The Laptev Virus

“There is one other thing you should know. For now, all drilling and exploration has been halted in that area, of course.”

Oscar looked at Angela, his bushy eyebrow now one long line across the top of his forehead. “But it can’t remain that way,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we only have three months of the year that we can work up there. The Arctic contains a vast amount of oil and gas—enough to make North America energy independent for the foreseeable future. We’ve finally obtained the permits we need to begin drilling, and we’ve invested billions of dollars and moved tons of equipment up there. My CEO tells me that the shareholders will not take kindly to matters if we have to report back that we let an entire season go by without further exploration, and then we cannot do anything for another nine months while the winter rages on.”

“I understand. We will work quickly on this investigation. We’re very fortunate to have the former head of the CDC, Dr. Rhonda Bentley, leading the Infectious Diseases department. I’ll inform her of this decision and I’m sure she’ll get a team right on it,” said Oscar.

Angela sighed imperceptibly with relief. It was the answer she had been hoping to receive, given the urgency of the issue for her company. She would visit her CEO, Stan Sundback, as soon as she returned to her office and let him know.

CHAPTER 3

“Can I play with Opus? Pretty please!”

Molly was so focused that she didn’t glance up from her laptop. She was busy trying to finish writing the essay for her anthropology class, ‘Pre-humans in the Iberian Peninsula’. She was fascinated with the subject and had found some interesting journal articles in the last few days using the new online database that the library had acquired. In one of the articles she was reading how there seemed to be direct evidence that Neanderthals and modern humans had coincided, inhabiting caves only a mile apart, for more than 5,000 years, in northern Spain. In another more ancient cave they had discovered 17 skulls with Neanderthal-like features which were thought to be over 30,000 years old.

It was so fascinating that she was seriously thinking of changing her major from Psychology to Anthropology. How she wished she could go there and be a part of the archaeological discovery teams. Maybe she would do a Master’s degree in Anthro? Maybe she could apply for an NSF grant once she graduated next year…

“Come on, Moll-Moll!” said her brother, interrupting her thoughts. “I’ll just have him out for a little bit. I promise!”

“Hmm? Yeah, sure, go ahead,” she said distractedly. Her younger brother loved the little mouse she had brought home one day from the laboratory animal care facility. She worked there part-time, 10-20 hours per week, cleaning the cages and feeding the mice. The mice were bred for all kinds of experiments, and although some were more intrusive tests, requiring the mice to receive injections or grow tumors which could be studied to find anti-cancer drugs, many mice were used for behavioral studies or as control mice for the tumor studies, which required nothing more of them than to live normal healthy lives so they could be used for comparison to the others. These were the mice she usually cared for.

One day about three weeks ago, one of the graduate students, Kevin, had told her about Opus, though the mouse had not yet been baptized as such. Molly really liked Kevin. It wasn’t just that he was probably closely related to Channing Tatum, as evidenced by his green eyes and gorgeous smile. It was because even though he was obviously busy and had tons of friends who were constantly contacting him on his cell phone, he still made time to explain things and teach her things, unlike the other technicians, some of whom were just plain nasty.

The researchers in the department that studied HIV/AIDS, he explained, were performing a non-intrusive study to see how long it took for the mice to wake up from anesthesia. Sometimes they did benign tests like this to see if there was any way to make this process more tolerable for the little mice. They had tried different methods for waking them, and they had found that the colder the mice were, the more lethal the anesthesia was. So they were trying different methods for keeping the mice warm to see if they could help the mice emerge more healthily from the somniferous effect of the anesthetic.

“We kept him under an electric blanked for several hours afterwards, you see,” explained Kevin. “Otherwise he would be too cold and never wake up.”

“Aw, he doesn’t like being a little penguin!” she exclaimed, obviously upset and reaching out a finger to stroke the soft white fur.