Selkiefic2.0-Incomplete

“What's it mean; are you determined
To make modern all mankind?
If so, you should be be-sermoned
And brought back to healthy mind.”
― Charles C. Abbott


"Since cells must return to a fluid state to resume metabolism and complete their life cycle, and ice is almost universally present in environments at sub-zero temperatures, we propose that the vitrification temperature represents a general lower thermal limit to life on Earth, though its precise value differs between unicellular (typically above −20°C) and multicellular organisms (typically below −20°C). Few multicellular organisms can, however, complete their life cycle at temperatures below ∼−2°C."  Clarke et al, PLoS ONE 8(6): e66207.



The sea was a choppy frothing mass of criss-crossing turbulence. Stout though the little tugboat was, A. felt every wave continually push and pull at the vessel. He was growing to enjoy the awkward spinning light-footedness that had been hounding him since the start of his 'cruise'. Perhaps, he thought, this is why sailors and pirates are so cheerful. He often felt nearly drunk, and the sensation had become accepted and somewhat enjoyable across his sojourn. The lengthy stays in his small room were starting to grate. Hence his current place on the deck. He was happily balancing between the howling wind, roaring sea, and the warmth of the unnaturally long mornings. There was little help for the periodic long grueling hours couped up in his room. The rehearsal of sample gathering and experimental protocols had to be done in his little berth on the ship. He dare not expose valuable lab equipment to the elements. Over the weeks he'd done his damnedest to make every minute locked away from Nature count. There was no one else to man the derelict site and complete the field studies. He was all the Institute could afford to send, a single researcher. Given his small but tolerable stipend, this was a sad state of affairs. A. was certain the Institute equipment he'd brought was worth more than five of him. No wonder they couldn't currently afford to field an entire team. Without a doubt, the Arctic weather had contributed to the scarcity of manpower.

They were nearing shore now. Nearly devoid of shadow, the crisp white plain beckoned as they drew closer. The regularity of the landscape was broken by a unmoving pickup truck. It and the tracks of its passing, which drifted around a distant mountain, were the only deviations from the eerie stillness A. felt at the sight. For even as the world shifted and swayed, even as the harsh forces of wind, sun, and cold battered him, the sense of spaciousness reverberating from the white crystalline landscape couldn't be denied.

Still awash with the listless floating feeling of life at sea, he had become landbound again. The captain and crew of the tug had made several friendly jibes as they helped him get the equipment ashore. According to them, he'd gained 'sea-legs'. A. found the notion hard to deny. Clearly his gait and posture on land now felt foreign and off-center, no doubt it looked even stranger. Even merely walking on solid ground gave him the unpleasant sense that the ground was somehow too close, that his feet should travel further down before stopping. There just didn't seem to be enough tilt or looseness for his tastes. The truck held a local who was waiting to drive him to the long abandoned site. After carefully loading and strapping down his equipment and provisions, they set out.

R., the driver, was a mountain of a man. The inside of his truck reeked of dog and cigarettes. He had bluntly stated his hope that A. wouldn't mind his smoking, before lighting a cigarette without even waiting for a response. Unable to stifle his cough, A. cracked his window a bit. The biting wind had become familiar enough that it almost outweighed the disappointment of traveling in the truck. It wasn't nearly similar enough to sea travel to satiate his newly adapted inner ear. Though even more Northener-brash and cruder than the sailors, R. was friendly enough in his own way. They chatted amicably as the landscape grew lush with the green of forests. R knew a lot of the locale, both the forests and the people. The steady stream of talk wound into diverse topics like lutherie, and A. had even managed to mention his research a length without boring the man. Older and bearded, R. had quite an interesting life, having been in turn: a service combat engineer, master luthier, and carpenter.  His discussions were varied. The one on teaching violin-making to the Inuit children on the reservation, was a high point, clearly the man felt passionately about the subject.

"Well no, y'see the bass bar actually dampens the deeper register, otherwise it would sound unbalanced.", said R, after diving into a tangent on lutherie. "So you gonna eventually head to tribal lands to get these ice worms, eh?"

