by Jeff Yee
“Sean…” Stacey was about to say something to her husband and then refrained from saying the first comment that crossed her mind. “I’m just glad you’re back,” Stacey replied instead.
“It was my fault,” Sean continued with his long explanation of the events. “It should have been in my pack, but I was holding it when I slipped into the crevasse, which was masked under snow. I was tied into Dawa, but as I struggled to quickly get my footing and grab the rope, I accidently dropped the radio deep enough where it could not be recovered. I know you must have been concerned.”
“Sean Harrison, you don’t know what you’ve put me through this past day,” said Stacey, using his first and last name, which was only used in situations when Sean was in trouble. “Nevertheless, I’m very glad to see you in one piece. I just want you to tell me that you will not be climbing that mountain ever… ever again.”
“Honey, it was fascinating. It was absolutely remarkable at the top of the world. I wish you could have been there to see it.”
The fifty-three year old Sean did not lack confidence. Nothing would ever stand in his way. Sean was goal-oriented. If there were something to obtain, he would find a way to achieve it. It’s what had attracted Stacey to Sean when they first met as college students. She was an ambitious junior with political ambitions and he was at the top of his engineering class, in his last year, with a handful of job offers before he’d even graduated.
Sean stood at an even six-feet tall, dressed in the best mountain climbing equipment that money could buy. He unveiled his hair as he removed his hat to let his head breathe, letting the melting snow drip down his face as it warmed. His hair, which was once black, began to show his age with a scatter of gray across his head. And his cheeks, normally an olive color that matched the rest of his skin tone, were pink from the sustained arctic temperatures he had endured for days.
Sean gave his wife, only one year less in age, a grim smile and said, “That being said, that was my first and last hike to the top of Everest. You have my word. I’m tired now… let’s go home.”
Being the CEO of Tace Technologies, a multi-billion dollar company that he founded twenty years before, meant that Sean’s time was in high demand. Stacey and Sean had previously arranged for helicopter support out of Base Camp, which was normally reserved only for emergencies. Helicopter support was quite expensive for the average climber. However, with a quick call on the radio, the helicopter on standby was promptly airborne and on its way to pick up the husband and wife climbing team.
Meanwhile, the tents were dismantled and then Sean and Stacey said their goodbyes to Dawa and Pemba, who prepared to trek back to their hometown of Lukla. Stacey thanked the American and German expedition teams for their support and wished them luck on their journey.
The large Mi-17 helicopter could be heard long before it was seen. As it hovered above, a path was cleared in the snow with markings for the helicopter to make its landing at Base Camp. It’s massive wingspan caused the powder of the fresh snow to fly up in a circular pattern on its decent. When it finally touched down, the pilot opened the rear cabin door.
The Harrisons were generous and left most of the equipment for Dawa and Pemba as a token of appreciation for their support. The remainder, which Dawa and Pemba could not carry back with them on their trek, was loaded into the back of the helicopter. After saying their final goodbyes, the Mi-17 took off for Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
With clear skies and a setting sun, the ride home presented breathtaking views of the snow-capped mountain range. In any given direction stood a majestic peak, including two of the world’s largest mountains accompanying Mt. Everest. In close proximity to the world’s tallest mountain are the mountain peaks of Lhotse and Nuptse, which hover magnificently above the world at more than 25,000 feet in height. Stacey used her Nikon camera to record the stunning sunset over the mountain range.
“It’s amazing, simply amazing,” Stacey said as she leaned and grabbed Sean’s hand.
“Yes, it certainly is. Let’s buy the house down there as our vacation home,” Sean said with a chuckle as he pointed to the Thyangboche monastery. Although Stacey knew that her husband was kidding, she would have loved an escape home with views like the scene that they were leaving behind.
The helicopter continued onto Kathmandu where the Harrisons would transfer to a private plane to take them back to the United States by way of Hong Kong. The landing was smooth at Kathmandu and the helicopter was able to land relatively close to the plane awaiting the Harrisons, shortening the distance to transfer its passengers and equipment.
Upon landing, Sean reached for his global Blackberry phone. He was glad to be in a city with wireless coverage again. He turned on his phone and waited three minutes for the phone to download all of its messages. 2,193 unread emails and 18 text messages. One of the text messages was from his son Kris. It was the one that he was looking for. He opened the text message and smiled when he read its contents.
We did it! The rat is awake. Vital signs normal. Cells do not appear to have aged.
Chapter 2
Halfway around the world, the employees of Tace Technologies shuffled into work one-by-one, enjoying the last minute warmth of a sunny, San Diego morning before entering their offices and cubicles. In a valley located in the high-technology industrial park in northern San Diego, stood the ten-building campus of the aerospace firm founded by Sean Harrison and his business partner Steve Kuhl. Twenty years before when the duo founded the company, they had chosen an appropriate corporate name, Tace, by combining two words together: Time and Space.
