The Curiosity Read Online Free PDF Page B

tell it is not a matter of getting comfortable, but of growing anxiety. You like it.
    â€œOne caveat,” you say, raising a hand. “Today contains merely one portion of a five-phase process.” You count on your fingers. “First, reclamation, which includes finding and identifying a viable sample. Second, reanimation, which you will witness momentarily. Third, recovery, in which the specimen gains function. Fourth, plateau, in which it achieves equilibrium. Fifth, frenzy, which, as you observe, will speak for itself.”
    You wave your arm. “Commence the exercise.”
    As the lights dim and the overhead comes on, the eyes of every person present go to the screen. It is that simple. They follow and obey. The Yalie is explaining hard-ice now, how it forms under stupendous pressure, coupled with the most bitter weather this planet’s climate can conjure. This was the first of your discoveries, nature’s cryogenics. No need to ponder why species would develop this survival mechanism, turning their corpses into seeds for a future time. No need to become all Darwinian about it. Already the audience members begin to believe; their fixed stares at the overhead screen prove it.
    â€œExcuse me.” The heir to a defunct newspaper fortune has raised his hand. His last check ran nicely into six figures; you remember the exact feel of him placing it, folded discreetly in half, into your palm. “How old is the sample we are seeing today?”
    â€œAbout seventy years,” the postdoc answers. He places a sliver of ice into the animating vessel. “This specimen was dead, in the traditional sense, before anyone in this room was born.”
    Thomas, schooled by you in seizing opportunity, steps forward. “This hard-ice discovery occurred in a calving of Antarctic shelf three years ago. Funding for that mission came from a benefactor who is here today. The specimen has been stored at one hundred and twenty degrees below zero. This particular find has proven to be one of the more reliable for reanimation.”
    Well done, Thomas, you think, nicely wordsmithed. In truth, all hard-ice samples perform equally regardless of age or origin. But none of the ants in this audience could understand the professional publications, so there is no harm in encouraging a funder to believe his ice is special. You would praise Thomas for cleverness, but you do not praise.
    â€œWhen hard-ice forms,” the postdoc continues, “any creatures in the water undergo extremely rapid freezing—so fast that the usual crystals of ice do not form. That speed leaves cells intact, and with unique chemical properties, namely abundant oxygen and glucose. Everything is preserved as it was when alive. Our challenge is to guide it back. Observe.”
    The screen displays a microscope zooming in, a blur of gray-white ice, and then, with arresting clarity, dozens of tiny frozen sea creatures.
    â€œIs that an electron microscope?” asks the woman from the Post. You could give her a lollipop for naïveté.
    â€œNaw,” a technician says. “You could find one like it in any high school lab.”
    You make a mental note to have Thomas scold that imbecile. If it’s a second offense, he will be fired. Nothing about this process should appear easy or offhand.
    â€œYou can see that these formerly living objects are perfectly preserved,” the postdoc continues. “Like seeds waiting to find the right soil. Now we perform two tasks simultaneously: providing the thawing bath, and galvanizing the samples with electricity and magnetic forces. Think primordial ooze, but instead of millions of years of randomization, we have precise chemistry, and instead of a lightning strike, we provide highly calibrated amperage.”
    Technicians scurry to and fro. Thomas answers another question from the newspaper brat. A congressman’s staffer wants to know what all of this costs.
    â€œIt varies from