A natural researcher, A. tried to dampen the nasally inflection that crept into his voice during lectures. "There's supposed to be an abandoned laboratory site that the Institute leased for the bulk of the research. Some, if not a large chunk, of the field work, will have to be done on the tribal lands. There's no avoiding it. We think the populations are denser in those areas."

R. let out a spout of laughter before responding around his cigarette, "Research laboratory? Is that what they told you?" Visions of some sort of Arctic crackhouse flashed through A.'s thoughts. His insides felt heavy as he probed the other for more information. R happily complied, "Nah. It ain't no lab. Nothing wrong with it, though. It's an old cabin, there's a stove, generator, running water. Y'know all that good stuff. Used to be a Forestry station. Good thing you loaded up all of that equipment, huh?" This utterly failed to set A.'s mind at ease in any way -- it did exactly the opposite, in fact. Soon he and R. were back to discussing sundry and assorted subjects, if only to burn away the travel time. However, A. now found a new distraction to gall him. It settled into the the pit of his stomach, making small talk with his nascent sea-legs. The disconcerting sense of open space, and the vexing sense that time didn't pass here joined the other two roiling feelings. They all got along merrily. Except A, of course.


Still maintaining his cool, A. was still a bit jittery as he brushed the dog hair off of his coat. White and stiff, the hair was long. A huskie of some sort, perhaps. He was happy to be away from the truck's omnipresent reek of dog, cigarettes, and faint scent of rosin. Though lacking in the usual accoutrements of laboratories, the rustic cabin was serviceable. It was even equipt'd with a snowmobile, and its requisite fuel. They had driven past the reservation, and A. had readily scrawled the directions on a foolscap of paper.



"1577. Captaine Frobisher in a ship of our queenes of the burden of 200 tonnes came into Kingrode from Cattai, who brought certaine oare from thence, which was esteemed to be very ritch and full of gowld....They brought likewise a man called Callicho and a woman named Ignorth. They  were sauage people and fed only uppon raw flesh. The 9th. of October he rode in a little bote made of skinne in the water at the backe, where he killed 2 duckes with a dart, and when he had done carried his bote through the marsh upon his back. The like he did at the weare and other places, where many beheld him. He would hit a ducke a good distance of and not misse. They died here within a month." --Seyer's Annals of Bristol


Reminded of R.'s talk, A. thought the Inuit of the reservation a friendly folk. He was fortunate enough to be right. His awareness of the sharp everpresent aftertaste of snow and wideness grew, as he moved among them chatting. The good cheer of the people was a welcome surprise. A. had adapted to the cold during his northern sail, but only barely. His rigorously and deliberated scheduled deck times had done more than cure his cabin fever. The reservation was far from grand, but it was well built and pleasant. The set of restrictions and regulations regarding tribal land was a morass red tape that probably filled an entire shelf of its own. The locals treated it with aplomb. While clearly aware of the ridiculousness of the bureaucracy forced upon them, the Inuit were easy and helpful about the matter. Even moreso after A. had taken effort to underscore how the research on ice worm morphology and metabolic processes would have very little ecological effect on their lands. On the whole there was a sense of bemusement among the locals. When introduced to others they invariably mentioned A. and his search for the ice worms, the smiles were contagious. Despite their clear merriment on the subject, they were sincerely helpful.

"Oh yeah, ice worms.", chuckled the middle aged woman, her gleaming folded eyes drawn in amusement. "I know where you can find 'em. Lots of them slithering near the surface." Ada, who he would later cite as a 'local informant' in the research article, was interrupted by A. While he could handle being a local oddity, he did want to know just what was going on.

"Not to be rude, but I have to ask. Why is everyone so amused, is there some sort of inside joke about ice worms?", said A. Ada's lips twisted into a wry smirk as she momentarily sized him up.

She gave one of the sharp outward nasal huffs, that seemed to be meaningful here, and responded. "Actually, yes. But that's not what's funny. You're obviously not from around here. Honestly, you'll probably going to turn into a shivering mess in about 5 minutes. Isn't this a long way to go for some ice worms?", she pinned him with her gaze awaiting a response.

"Well, yes. But the research is important, the metabolic catalysis and enzyme populations ar--", she cut him off with a dismissive wave.

