The Vault.

My feet touched ground mid morning, but you can't tell on account of the daylight. Everything is hazy, as it were the sun lingers right below the horizon. Only peeking a few hours of the day this time of year. I am used to the climate by now and prepared myself well with what I brought. Those movies about large fur lined parkas and snow goggles fit the picture. Without the goggles the wind chill factor would freeze your moist eyeballs. Not to mention what ice crystals feel like when forming in the inside of your nose. Fortunately today the breeze was warm-ward and just crisp seeping cold.

I met up with the guide, for the scientific group, that would take me across the white plains and to my destination... the vault. The ride over was in that of a high tech ice vehicle, conveniently warm and faster than a standard terrain snow vehicle or snow mobile.

I had arranged the visit the week before, and surprisingly found that they were honored to have me. I was greeted by a small staff of biologists and even an archaeologist. But it was the physicist, Charlie, who warmly hugged me and stated that he was sorry for the loss of my father and his good colleague. Intriguing... here was a world I had not even once been informed of. My father's life and work away from home, not to mention 78 degrees north.

I was taken to a dining salon to eat a meager fare with those who I had just met. Over coffee and the traditional dessert, I was briefed on the facility and its purposes. Accordingly, the chosen location of the Global Seed Vault (to house green specimens) was that of the cold, frigid, never changing arctic tundra. The archaeologist looked at me eagerly as if to say there was much more to it than that, but she only mentioned how there were STILL ongoing excavations under the very place where we ate.

In the course of my stay I would be educated by each member and their duty at the site. Tomorrow I would be in the care of Charlie, as he worked closely with my father, and that he would be explaining my dad's purpose in the whole project. After chit chat and laughs of the past, I took a walk around outside before I retired. No one can possibly describe what it feels like to stand underneath the aurora borealis, but I was fortunate to catch its raining stardust of chemicals on the very first evening I had arrived.


Evidently, during my birth year, my father was commissioned to create a lighting atmosphere to house the world's seeds. Nothing out of the norm there, aside from the project itself being monumental. What a landmark in someone's life to have been a part of! I looked at a few pictures of The Scientist along with Charlie and others that were no longer working the area.

I was also told how the original site underneath us was already developed when found. During land surveys and coring, the small team that was entrusted with this area discovered a profound archaeological find relating to our whole existence. It was the equivalent of Onkalo (the vault for radioactive waste), but we were its future. No wonder the archaeologist had a twinkle in her eye.

So I asked point blank putting 2 together, "The vault here was already in existence then?" Charlie nodded his head, but his stiffed curled mustache did not budge. My next thought and question was, "What was in the vault?" His reply was the same thing that is contained in there today, but our generations we added in the last 20 or so years. As always, answering one question in the world of science only leads to a new one.
"Is it man made?" He shrugged,
"That's partly why we are still here."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMOkORxF4JA
(1901 - Phoenix)