Drug of Choice Page 15
“No,” Clark said. “You’re wrong.”
“Are you against drugs? If you are, you’re in the minority. The largest-selling prescription drugs in this country are tranquilizers and sedatives. Everybody takes them. Everybody wants them. Everybody loves—”
“No,” Clark said. “You’re wrong.”
“Do you want to live in a certain neighborhood? Do you find certain food tasty? Do you prefer certain climates, clothes, cars, paintings, movies, books, films, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste, singers? Don’t you see your preferences are all conditioned? Don’t you see you are manipulated every minute of your life? You’re manipulated by Proctor and Gamble, by Ford, by MGM, by Random House, by Brooks, by Bergdorf, by Revlon, by Upjohn—”
“No,” Clark said. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m right,” Harvey Blood said, sweat pouring down his face. His eyes were fixed on the tuning fork. “I swear to God I’m right.”
“You’re wrong,” Clark said, and struck the tuning fork against the desk.
It hummed softly.
Harvey Blood did not move. He continued to stare at Clark, and his lips worked, but he did not speak. Clark watched with a kind of curiosity: he had never given the reversal drug in such a large dose before.
Harvey Blood screamed.
“They’re after me!” he cried. “They’re all after me!”
He sobbed, tears running down his cheeks. And then he began to pound his head against the desk.
Clark looked at his watch.
Four minutes.
He walked out of the room, hearing Harvey Blood’s cries, and the sound of his head thumping against polished mahogany.
The rest went quite smoothly. He hit the policeman at the front door across the back of the skull, then carried him, feet scraping, across the asphalt parking lot, dropping him onto the wet grass some distance from the building.
Three minutes.
He climbed into the limousine and started the engine. As he was about to pull out of the parking lot, a small sportscar came up and stopped by the entrance. A girl got out; he recognized Susan Ryle.
He called to her. She came over, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“There’s about to be an explosion,” he said, pointing to the building. “Right in there.”
“An explosion? What are you talking about?”
“Get into the car,” he said. She hesitated. “Get in!”
She climbed into the back seat. He checked his watch: a little more than two minutes.
He drove down to the road, turned left, and went two hundred yards. He pulled off and waited. From here, they could still see the building.
She said, “You’re really serious.” Her voice was awed and frightened.
“I really am, Susan.”
“My name isn’t Susan now. It’s Angela Sweet.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s Susan once again.”
The seconds ticked by. Finally Susan said, “How do you know there’s going to be—”
She stopped. She understood. “You’re a madman,” she said.
“Apparently.” He grinned.
“You’re going to blow up that building?”
“Apparently.”
One minute left. He sighed.
“But you can’t do that. Everything is there—my costumes, the music, everything.” He shrugged. “The breaks.”
“How can you do this to me?” she wailed, and began to cry.
At that moment, the headquarters of Advance, Inc. exploded. Clark thought it was rather a nice explosion, one that built up slowly from a muffled roar to a giant hot fireball as chemical stores caught and blew. The building seemed to fly apart; the sky was filled with gas and burning sparks.
Susan watched, mouth open, and then sobbed loudly. “I hate you,” she said. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”
“That’s all right,”
“I hope when they catch you they lock you up and throw away the key.”
“They may do that,” he said, starting the car and driving down the road.
“You’re completely insane,” she said. “Hopelessly insane.”
“That will be decided,” he said. He turned onto the freeway, and headed toward the police station. As he drove, he wondered if she were right. He wondered if he were really insane.
He decided that probably, he wasn’t.
But it was hard to be sure.
Christiansted, St. Croix
January, 1969
A Biography of Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Roslyn, New York, along with his three siblings.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his MD from Harvard Medical School. As an undergraduate, he taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University. He also taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While at Harvard Medical School, Crichton wrote book reviews for the Harvard Crimson and novels under the pseudonyms John Lange and Jeffery Hudson, among them A Case of Need, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery in 1969. In contrast to the carefully researched techno-thrillers that ultimately brought him to fame, the Lange and Hudson books are high-octane novels of suspense and action. Written with remarkable speed and gusto, these novels provided Crichton with both the means to study at Harvard Medical School and the freedom to remain anonymous in case his writing career ended before he obtained his medical degree.
The Andromeda Strain (1969), his first bestseller, was published under his own name. The movie rights for The Andromeda Strain were bought in February of his senior year at Harvard Medical School.
Crichton also pursued an early interest in computer modeling, and his multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090, was published by the Peabody Museum in 1966.
After graduation, Crichton was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he researched public policy with Dr. Jacob Bronowski. He continued to write and published three books in 1970: his first nonfiction book, Five Patients, and two more John Lange titles, Grave Descend and Drug of Choice. He also wrote Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues with his brother Douglas, and it was later published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.
After deciding to quit medicine and pursue writing full-time, he moved to Los Angeles in 1970, at the age of twenty-eight. In addition to books, he wrote screenplays and pursued directing as well. His directorial feature film Westworld (1973), involving an innovative twist on theme parks, was the first to employ computer-generated special effects.
Crichton continued his technical publications, writing an essay on medical obfuscation published by the New England Journal of Medicine in 1975 and a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma published in Metabolism in 1980.
He maintained a lifelong interest in computers and his pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1995. Crichton also won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered dinosaur of the ankylosaur group was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.
His groundbreaking, fast-paced narrative combined with meticulous scientific research made him one of the most popular writers in the world. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films. Known for his techno-thrillers, he has sold more than 200 million books. He also published four nonfiction books, including an illustrated study of artist Jasper Johns, and two screenplays, Twister and Westworld.
Crichton remains the only person to have a number one book, film, and television series in the same year.
He is survived by his wife, Sherri; his daughter, Taylor; and his son, John Michael.
Crichton and his younger brother, Douglas, co-authors of Dealing or Th
e Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, which was published under the pseudonym Michael Douglas.
Telegram from Harvard College announcing Crichton’s acceptance, May 4, 1960. (Courtesy of the Office of the General Counsel of Harvard University.)
Lowell House Harvard yearbook photo, 1961. (Courtesy of Harvard Yearbook Publications and Harvard University Archives.)
Crichton as an anthropology major at Harvard College.
“Peabody Papers.” (Reprinted from “A Multiple Discriminant Analysis of Egyptian and African Negro Crania” in Craniometry and Multivirate Analysis, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 57, No. 1, 1966, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.)
Harvard Crimson article featuring Crichton, March 1969. (Courtesy of the Harvard Crimson.)
Crichton as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, 1969.
A photo of Crichton for his memoir Travels.
Crichton hiking while doing research for his novel Micro.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1970 by Centesis Corporation
Cover design by Andrea C. Uva
Cover illustration by Omar F. Olivera and Theresa Burke
978-1-4532-9927-2
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