"Yeah, I'm sure it's important. But still, it's kinda funny, yeah?" Thinking for a moment in the open air, much colder than he'd felt in his life, A. reigned in his own wry smile. The numbness of his lips made it difficult to tell how well he was doing. It honestly was a bit funny. Uncertain why, he gave a little nasal huff of his own. He managed to admit to her that it was, with a passably straight face.

Soon she lead him to the next person in the snarled and unkempt bureaucratic chain that the government inflicted on the natives. Ada insisted that the older man, Uyaquq invite him inside and let him thaw. Ada invited herself in and introduced him to the elder as 'the guy who came all the way up here to study ice worms, no seriously that's not a joke', A. found that giving them an answering smile was much easier with warm hands, and tea held close. Uyaquq shuffled sheets of paper as Ada filled him in on a somewhat scatter-shot version of his research. A. made sure to issue corrections between sips of tea. He managed to sketch a rough map of the area under their guidance, and made sure to note the spots, they and the other locals would supply.

A.'s next week was filled with meeting people, gradually setting up and calibrating the labspace at the site, and scouting for locations. R. even made time to give him a call to see how well he'd settled in. A. tried not to quash his growing optimism. His meticulously taken notes and maps were a necessary advantage, and gathering the data so easily seemed to bode well. In the pit of his stomach, A. still felt somewhat perturbed. Fieldwork, even in less extreme environs, tended to involve more setbacks and improvisation than would be expected. The ice worms would be challenging subjects, and not nearly enough different species of them had been surveyed. So much of the work was in its infancy, with too little known for certain. With so much depending on him, A. knew he had to make this expedition count. The realities of limited space and equipment clashed with the near-mandatory urge to be as meticulous as possible. His scheduled 'evenings' were filled with hastily scrawled contingencies. Though all was well, A. had enough experience in the field to wait for the other shoe to drop.

After seeming to exhaust the local's knowledge of reasonably locations of the quarry, the surveying began in earnest. A convenience sampling of the varied locales was planned out. A. held off on actual drilling into the layers of ice for now. Thankfully, the ice worms were easily noticeable as they slid within the solid sheets of ice in apparent defiance of physics. They left no trace of their passage. The ice remained solid as the thin worms danced gaily inside the frozen sheets. The dark bodies with the numerous barely visible hairs were distinct enough for visual counts. The environmental data per locale was tabulated and combined with the counts. Rough but serviceable indirect measurements of length and color/shape variation were gathered per each visible ice worm. True statisticians would later be able to make use of the acquired data. The current lack of data on ice worm populations had daunted and balked researchers in producing models. A. smiled grimly as he shivered and wrote. At least the field work was showing signs of success, so far.



“The temperature was not strikingly low as temperatures go down here, but the terrific winds penetrate the flimsy fabric of our fragile tents and create so much draught that it is impossible to keep warm within. At supper last night our drinking-water froze over in the tin in the tent before we could drink it. It is curious how thirsty we all are.”
― Ernest Shackleton


The Styrofoam box of slush radiated disappointment. Or so felt A., scanning the current container of the ice worms. He'd finished his cursory series of morphological studies. Aside from the glaring white elephant he'd found, the species collected weren't novel or unknown. He should be happy, they made up a reasonably diverse sample. The majority of the known species found were lacking in genetic, enzymatic and metabolic studies. An entire well-respected career could easily be made in filling out the picture. He could even share with colleagues, every hand possible would be needed on such a big project. Nearly big enough to be a research program in itself, certainly the Institute would need someone to direct such a large effort. Abruptly, A. halted his nascent delusions of grandeur. The pit of his stomach throbbed uncomfortably.

Paradoxically, the white elephant made A. feel even worse. Earlier, he'd thought that the oddity was some sort of sport. The deliberate attempt on his part to think it a mutation of a known species was meant to quell overoptimism. The morphological examination had made it clear that the oddity was structurally distinct. Without a genetic work-up, the possibility remained that it was a mutated variant of a known species -- some forms of mutation could produce radical morphological changes. A. doubted it though. A mutation with two known instances would be just as good a find as a novel species. Either way, it would be a novel discovery. Still this posed a series of tricky questions.

