by Dennis E. Power
(with much
assistance from
Matthew Baugh, Win Eckert and Chuck Loridans)
PART NINE
KATRINA
Special
thanks to
Win Eckert for providing necessary background information on the
Invisibility
Affair
The last member of the Griffin family (1) whose destiny was also intertwined with the concept of invisibility, was Katrina Griffin, the daughter of Maria Goodrich and Frank Griffin. For various legal reasons, Frank had to reassume the Griffin name but felt that time and his war record had expunged the taint.
After her parents had died in a fatal car crash, Katrina, nicknamed Kerry by her father, went to live with her bachelor Uncle, Her great uncle, Frank's mother's brother. Despite promised made to Frank Griffin, Kerry was not guarded from harm by agents of the ISD since there was actually no threat against her.
Kerry also intrigued by her family history and by the concept of invisibility although she approached it from a different angle than her ancestors, rather than trying a biological method she thought to use physics, specifically quantum theory. Dr. Willard Morthley had made some strides in this field and in early 1965, Kerry Griffin began working with Willard Morthley upon a method of creating invisibility by allowing the entire electro-magnetic spectrum to pass unimpeded through matter. Although Kerry was just 19 and still a student at MIT, it was she who had the theoretical breakthrough that brought about the creation of the OTSMID (Omnidirectional Total Spectrum Molecular Interpenetration Device) which rendered objects invisible.
In creating the invisibility field the OTSMID also warped the space-time continuum and created a sort of null-space. Although there was no real practical use for the latter discovery at that time. The OTSMOD rendered objects invisible with a spherical field of radius, so one of the major flaws of the device was the visible demarcation of the its field which appears like a circular pit in the ground or a circular patch of clear air in a bank of fog.
In other words if it were applied to a building, all you see is a giant circular pit in the ground, which would denote the edge of the field. Therefore it is not really useful for personal use, as the person walking around could be identified by small circular pit moving around on the ground.
Word however got out they had been successful in their experiments in invisibility and Dr. Morthley and his "assistant" Kerry Griffin were captured by Thrush. When they were captured by Thrush Morthley insisted for Kerry to let Thrush think he was the brain of the outfit. In that way all attention would be centered on him and she could possibly escape and get help. Dr. Morthley did not tell her however that if Thrush thought he was the sole inventor, he hoped any mistreatment would be directed at him and if he should happen to perish in their hands then they might let the "useless" girl go free.
Thrush was not so quick to let a useful ploy slip through their hands.
They had to come up with a practical use for the OTSMOD or Kerry would face a fate worse than death.
Kerry came up with the idea of an aircraft and Willard Morthley thought of the dirigible. Thrush then equipped a dirigible with an OTSMOD Soon they discovered the second major flaw of the invisible invention. The null space inside the field was also an electromagnetic dead zone. You could not see out of the invisibility field nor could any form of electromagnetic energy such as light, heat, radio etc be transmitted or received. Therefore to fly on course, the field had to be dropped intermittently to take bearings and set the engines.
Despite its flaws Thrush used the dirigible to help Thrush's side win a revolution in a small Central American country, San Sebastian. However, the intrepid UNCLE agents triumphed and re-captured the dirigible and the technology, rescuing Dr. Morthley and Kerry Griffin. Napoleon recommended to Mr. Waverley that the technology be used to help *their* side win the revolution. However the flaws of the OTSMOD were considered to outweigh its practical uses and the idea is shelved.
Despite their breeding, charm and intelligence the Uncle agents accepted without question that Kerry Griffin was a mere girl friday to Dr. Morthley. (2)
Devices oddly similar to the OTSMOD would later show up in two of the variant futures of the Wold Newton Universe. In the future which Future lived, Captain Future that is and the Star Trek timelines and of course the combination of the two. Curtis Newton had an invisibility device built into a belt, which created an invisibility field about his body for a period of fifteen minutes. Since he could not see out of this field however he had to rely on his other senses to guide him when he was inside the field.
In the Star Trek timelines The OTSMOD sounds very similar to the Star Trek cloaking device, with the difference that on Star Trek, one can see outside of the cloak.
Kerry continued to work on the invisibility project even after Dr. Morthley died in the early 70's. She received government grants to continue her research; she was later to find out that it was the military doing so. She hired an assistant who was a brilliant as her, Daniel Westin, from Britain. Even though he bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the two UNCLE agents that had rescued her, Westin insisted that there was no connection and as far as he knew no familial relationship between the Westins and Kuraykin's.
(It may look like Ilya Kuryakin but it is not).
Dr. Kate and David
Westin.
