and neither effect requires the volunteer to be anything but a volunteer. Applied Biology was formed to ask whether the enhancement could be moved from the floor into the man.
Four years on, the answer is a qualified no, the qualification being that the department has produced eleven volunteers who no longer require the gel to bounce and would very much like to stop. The department is working on that. The department describes the eleven, in its own paperwork, as a success.
Programme Two — Mantid Husbandry
Here is the programme this company is known for, in the parts of Marquette County where this company is known for anything besides curtains, and I am going to describe it exactly as it happened.
I asked the department whether a man and a mantis might be combined to produce a soldier with the strengths of both. It is a reasonable question. A mantis is patient, fast, and does not appear to feel anything about what it does, and the United States has been asking me for a product with those properties since 1956 without using those words.
Interoffice Memorandum
The department has considered the proposal with the seriousness the Office of the President requires of all proposals, and wishes to report as follows.
A programme combining a man and a mantis would not produce a soldier with the strengths of both. It would produce a soldier with the weaknesses of both. The department has set out the weaknesses of a mantis on the attached sheet. There are eleven, and the first is that it cannot hold a rifle.
The department recommends that the programme not proceed, and notes for the record that it has never before been asked to write that sentence.
Endorsed in the President’s hand: Read it. Good memo. Proceed anyway. — C.J.
Mantid programme, Sub-Level 5, status at Spring 1959
| Item | Status | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Authorised | September 1957 | Against the department’s advice, in writing |
| Staff assigned | Four | Three volunteers. One reassignment. |
| Mantids on hand | 1,400 | Sub-Level 5, north gallery, kept warm |
| Subjects | None | The department has not asked and will not ask |
| Rifle trials | None | See weakness one |
| Reassignment | Greg | From the reactor room. Back to the reactor room. Same week. |
The 1,400 mantids are fed, housed and counted weekly by the north gallery staff. The count has been 1,400 on every occasion but one, when it was 1,401, and nobody has been able to explain the one.
“Read it. Good memo. Proceed anyway.”
Programme Three
The third programme concerns the long-term storage of a personality, is conducted jointly with the Computation Department, has a number and not a name, and is described — by agreement between the department, the Computation Department, and the Office of the President — in this one paragraph and nowhere else in this publication. It is proceeding.
He wrote “proceed anyway” on the mantis memo without reading the attached sheet. I read the attached sheet. Weakness eleven is not about the mantis. — C.
Form ASI-405. The gels are described at ASI-203 and ASI-204; the department’s joint work with Computation is described at ASI-403 to exactly the same extent as it is described here.