Maysie's Galaxy ONC 2023

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen was warmer than Maysie expected--but then, no one had bought her any protective gear, and she thought she'd have to get back into her furs by the time they reached Hell's Armpit.

When she asked Ethan, he shrugged and said, "All the shell surface is the same temperature,  The majority of the continents are maybe a degree cooler and perhaps the mountains  dip into the frostline, but there is no ice on the turtle's back."

That was a far cry from the frost that drove her to wear furs in the first place. It ensured she'd never visit home--well, travel would be worse going back up to the head than coming down.  The thought hadn't crossed her mind that she'd never make it back to Alder's grave or Mr. Kitty, which caused her to struggle against crying as Ethan escorted her to a vault door right next to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, initialed SGCV.

"A cryogenics vault?!"

"We've been working on one for a while, and our resident quack has been moaning for a decent worker for a while. She's probably going to be unhappy with you if you can't meet her expectations."

"Do people still go to college?"

"Not often. Most of those who sat in schools and did nothing else couldn't survive the first few years, so we more often apprentice and let the remnants of the schools set the standard."

"So there should be no problem unless she can't teach." Having a new barrier to Maysie's goals distracted her from the tears she wanted to shed. If she had been aware of it, she'd have laughed and cried at the same time.

"It's  worse than that." Ethan scanned his ID at the door then held the door open as Maysie passed through, relaxed, with a soft smile curling the corner of his over-generous lips. Strange how she didn't notice it before.  "Maja and Cleo gossip. You're coming in here as that crazy girl. "

That worried Maysie some until Ethan busted out laughing. "Girl, you've got to start reading body language better than this. It was a joke."

"What am I missing?!"

"Well, the nature of my relaxed state either meant it was a joke or nothing that I couldn't handle for you. You missed that the boss mirrored your posture when you got real with him, didn't you?"

"Yeah... I thought y'all sent me to the psych ward to stay."

"Didn't your father make a lot of expressions when you were growing up?"

"He was half-Sioux and felt that people questioned who he was all the time, so he tended to be stiff for whites."

"Did he consider you white?"

"He considered me removed from history and not needing to carry his ethnic burdens, so it's a maybe?" She shrugged as they made it through the first hall and into the deep stone room beyond the first door, then entered the leftmost door after Ethan scanned his badge. "Really, the breaking up of our world took any grievances and prejudices he had and turned them upside down so they could mock him. He never felt safe in his old beliefs and never had a chance to form new ones with people, so I really don't....know."

Maysie barely got the last word out as a tiny woman launched herself at Ethan, screeching, "Mobo!"

It was a juxtaposition, a little pixie pale thing with purple bobbed hair against mahogany skin. Ethan was bracing her and half-lifting her before she did a face-plant in his groin with her antics.

Maysie felt like she was intruding, immediately.

"Come on, girl, she doesn't know how people are, act like you're her senior long enough to introduce yourself, Cleo."

The pixie lost her grip, and bounded over to clasp Maysie's hand--a closer insepction provided a glimpse of faint wrinkles. "Hi, I'm Cleopatra, a Greek scientist named after a long-lost cousin."

"I thought Cleopatra was a queen of Egypt."

"After the Greek invasion, hon. My ancestors claim to come from one of the 2nd wives of one of the middle Ptolemaic kings. Anyway, my studies of mummies as a kid are what lead me to look for a better form of preservation--and to this bunker in hell. So, Maja said you were sound enough to try to upgrade what we've got."

Cleo lead her around the room prattling on about what each station was for as well as the several different cryogenics tests they had going on in one of the other vaults.

"Wait, we have people frozen right now?!" An alarm slammed into Maysie's blood, causing her heart to lurch erratically. "The information I was given is that all early trials are done without changing the effects of time. Did you generate a time-dilation field?"

"A whosawhatsit?" Cleo blinked. "Nobody is messing with time currently. This is straight-up deep freezing and pumping chemicals through the body to see which ones hold up better--and hope people make it out of the test alive. We have had some success with that."

"Oh...so at least one of them came out of it alive?"

"The first one to come back out of it did so last year, but he didn't live long." Cleo frowned. "Just what do you have in mind?"

"If you place some of the burdens on time dilation, and the rest on a less cold body temperature, you can suspend a person for a long time. It's not fully one direction or the other, keeping stresses on the body down to a minimum. You don't fully freeze them, so you're only going into hypothermia stages, which doctors already do, for induced comas."

"Hrm, but how do you stop the aging process?"

"We are outside the time dilation, so the temperature feels like a deep freeze in time before we lower their temperate. Since it is a small amount of time being used, they only age that little bit. The stage we are at does require a cold-induced coma because people move too much and you don't want to touch the field...and contact with people on another back requires the ability to hallucinate or dream."

Cleo blinked, slowly losing her smile before turning to Ethan to say, "I thought you said she was sane?"

"She is. No hallucinations, was put in a position to have them, and had these schematics dropped in her head. The boss wants to try it, as does the girl. Let her try. The worst that happens is she's not suited for the work."

"Ah, boss has a wild hair up his ass?"

Maysie shrugged but answered for herself. "It's a long shot that I am certain of, but I don't expect anyone else to believe me. Can I see a sketch pad to draw out what I'm thinking of doing?"

Cleo nodded, curious, but certain that this kid was crazy. She shrugged and said, "Well, if you believe it is enough, perhaps you will be one of the first to test it."

"You will not kill her through your skepticism, Cleo." Ethan grumbled, already wanting a cigar, anything in this nearly sterile atmosphere. "The usual volunteers and not anyone with potential.