Westin and Kerry, whom he insisted on calling Kate, became partners and then husband and wife. In late 1974, they received an ultimatum to finish their research or lose all funding for this and future projects. The Westins realize that someone had been studying their notes. Westin without Kate's knowledge used himself as a guinea pig for the first human experiment in invisibility using their new method. This consisted of injecting himself with what he termed liquid photons and having it activated by a machine which activated the injected chemicals on a certain electro-magnetic resonance. This was more than likely a bogus term, this research sounds very similar to that conducted by Professor Gibbs in 1939. (3) His initial experiments were successful. Westin was able to render objects and living subjects invisible and reverse the process.
Discovering that that Klae Corporation was funded exclusively by the military, he wanted assurances that his research would not be used for military purposes. (4) When this was not forthcoming Westin destroyed the files at the lab so that the military could not get their hands on the use of his device. Guards were alerted to his vandalism and he thought that the only way to get out of the incident without being arrested was to leave the lab invisible. Westin was however rushed a minor mathematical mistake resulted in too much power being used by the device which activated the chemical in his body. The increased power altered the electro-chemical make up of Dr. Westin's body. The overload also destroyed the machine. Westin was permanently invisible. He and Kate continued to work by themselves on a cure for his condition. They made a deal with the Klae Corporation to carry out various tasks for the multinational conglomerate, basically by being hired out as investigators and/or spies. This is how the couple pay for their lab time the Klae Corporation's ties to the US Military and various intelligence corps, allowed it to put in a special order to the OSI/IMF. Not only did Westin need one of their special masks but also he needed a realistic full body suit. Fortunately his resemblance to Ilya Kuryakin whose facial and body measurements were already computerized made the task easier to do. An old friend of Westin's Dr. Nick Maggio developed Westin's artificial skin body suit. He had earlier designed smaller realistic pieces to cover the cybernetic mechanisms on Colonel Steven Austin's legs and arm. (5)
How successful the Westins were in finding a cure for his condition remains unknown at this point. (6)
Click
here for a Griffin family tree graphic
NOTES
KATRINA
1.
Although
2. A reasonably accurate account of this incident was reported in The Invisibility Affair, Man From Uncle 11 by Thomas Stratton.
3. Please see the Kitty Carroll section of this article for information on Professor Gibbs
4. He was rather adamant about this because he started off his early career designing nuclear bombs. At first he thought of it an intellectual exercise but he eventually came to realize the devastation that some of his inventions could achieve and swore off making military weapons. He was told that the Klae Corporation was pure research with no military applications. When he discovered otherwise he felt betrayed.
5. The OSI connections to the Westin's was in the novelization television series of the Invisible Man by Michael Jahn. Thanks to John Small for pointing it out.
6.
Although the pilot film of the television series was slightly more
accurate
than the series itself, the Invisible Man television series Universal
Studios,
NBC 1975 should not be construed as a real depiction of events in the
lives of
Kate Griffin Westin or David Westin. The use of their names and
situations was
sold to the network without consent. Westin and Kate sold some of their
stories
to television. Because of the failure of the television
show based
on some of Kate and Daniel's earlier adventures, the network
retooled the
characters. Kate Westin became Dr. Abbey Lawrence and Daniel Westin
became Sam
Casey, intrepid adventurer. The show was entitled The Gemini
Invisibles
Timeline
1897 Invisible Man by H.G.
Well (John Hawley Griffin. OIM Original Invisible
Man)
1898 League of Extraordinary Men (John
Hawley Griffin)
1922 Invisible Man (John
(Jack) Griffin)
1929 Invisible Murderer with William Carpenter as the Invisible Man
1931 Invisible Man's Return (Frank Griffin----- with Geoffrey Radcliffe as the IM
1935 Invisible Man's Revenge
(Robert Griffin) the IM
1938 Invisible Woman (Kitty
Caroll)
1942 (twenty years after Invisible
Man) Invisible
Agent (Frank Griffin a.k.a. Frank Raymond)
1948 Abbott
and
Costello Meet Frankenstein (Geoffrey Radcliffe IM)
1949 Abbott
and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (Tommy Nelson IM)
1966 Invisibility Affair
Willard
Morthley and Kerry Griffin inventors of the
OTSMID
(Omnidirectional Total Spectrum Molecular Interpenetration Device)
which can
render objects invisible
1974 Daniel Westin
becomes an Invisible Man
1998 Darien Fawkes
surgically
implanted with quicksilver gland to become an Invisible Man
1999 Sebastian
Caine has
a brief and deadly career as an Invisible Man as seen in The Hollow
Man