In 1959, the Sawtooth Complex project began. Two years before the Cheyenne Mountain construction was started, Thompson Peak was being hollowed out. It was twelve years into the Cold War, and The Viet Nam incident had been going on for four years. It was the same year that the Canadian NORAD bunker was started. Eleven other bunkers had been built since 1953, those were all common knowledge. Sawtooth was set up differently though, it was designed to be self sufficient after completion and was filled with scientists as opposed to military personnel. An enormous dome had been created inside the mountain, with nets across the top to catch any falling rocks. The four towers held each of the four divisions, and there were storage and agricultural structures around the surrounding cavern. The area was not known for earthquakes, but the surface of the planet was becoming increasingly unstable. Yellowstone was only about two hundred miles away, and there had been an increasing amount of seismic activity in the old caldera. The original intention was weapons design, and there was a nuclear physics division, but by the early 1990’s, the focus had changed.

One of the largest seed corporations had been dabbling with modifying plant cells and with the government’s assistance had moved a portion of their biotechnology department to Sawtooth. It was there that the first ideas of other forms of biotechnology had begun to emerge. In keeping with good government practice, each division was kept separate and mostly ignorant of the others, unless they were involved in one of the Special Projects teams.. In the kinetics division, the only people allowed in had to have SCI clearance, sensitive compartmented information. Certain people were only allowed on certain floors of that facility. Eerie and shocking things were going on there, illegal as well as dangerous.

The scientists in the Genetics Tower had been focused on gene transfer technology. Using embryonic cell mediated gene transfer, they had managed to create manipulated gene constructs, which were then inserted into a certain kind of stem cell. Those cells were then incorporated into the human embryos, which were implanted into a specific group of females after being fertilized. The problem with this was the types of DNA they were using to modify the cells. They were creating things that nature never intended through natural evolution. They still worked with seeds and plants, large corporations paid well to have results with no questions asked.

In the Pharmaceuticals Tower, the chemists were working on many different projects. Some were creating new medicines and improving current formulas, others had darker tasks. Specialized teams made up of the best and brightest chemists and scientists had been well compensated for agreeing to work on some of the less legal projects.

The Nuclear Physics building housed the weapons and energy divisions, things much too advanced for the general public to know about. They had figured out how to make nuclear power completely safe, never again any more accidents like Chernobyl or the Fukushima Nuclear power plant disaster. Unfortunately it was much more profitable for those invested in fossil fuels to keep that information tightly under wraps.

Each of these groups also worked on joint projects, Kinetics and Genetics had many biological experiments going on a continuous basis, Pharmaceuticals also worked with the Weapons department within the Physics Tower. There were corridors that connected each of the towers on different floors, so that those working on joint projects didn’t have to go all the way to the main floor and then all the way back up. Generally the populations of each tower kept to themselves and did not associate with each other. The directors of the separate divisions were the only ones who knew what each of the others were doing.


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