The Sample

Author's note: This is one part of the Melted collection. These stories can be read individually or in any order.

Dr. Eleanor Lee stepped outside of the Amundsen-Scott compound and felt the icy wind chill the sensitive membranes in her nostrils. She was accustomed to the cold and although it was -12 degrees celsius, she quickly felt overheated in her thick orange suit. It was a balmy day in January and the sun dipped in the sky, but refused to set at 10pm. Dr. Lee didn’t mind working at all hours. After a few months, night felt the same as day and was only differentiated by the numbers on her wristwatch. As a meteorologist, she tracked the temperatures precisely and was more than a little surprised by the relative heat. It was summer after all, so the increased temperatures were to be expected, but this was exceptionally toasty. She fretted and stressed about the effects of climate change, but Dr. Lee harbored a secret thrill that she was the one witnessing such a dramatic shift. She had already authored more articles than she could recall, but she knew this was the Big One. The coldest place on Earth was much warmer than it should be, and she was there to document it. 

“Dr. Lee!” said Dr. Lars Kristiansen. Except for his bright orange snowsuit, he was barely visible leaning out of a door at the other end of the compound. Dr. Lee called back a greeting without raising her voice. Sound traveled excellently at the south pole. 

“Green just came back.” His cheerful voice carried across the barren white landscape.

Dr. Lee waved her hand above her head in acknowledgment and trudged across the packed snow towards the compound, jotting notes on her clipboard as she walked. She stepped inside and stomped the snow off her shoes, hanging up her parka as quickly as possible. She was beginning to sweat.

Dr. Kristiansen buzzed around Dr. Arne Green, who was carefully unpacking an ice core onto a laboratory table. The opaque tube of ice glistened. The delicate sample was just three inches in diameter, but was over a meter in length. The frosty imperfections in the silvery cylinder were striated with debris. Dr. Colleen Carlson, head of the glaciology team, wore a twisted expression of pride at the discovery mixed with terror at its implications.

Dr. Kristiansen had been waiting impatiently for this sample to return. For the first time, glaciologists were able to drill into a portion of the Thwaites Glacier that had never been exposed in human history. Multiple teams had been sent to the glacier to explore the melted and thinned area before it sloughed off into the ocean. Dr. Green was grim and Dr. Kristiansen was glowing.

“We sent off the larger sample to Argentina,” said Dr. Green. “It’s already on board the plane. This is the secondary sample, of course, for immediate study. Another sample was delivered to the Argentinian compounds. The largest sample, as I said, has been packed and put on a plane to Argentina already. This is only a small sample of the newly exposed area. The temperatures at the glacier have risen so much that this sample is actually much further inland than we were hoping for. The portion my team was sent to retrieve has actually already calved.” Dr. Lee, only marginally interested in the distribution of samples, nodded along. The verbose Dr. Green’s habit of repeating himself wasn’t particularly missed while he was at Thwaites.

“Dr. Green,” said Dr. Lee, “what was the ambient temperature at the time of drilling?”

“Four degrees above zero,” he replied tersely. 

“Above?” repeated Dr. Lee. Dr. Green clenched his jaw and nodded mutely, allowing the words to hang in the air.

“I’d like a shaving of this location immediately,” said Dr. Kristiansen, excitedly pointing to a greenish location near the bottom of the sample. He was a biologist specializing in phycology, so Dr. Green was prepared and shaved off a tiny sample. Before Dr. Green could begin rehashing the origins of the sample, Dr. Kristiansen dashed off with the rapidly melting ice. 

In his laboratory, he promptly set the sample under the microscope. He gleefully observed the algae-rich ice, knowing his work was groundbreaking in more ways than one. The longer he stared and measured, the less certain he was about the greenish goo. Squinting, he observed that the algae was not preserved, but actually still living and thriving. In fact, cells had begun to multiply before his very eyes.

“An extremophile!” he breathed. Dr. Kristiansen began taking extensive notes, working deep into the darkless night.

The next day, Dr. Kristiansen woke with a headache. Assuming his late night and hunched posture were to blame, he eagerly returned to the algae sample. To his surprise, the sample had grown significantly despite the proper containment procedures. The overgrowth touched a nerve and Dr. Kristiansen swept his arm across the table, crashing microscopes, files, and samples to the ground. He couldn't understand what had happened. Why the overgrowth? His head ached. What was that green stuff? He felt hot. Why was he in a laboratory? He grunted in confused frustration and stomped out of the room.

Dr. Schroeder, a meteorologist on Dr. Lee’s team, poked his head out of the door to investigate the source of the sounds. 

“Dr. Kristiansen?” he said. There was no response from his coworker stalking down the corridor. 

“Lars?” Dr. Schroeder stepped cautiously from his laboratory and into the hallway. 

“Is everything alright?” Dr. Schroeder said just before his coworker smashed a microscope over his head. Blinking with tears and blood streaming over his eyes, he attempted to sit up, but Dr. Kristiansen kicked him in the stomach. Over and over. Curled on the floor, Dr. Schroeder spotted one of his teeth on the other side of the hallway.

“Eleanor!” screamed the bleeding man. Dr. Lee flung open the heavy door, took one look at the carnage, and slammed it shut again. She pulled the emergency lever and called for medics. 

Dr. Kristiansen, having silenced Dr. Schroeder, roared in frustration and pulled at his hair. His pupils were dilated to black spheres. His skin was red and hot. The medics arrived with a stretcher and emergency kit. Dr. Kristiansen broke into a run. He landed on the military-trained medics and tore into them with his fingernails. They attempted to subdue the biologist, but the damage was done. A trail of broken bodies littered the hallway.

Dr. Green burst from his office. His eyes were as wild as his coworker's. He did not glance down at the chaos unfolding. His fists balled and his shoulders flexed as he rushed into the fray. 

Inside her office, Dr. Lee had ducked behind a desk and clutched a phone to her ear, the twisted cord trailing across the room.

"I don't know! No. He just, he went crazy! No, I don't know what set him off. It was like his brain melted or something. Yes. Yes. I will. Please hurry," she whispered into the receiver. 

Dr. Lee covered her ears to block out the shouting and crashing in the hallway. After a long while, all sounds stopped. A pair of heavy-booted feet approached her door.

"Eleanor," called a familiar voice. "Our ride is ready. The sample's packed up already, too."

"Thank you, Colleen," she replied. Dr. Lee shrugged into her parka and carefully opened the door. "Who else is coming?"

"Erik, Denise, Mari, and Sven got out as soon as they heard. Three of the people on Denise's team… tried to help." She shuddered.

The doctors hurried through the compound and out into the frigid wind. The emergency plane whirred and stirred up snow. 

Dr. Lee complained of a headache as she boarded the aircraft.