17 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
TOP SECRET
To: The President and Staff
From: R. McQ. Welch, Executive Department, Drug Task Force
Date: 11 January 1994
Subject: Eradicating cocaine
Ecgonine synthase is the principal enzyme that enables the coca plant to produce the chemical backbone of the alkaloid known as cocaine.
As experiments with tobacco plants have proven, it is possible to create an RNA messenger molecule that will instruct plant cells to stop manufacturing a specific enzyme. The tobacco experiments, which focused on the alkaloid nopaline, were highly successful using this antisense RNA sequence treatment. (The term “antisense” means that the RNA sequence is instructing the cell to stop producing a certain chemical, rather than start.) Nopaline production was suppressed, and this trait was passed down to the plants’ offspring.
Our proposal is to develop and deliver an RNA sequence that will turn off the gene responsible for ecgonine synthase production without affecting any other gene in the coca plant’s cells. This genetic agent will not kill the coca plants. In fact, its only effect will be to suppress the production of the enzyme, which will suppress the plant’s production of cocaine and render the plants useless for cocaine processing.
We believe that this technique will be the safest, most successful, and most ecologically responsible method of eradicating cocaine from South American jungles.
Should such a research project be initiated, it must proceed under airtight security. To have the maximum impact on the cocaine cartel’s raw materials, the coca crop must be treated in a single growing season. If the cartel learns of this plan they will disperse their growing fields and/or diversify into other drugs.
Security for the scientific personnel will also be important, both for their personal safety and to ensure the integrity of the program. Therefore the research should be conducted in a laboratory facility that is as secure and remote as possible.
The station wardroom shared a module with the exercise and recreation area. The wardroom consisted of six galley stations and an equal number of chest-high tables. No chairs were necessary in microgravity. Instead, diners slipped their feet into the “stirrups” that were mounted on the table legs like the rungs of a ladder, so that anyone could find a height that was comfortable for his or her individual size and posture.
Each galley had three doors, two hinged to open sideways and one that swung down to provide a working surface. Behind the doors were a pantry, freezer, refrigerator, microwave oven, a supply of plastic trays with magnetized receptacles for utensils, and hot and cold water injectors. The predominant color of the fixtures was pastel yellow.
On the wall spaces between the galleys were larger versions of the video screens found in the living compartments. The screens almost always showed real-time views of the Earth taken by the station’s TV cameras, accompanied by soft music.
The six tables poked up from the floor like truncated mushrooms. Above each table was an inverted bowl attached to the ceiling by thin pipes. Looking like Art Deco chandeliers, the bowls were actually vents that gently sucked crumbs and errant bits of food onto removable grids. Each table had four bins for holding the magnetized food trays. This limited the wardroom capacity to twenty-four; meals had to be staggered, since the station’s normal population was more than double the wardroom’s capacity. On rotation days it got even worse, with new personnel arriving before the old ones could depart.
Despite its high-tech ambience, the wardroom had the feel of a small-town general store. Except for a few days after a rotation, everybody knew everybody else. A nod or a glance often told as much as words; more, sometimes. Groups combined and recombined from meal to meal as alliances were forged and friendships made—or broken.
O’Donnell found the wardroom crowded when he pulled himself through the hatchway for his first meal. From the pantry he selected a tray of soup, smoked turkey, mixed vegetables, bread, strawberries, and apple juice. Just as he had been taught at his abbreviated preflight briefings, he attached his tray to the magnetic strips on the fold-down door of the galley, placed the turkey and mixed vegetables in the microwave oven, and rehydrated the soup by injecting it with a blast of hot water.