The Laptev Virus

“I’ve got two distinguished visitors with me this afternoon,” continued Rhonda, her voice a slightly higher pitch than usual. “You remember Oscar Mitchell, our university president?”

Sarah accepted his extended hand and kept her eyes from flitting to his eyebrows.

“And this is Angela Redi, Vice President of Safety and Health…”

“Health, Safety and Environment at Riesigoil,” said Angela, extending her hand in turn to Sarah.

Riesigoil. Sarah smiled and shook hands even as she felt her stomach sinking. Riesigoil. Wasn’t that the name of the company which had had the Laptev virus incidents? Of course! And that meant that they were funding her research now, through a sizable donation. Rhonda had only mentioned the company’s name once, and Sarah had barely noted it, being much more concerned with the science than the politics. Now she chided herself for not having looked up the company. The name had sounded foreign and she assumed that it was located somewhere in another country. But here was their HSE VP, speaking in perfect English, and not at all looking like she’d just hurried off a plane and raced through Customs and came straight to the university.

They exchanged pleasantries, and Rhonda made sure to drop the word ‘Laptev virus’. She was trying to help make things clear for Sarah in a subtle manner, in case she had not yet understood. Then Rhonda asked if it would be all right if they sat in on the meeting. Sarah froze for only an instant, then recovered and forced herself to smile. She graciously ushered her illustrious guests into the lab. Since they usually just sat around on lab stools, Sarah experienced a moment of panic, thinking it might be better to move the meeting to the conference room where everyone could sit in a proper chair, but her visitors immediately rejected that idea.

“Well then, your timing is impeccable,” said Sarah, struggling to regain her composure. “We only just got started a few minutes ago with our weekly progress meeting. Let me present my team to you.”

Once lab stools had been found for the visitors, Sarah introduced her investigators and asked them to say a few words about themselves and their role in the Laptev virus project. Then Sarah recapped last week’s meeting briefly, explaining Tally’s working hypothesis about humans living in the Laptev Bay area all those thousands of years ago as they followed the mammoths around, and perhaps succumbing to the virus in that location.

Then, crossing her fingers that her team would respond well, she motioned to Tally and Drew, and said, “All right, let’s get going here. Would you mind starting over and telling us all what you two found out about the ice core sample analysis this past week? I believe you had some more specific information about how the virus suddenly became virulent again after lying dormant for 30,000 years?” It was as good a place as any to begin, and she felt fairly confident Tally and Drew would respond well.

“Okay,” said Drew, taking the lead in the presentation they had planned. “Our first question, following up from our presentation last week was regarding whether the appearance of the Laptev virus at the site where they took the ice core sample was an isolated incident or whether the virus was present in other locations nearby.”

At this point Angela nodded and Sarah guessed that she must have also wondered about that question.

“We were able to get an audience with a geologist from Riesigoil,” said Drew, glancing quickly toward Angela.

Sarah’s eyes widened slightly as she realized that this meant that her researchers had paid more attention than she had to the company who was sponsoring their investigations. Well, she thought, good thing they weren’t oblivious like me.

“He’s a guy named Russ Morrison,” continued Tally, taking up the story, “and he was assigned to the Laptev Bay drilling area. He turned out to be instrumental and had some interesting things to tell us. First off, in regards to that ice core sample taken on the day the bears attacked: it turns out that part of the reason it slipped out of the bore and broke so easily was because the ice was already softening. Russ said that they had done some geological sound wave analyses earlier in the week in that area, and they found that the ice shelf above the area where they were expecting to hit land and drill for oil had been melting, and apparently it was melting at a faster rate than they had expected. I don’t think that the research team that was sent out to get the ice core sample that day was aware of that, or otherwise they would have perhaps taken extra precautions in handling it.”

“Like making sure no bears were around?” asked Shane ironically.

Sarah felt mortified and noticed that Angela blanched.

“Perhaps,” said Tally, clearly not taking the bait. “But there’s another thing which no one mentioned earlier, that Russ thought might be important, and that is the fact that they had already drilled exploratory wells only a kilometer away.”