In Building Four of the campus, a small team of scientists gathered around their project leader and a white board to review the plan of the day. Despite being twenty-seven years old and one of the younger members of the team, Kris Harrison was their leader. His practical work experience was limited to only three years, but being the son of the CEO offered Kris an advantage over his peers. He was not only the son of Sean Harrison, he was a miniature version of his father. His six-foot build, black hair and facial features were nearly identical to his father’s features, although Kris tried hard to differentiate himself from his old man. While his father was always clean-shaven, Kris chose a permanent three-day stubble by using a special razor to create the Brett Favre shadow. And while his father’s attire was typically a dress shirt accompanied by a dark blazer, Kris set himself apart with a casual, un-tucked shirt appearance. The only natural characteristic that set them apart was that Kris was left-handed, while his father was right-handed. Nonetheless, Kris had ambitions of his own and he knew that he could find a good job on his own without his father’s help. After completing his undergraduate work at Pepperdine University, Kris had continued with his graduate studies where he received an MBA from the University of California in Los Angeles. At the age of twenty-four, he chose to join his father’s company, although he had his choice of top consulting firms and investment banks who were offering large signing bonuses to lure the bright star. Instead of consulting or banking, Kris decided to follow his father into science and technology. At Tace, Kris received the occasional heckle from his colleagues for being the son of the company’s founder, however, each had tremendous respect for Kris and his work and it was quite clear that he could lead the team of scientists and their project, if not the entire company one day.
Kris began reading the daily tasks off the lab’s whiteboard, located at the front of the room. “Ryan is preparing the next test with Mr. Nelson.” Each of the lab rats had specially assigned names and Mr. Nelson was the next unfortunate rat in the testing process. Kris continued, “Krishna and Annette will continue yesterday’s tests on Mr. Murray and will…”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Kris was interrupted by the sound of his phone indicating an incoming text message. In normal situations it would not have interrupted the meeting, however, he had been waiting for an important text message reply for nearly a day. Kris paused from his task list to open t
he text message from his father.
Great work, Kris. My kudos and thanks to the team. Long live the rat.
Kris held the phone high in the air for the team to see, although it was not legible from a distance. Nevertheless, he read it to the team.
“We all know what we accomplished yesterday… quite an achievement,” Kris said with a positive, encouraging tone in his voice. “We have the support of our executive team, and with continued focus on our mission, we will deliver a solution critical to long distance space travel for NASA and its astronauts.”
Kris was referring to the company’s fifty million dollar grant from NASA to research cryogenic freezing methods to potentially be used for the ambitious Mars mission. To send astronauts to Mars, NASA knew it would need to prepare for many conditions associated with interplanetary travel that were not issues with orbital or moon missions. The length of time to travel between Earth and Mars would ultimately depend upon the launch date chosen by NASA. A one-way trip to Mars would be as little as eight months or many years depending on the planet’s position at the time of launch and the speed of the ship. The long duration presented problems for NASA. The astronauts would need sufficient food, oxygen and exercise on the journey to Mars, which required a large ship designed to carry the provisions. A larger ship was not only more complicated to build and liftoff from Earth, but more importantly, it was exponentially more expensive for NASA. Thus, they were keen to explore their options. One potential solution to the problem was hibernation. During the journey, the astronauts would enter into a deep sleep en route to the planet and awake just before arriving at the fourth planet from the Sun. To encourage research in this field, NASA selected three companies and awarded each a grant to research and prove a hibernation method using cryogenic freezing. The winning company would be awarded a multi-billion dollar contract for the Mars mission if the initial experiment proved to be successful.
Kris concluded his morning assignments and walked towards Ryan who was examining one of the laboratory rats. “Ryan, we did it,” he said as he reached out his hand to shake Ryan’s hand. It was the second day of congratulatory gestures, but a sense of confidence and pride rushed through Kris after receiving the support of his father. He was not finished with the celebration that had started the previous day.
Ryan Graves was not a typical scientist. A native to Southern California, Ryan looked more like a full-time surfer at Mission Beach rather than a lead scientist with a Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology. His sun-bleached hair ran down his neck like an old-fashioned mullet. His torso resembled an Olympic swimmer’s body and hidden on his back, exposed only when his shirt was removed, was a nerdy tattoo of the solar system that his Caltech buddies convinced him to get one night when he was drunk. And Ryan’s tendency to wear sandals to the office completed his beach boy outfit. Despite the deceptively laid-back appearance, Ryan was well known within Tace Technologies as a young, brilliant engineer with an amazing mind. He was allowed to do or wear whatever he wanted at Tace, within reason. Although it was a team of scientists that worked on the cryogenic project, it was Ryan’s ideas and contributions that led to their stunning breakthrough.
“Ahh… yes, but we are not done yet,” Ryan replied to Kris. “Mr. Murray might be able to go to Mars, but can we send a man?”
Mr. Murray, the lab rat, was cryogenically frozen the week before, at temperatures so low that all cellular activity stopped. At -196 degrees Celsius, the temperature of liquid nitrogen, the body no longer required oxygen or energy for normal life sustainment. Mr. Murray was in a state of hibernation. However, hibernation was not the experiment that NASA had spent millions of dollars to research. Cryogenic freezing had been performed many times before on deceased human bodies, dating back to the late 1960s. Tace’s scientific achievement was the stunning accomplishment of bringing a normal and healthy rat out of hibernation. Although one week was significantly less than the time it would take to get to Mars, the team knew that the results of the experiment would lead to additional federal funding and it would give them the ability to complete the remaining tasks to prepare a man for the mission to Mars.
