Project X

Miss Dennis, please.

Dr. Crowther, Intelligence wants you to begin at once.

Colonel, you are asking the impossible.

I'm not asking, doctor. I'm relaying an order.

- Process has never been reversed. - Well, it's got to be done.

And immediately.

Hagen Arnold has been frozen for four days now.

Yes, what have you been waiting for?

I have been waiting for a decision.

You don't realize high-level meetings on this

have been held all over the Western world.

Well, the orders have finally come through.

Find out the meaning of Hagen Arnold's last message.

Once the psycho-barrier has been activated,

you cannot restore a memory.

Have you ever tried?

Yes, we have.

Then try again.

Let's close the capsule.

Dr. Craig, Miss Dennis, will you excuse us, please?

Will you please tell me what the head of Security is doing here?

How much has Crowther told you?

Only that Hagen Arnold was on a special mission in Sino-Asia.

- Did he fail? - Oh, no.

On the contrary, he was quite successful.

He was sent to confirm a rumor

that the Sinoese were mass-producing male babies.

Only boys?

Scientific breakthrough.

Hagen Arnold sent back the information

and then, apparently, he stumbled onto something bigger.

What could be bigger than that?

Stover.

Dr. Crowther, I would like to see a much more positive attitude.

Colonel Holt, whatever Hagen Arnold knew has been erased from his mind.

- Are you sure? - Absolutely sure? No, I'm not.

It could conceivably be lurking in the depths of his subconscious.

But how on earth are we gonna dredge it up?

- You're the scientist. - We have ten days.

And the earth was created in six. Thank you, gentlemen.

- This is serious. This is damn serious. - You Security boys, you come in here

and you ask us to develop a serum that will obliterate the memory.

Then you come back and you demand the impossible.

All right, all right, Dr. Crowther.

You're right, of course.

But do we have a choice?

No, I suppose not.

We'll try.

Good.

I don't care what method you use, but the less people involved, the better.

Well, there won't be any outsiders but I've gotta have my staff.

All right.

Colonel Cowen will remain here as liaison if there's anything you need.

We must be getting back to the Capitol.

Thank you, Dr. Crowther.

I'll show you out.

Excuse me, colonel.

That's quite all right.

Are you all right, colonel?

Why, yes, I...

I...

Well, I'm not very comfortable here, doctor.

I'm sorry, I... I know it's immature, but I have a feeling about death.

I understand.

But you see, we consider this just a sort of waiting period.

All the men and women here served the country

with great distinction in their various fields,

and they all died of ailments for which we have as yet no cures.

But some day we will.

And then we'll be able to thaw them out and extend their lives.

But Hagen Arnold?

Well, Hagen Arnold is a kind of exception.

He's really a temporary lodger.

- How? I mean, well... - How do we do it?

Well, when it's been decided that the person dying is to be preserved,

we start freezing as close as possible to the actual moment of clinical death,

so that the tissue remains in a nearly perfect state until the thaw.

And after-effects? Are there any?

Almost none if the process begins soon enough after death.

This is our vital statistics room.

All of our subjects in trial biology have had their lives minutely examined

and, of course, recorded.

I am Charles Bingham.

This is a sample of my voice.

I was born in Virginia and lived there most of my life

with the exception of diplomatic service in various countries.

Besides these voice reproductions, we have data

on all the important incidents in their lives.

We have their IQs, their school records,

the results of the psychological tests.

We know their preferences in reading, in friends, in dress.

All the things that made up their total personalities during life.

But why...? Why do you need so much detail?

Well, suppose while we're extending a subject's life,

we discover cellular damage

or some unforeseen damage to the brain.

We have to replace those cells, you see?

So we keep a supply of cells and tissues on hand

for just such contingencies.

That's fascinating.

I had... I had no idea.

- You're not feeling quite so...? - Squeamish as I was? No, I'm not.

Frankly, I'd like to know more about cryo-biology. It's an interesting subject.

I think you're gonna learn a great deal about it

before we're through with Hagen Arnold.

Colonel Cowen, you've met Dr. Craig and Miss Dennis.

I don't think you know Dr. George Tarvin, the radiologist,

or Dr. Tony Verity, a behaviorist who doesn't always behave.

Dr. Crowther, you have Hagen Arnold's voice print?

Yes, we do have it.

Thank you, doctor.

His last words.

West will be destroyed in 14 days.

Repeat, 14 days!

- What does it mean, sir? - We don't know.

"West will be destroyed in 14 days." By whom?

He was in Sino-Asia. I think we have to assume he meant the Sinoese.

That's ridiculous.

Well, Hagen Arnold was too responsible a man

to make such a statement without fact to back it up.

Gentlemen, Miss Dennis,

you are involved in the single most important project in the world today.

For the West, this may well mean a matter of survival.

Dr. Crowther?

Sino-Asia.

Now, the Sinoese, like us,

have been trying to solve the problem of overproduction of people.

We're running out of space.

Now, we knew that, sooner or later,

the uneasy peace between East and West would end.

But all are agreed that thermo-nuclear war is out of the question.

It was... It was just a matter of time before some other weapon,

a means to impose the will of one side upon the other,

would one day be found and used.

We have reason to believe the Sinoese have such a weapon.

But unfortunately, only one man knows for certain what that weapon is.

And he, Hagen Arnold, has that awesome secret locked in his mind.

We have ten days.

Ten days?

If it was ten months and then I'd give odds.

We've had difficult assignments before.

This project has top priority with every government in the West.

George, you probably know more about holograms

than any other man alive.

Do you intend using laser holograms?

I'd like to discuss that later.

When we thaw Hagen Arnold out,

we've got to able to keep him in one place without restraint

as long as necessary.

Tony, any ideas?

You mean available?

Any time of the day or night you might need him?

That's a tall order.

- That's why I brought you in. - Thank you.

Well, to keep a man in one given place for any length of time,

you have to create a state of apprehension.

Excuse me, doctor, but will fear alone do it?

No, we need more than that.

Ideal situation is to get Hagen Arnold to believe he committed a crime.

Crime? Why, it's been, well, at least three generations

since we eliminated crime and violence.

I know. I said the ideal situation.

I'm laboring under a handicap, Dr. Crowther.

I read the brief biography of Hagen Arnold,

but I know very little about him.

We can remedy that.

Hagen Arnold, in the year 2100 at the age of 13.

He'd already shown enough brilliance

to attract the attention of the academic world.

At the age of 20, he received his master's degree in history.

I thought he was a geneticist.

He took his degree in biology at the age of 16.

Then he became so interested in history,

he went on and took a degree in that.

Arnold was widely recognized not only as a geneticist

but also as an historian.

In fact, he wrote and lectured on two decades:

The 1950s and the 1960s.

He was quite a man.

Is.

I forgot he was in that high-status refrigerator of yours.

Hagen Arnold's 31, unmarried.

I wish I knew more about the period Hagen taught.

Break it up! Come on!

Break it up! Break it up, come on!

- Come on! - All right!

What violence.

When was that?

Between 1965 and '68.

We'll need a new matrix for Hagen Arnold.

Yes, we will.

Question is, what sort of matrix?

I wish I understood all this. Matrix?

A new personality, colonel.

You see, Hagen Arnold's mind is as blank as a brand-new slate.

We can program anything we want into it.

Wait a minute.

- Yes, sir? - Send Stover up, please.

Yes, sir.

You're aware, colonel,