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Permafrost

The bitter, frigid northern Russian wind whipped and flailed on the scientist’s face like the mythical giant squid attacking an old wooden boat with its tentacles. Dr. Ji-Ho Park was not accustomed to the cold; and even though he wore the most expensive Columbia cold-weather jacket, pants gloves, knit hat, goggles, and balaclava that he could find, the vicious whips of the wind and snow cut him to his weak and aging bones. He carried his most recent deep-earth drilled core samples and opened the heavy metal door that led inside to his heated research building. Dr. Park may have referred to his shack as a “research building,” but it was nothing more than some plywood, metal, and cheap insulation. However, the one advantage he had was it would put a stop to the violent gusts of wind and had a propane-fueled space heater, which Dr. Park brought plenty of canisters for to last throughout the trip.

Inside the building were six large gray plastic shelves that contained hundreds of core samples that had been dug out from various locations in and near the Arctic Circle where the ground was so cold it always stayed frozen. There were various sensitive scientific instruments, tools, and a large map with red Xs covering it where Dr. Park and his team had taken samples. Stanford University had paid for Dr. Park and a couple of selected grad students to embark on this expedition in hopes of finding evidence of extinct microscopic life-forms such as bacteria, spores, and viruses. It had become a growing concern of the scientific community that these now extinct and forgotten or otherwise unknown diseases would become prevalent due to the melting glaciers and the general state of global climate change that was occurring.

Russia recently had to deal with a bout of anthrax that authorities believe to have come from a frozen reindeer carcass. The reindeer in question had died from anthrax, then been frozen and forgotten about; but when a heatwave melted the ice, the remaining anthrax spores were released and infected other reindeer, which eventually made its way back to a human population. Although this had been a relatively small incident, the scientific community saw it as a prelude to something more disastrous. Thus, Dr. Park was tasked to find as many of these old-and-forgotten diseases as possible so medical teams could start developing preemptive cures and vaccinations to them.

The task had been daunting merely because there was no data to go off of, to help him locate these ancient diseases. All Dr. Park knew was to go where the ground was always frozen and then just dig and hope to find something. The task was dreadfully boring, and as he approached his first full year of the expedition, the most interesting thing he found from over fifty thousand samples had been a well-preserved ancestor of what was now the common bullfrog. Dr. Park set three safely encased metal-tube samples on the shelf marked ‘Unprocessed.”

“Find anything, my dutiful students?” Dr. Park’s two most promising students in the field of microbiology, Brigitte Walters and Aaron Richards, had their faces glued to two separate electron microscopes scanning for anything that could be classified as a microorganism.

“No, Dr. Park,” Brigitte answered, never taking her face off the eyepiece.

“What about you, Aaron? Find anything exciting?” Dr. Park said as he removed his multiple layers of cold-weather gear.

“I…I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Maybe? We are scientists, son. We don’t get the luxury of using maybe.”

“This doesn’t look like anything we have seen before. It’s spherical, well, more oblong I suppose, and the surface proteins don’t appear to look like they do on other cells. They are more…” he paused hesitantly, looking up at the ceiling looking for the right word, “jagged I guess you could describe it?” Aaron tried to explain.

“Hmm… Let me see, son. This sounds like it could be interesting.” Dr. Park put his hand on Aaron’s shoulder, and Aaron got up from the seat. Dr. Park looked through the two eyepieces and studied the image. After a few minutes, hmm and ahhs came from the smiling doctor. “Aaron, do you know what you have here?”

“No, sir. Is it just some kind of dust particle?”

“This here appears to be what we have been looking for. Its structure is similar but appears to be an ancient descendant of the common cold virus. Of course, I can’t be certain until we do more testing. I think we might have found our first ancient virus!” Aaron and Brigitte gave each other a high-five as they smiled widely. “Let’s put this sample in a stabilizing solution and see what happens.” Brigitte ran over and grabbed a small quarter-filled tube of clear liquid. Dr. Park took the sample and placed it in the liquid, capped the vial, then swirled it around in a circle in his hands. The clear liquid began to slowly turn to a light shade of green.

“Wow, look at that color!” Brigitte said.

“Well, Mr. Richards, what would you like to name this new virus?” Dr. Park said, turning to Aaron. He touched a green crystal he wore around his neck. The crystal was a common stone found around the Ural Mountains that came in various colors and sizes. Aaron, while on a drilling mission, found a collection of green-hued crystal known as beryl. He fashioned one of the gems into a necklace and wore it around his neck for luck.

“Really, Dr. Park? You’ll let me name it?” he asked, astonished to have the honor of naming a newly discovered virus. He thought about the irony in discovering something new, which was, in fact, ancient.

“Well, you found it, it is only fair, son.”

“It’s almost the same color as this beryl gem. Let’s call it the Beryl Virus. I think it suits it.”

“Good choice, very appropriate I’d say. Now, you two head out and clean up camp before the temperature drops. We are going to celebrate our first discovery!” The two grad students geared up and headed outside to do their designated tasks laughing and talking about how exciting it was to find something, finally. As soon as the door closed behind them, Dr. Park went to his personal trunk that had been secured with a heavy padlock, pulled out keys from his pocket, and removed the lock. He pulled out a stashed-away satellite phone and dialed a number.

“Hey, it’s me. We finally found something that might work for our plan.” He paused a moment while the man on the other end of the phone spoke. “Yes, yes, I will take care of it. No, it will look like an accident, don’t worry, it’s dangerous up here after all. Yes, make the arrangements with the North Koreans. I will be in Seoul within a week. General, don’t worry, this will be our great moment of triumph. Okay, I’m going to go take care of it right now, see you in a week.” Dr. Park hung up the phone and tucked it back into his trunk, closed it, and placed the lock back through the small loop on the front. He put on his cold-weather gear, placed his goggles over his face, picked up a chisel, and walked outside in the frozen wastelands of the Nether-polar Urals.