“Let’s just put a space suit on Mr. Murray and call it a day,” Kris joked with Ryan.
Annette joined the conversation from a distance, while conducting her test at a lab desk close to Ryan’s experiment. “One day later, and it appears that all cells are back to their standard aging and decay process. I can confirm that in the process of freezing Mr. Murray we have a rat that stopped aging for a week and is now aging at a normal rate again.”
In the initial evaluation after the rat’s recovery from a state of hibernation, some of the cells had redeveloped slower than other parts of the body. All of the cells had quickly frozen during hibernation, but the unfreezing process led to differences in cellular recovery rates depending on the organ or the location of the cells in the body. Yet, nearly one day later, all of the cells in the body had recovered back to their normal state.
“Excellent,” Kris exclaimed. “It is as we expected. The results of this test will have significant impacts beyond space travel use. We now have a method to successfully unfreeze the frozen.”
The majority of Tace Technologies’ revenue came from federal government sources, such as NASA. Tace built and sold equipment from protective suits for pilots to electronics for space stations and shuttles. The Mars mission had significant impacts to Tace, who also won bids to build components necessary for the special ship being designed to carry the astronauts. However, diversification of revenue and less dependence on federal sources was important and Kris understood the potential business application and commercial revenue possibilities of their cryogenic freezing technique.
“When will we present the findings to NASA?” asked Ryan.
“Sean,” Kris addressed his father by his first name sometimes to avoid a father-son work situation, “should be on a plane back to San Diego today. If we finish up our report today, I am sure he will want to present it immediately upon his return tomorrow.”
The team continued to study Mr. Murray for long-term side effects as a result of the cryogenic freezing process. The preceding laboratory experiments had not been as fortunate on the earlier rats. The rats were named alphabetically like hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific. The twelve rats before Mr. Murray, from Mr. Anderson to Mrs. Langley, did not survive the cryogenic freezing process with all of their organs functioning properly. After many experiments on single cells, tissues and then lab animals, Ryan’s ideas were finally perfected to allow the successful freezing and thawing of a complex multi-cell mammal.
A report needed to be drafted for NASA that included the results of the experiment and how they achieved their success. Ryan carefully documented his established two-step technique for the freezing process. As the team had learned, the secret to their success was the freezing process, not the thawing process. Many of their failed experiments included cells that were damaged either because of ice crystal formation when the water inside the cell froze, or fractured cell membranes as a result of freezing too quickly. As Ryan continued his report, he explained the use of a cryoprotectant, a super-cooled alcohol compound, which was injected into the rat prior to the first phase of the freezing process. The injection was designed to reduce the formation of ice crystals in the cells. In the first phase of freezing, the rat was slowly cooled to a temperature of -30 degrees Celsius. The first phase took five seconds according to Ryan’s report. The second phase was an immediate acceleration to -196 degrees Celsius within a fraction of a second by submerging the rat in liquid nitrogen. By combining the two steps, the team had avoided the problematic ice crystal formation with the cryoprotectant and had resolved the cell membrane fracture issue by cooling the cells to an intermediary state before its rapid descent to the temperature of liquid nitrogen.
Ryan was pleased with his final work. “Kris, I think we’re good to go. I have the report finished up.”
“G
reat! I’ll give it a quick proof and then we’ll send it off to management,” said Kris, who then proceeded to lecture his team of the sensitivity of their experiment. “Team, as a reminder, all of this information is to be held confidential until the company determines when we will disclose it to the public. I trust that you will all continue your silence about our efforts on this project.”
Kris stared assertively at each team member in the room. He knew and trusted all of them, but then again, he also knew that they had never been in a position where they held confidential information that unlocked a potential multi-billion dollar business. Kris recognized that their loyalty was about to be put to the ultimate test.
Chapter 3
Sean Harrison looked out the window of his plane as the morning light revealed the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island. The sun reflected against the windows, and together with the typical haze surrounding the island, it provided a brilliant array of red, orange and yellow hues. Stacey was still asleep in the reclining chair. Sean had caught up on his sleep the night before while traveling from Kathmandu to Hong Kong. He had slept through the entire re-fueling process while on the ground at the airport, finally to wake to the sounds of the plane taking off from the airport on Lantau.
He turned to Stacey to watch his love and devoted partner sleep. She had ditched her mountain gear for a fashionable black turtleneck and matching slacks, more appropriate for an art show than a day in the Himalaya. Sean watched his wife’s lips expand and contract as she breathed deeply in her sleep. She was in need of a long rest after their journey in the mountains. However, Stacey woke from her slumber as if she knew that eyes were fixed upon her.
She slowly opened her eyes, smiled and said, “Good morning. Did you get any sleep?”
“Yes, I slept like a baby… felt great,” he said, letting out a yawn. “I’m going to make some coffee. Would you like some?”