He had spent several weeks making counts and measures of the sampled ice worm locations. The two visually distinct ice worms had been absent to his observations until the day he'd drilled there. The find seemed to be pure luck, and his excitement soared. It remained undampened, no matter that he'd been stricken by the eerie bite of snow in the air, and the giddy dizzy feeling of sea beneath him. The sensation had come to be a periodic but unusual occurrence. It often struck seemingly at whim, sans rhyme or reason. Not knowing why it alighted on him so often on his periodic surveys and walks around the cabin-lab, A often reminded himself of the many variables that could alter his state of mind. The ever present daylight and unnaturally cold temperatures in and of themselves could reek havoc on the mind and emotions. Deliberately refraining from drawing conclusions, he'd learned to simply go about his business whenever the mood struck him. So it was when he'd drilled widely to catch his unusual prey. Carefully cutting through the layers of ice, seeking his sample. All the while, the tilt of the sea and bite of snow assaulted his senses.

Returning to the present within the cabin, A. strode to his camera, a plan unfolding. A species with only two known instances was intellectually galling and faintly worrying.

“Our spoons are one of our indispensable possessions here. To lose one's spoon would be almost as serious as it is for an edentate person to lose his set of false teeth.”
― Ernest Shackleton, Leader of three British expeditions to the Antarctic

Ada was the first he showed. She looked through the pictures a bit more, at A.'s request. The woman gnawed her bottom lip thoughtfully. A. restrained his tension, waiting. She shook her head sadly. A. let the sudden wave of depression slide through him, a task not aided by the frigid atmosphere.

"I can't say I've ever seen these. And I've lived here longer than you've been alive.", she said, before momentarily stiffening and clearing her throat. "A little bit longer than you've been alive anyway. Sorry, Worm-guy." She shuffled about in sympathy as she handed A.'s phone back to him. Her wan smile would've meant a closed door to most, but A. had good reason to ask her first. Among the other Inuit, she was well known and reasonably liked, as far as A. could tell.

Networks were akin to webs, or so went the mathematical models used to describe them. Formed of points and lines, vertexes of information linked with edges. Galois' foundations of the field implied that the most widely distributed points were key in solving for movements routed across the network. More pertinently, such points were critical to the movement of information, and information gathering as a whole. Not so much due to what was contained in the widely distributed point itself, but due to the wide range of points (and their contained information) to which it had potential access.

"Well, that's unfortunate, nothing to be done about it. After all, you've spent so much time in those out of the way places. The ones the ice worms tend to favor.", said A. his tone lilting and happy, he was even shuffling around in growing excitement. It would be reasonable for a sociable person to avoid such out of the way locations; his supposition wasn't necessarily true, but it was internally consistent. Her critical and slightly confused expression at his words, was followed by a half raised arm in his direction.

"Hey now. I didn't say all that.", said Ada, her expression slightly pinched.

"Buuuuuut", said A. drawing out the word theatrically, "I certainly COULDN'T reasonably hope to find out more if those who spent long periods of time in ice worm favored areas, AND who spent long periods of their time staring at the ice never saw this sort of specimen. You are right, Ada. There is no hope." A. clasped a hand to his opposite shoulder and let his head sink lower in melodramatic fashion. He glanced upward, to see Ada staring at him, deadpan. If she was suppressing a smile, he couldn't tell. Despite her usual expressiveness, she had quite the poker face. "A bit too much?", he asked.

"Yeah. We need to get you out of that lab more.", said Ada. A. couldn't help but huff-chuckle at that.

"Sorry about that, my sisters would've walked off by now. So thanks for hearing me out. I've been considering how I could find out whether anyone here is familiar with these oddities. Thank Goddess their so visually distinct! I wouldn't want to just ask everyone, far too many people here to survey like that, unless I've no other choice. Fortunately, you're such a friendly, knowledgeable, wonderful, helpful --" Ada cleared her throat loudly, interrupting his spiel. A. raised his hands, palms towards her in placation. "Okay, I was simply saying that those who spend long periods of time in isolated locations, staring at the ice might be able help me solve this riddle. I think you're well liked and know most everyone in the community -- seriously, I'm not being goofy here -- do you think you could try and think of people I could ask about the specimens? Perhaps generate a small list of ice-fishermen or wilderness types for me to ask? Within say, a day or two?"