Rapture of the Deep, Chapter 4
This was Tina’s third time going to the Powell Center, and it felt no less majestic than it had before. For professionals in her field, Powell was an ivory tower of scholastic knowledge. It was a research center by which the entire field of marine and molecular biology was measured. Their staff was the standard, their curriculum the measuring stick. If you were a professor in the field and had ever spent time at Powell, the job offers practically kicked your front door in. If you were in R&D and had credentials from them to back you up, your papers would most certainly publish themselves. The industry power that this place wielded was the marine research equivalent to an atom bomb.
There had been some redecorating since the last time Tina had walked into the lobby. The place was quite nice before, but new grants had been spent to craft an exquisite facility. Marble stairs with glass rails climbed up to an immense round foyer. The US Government seal rested in the center of the floor, silent and commanding, bathed in a waterfall of sun from a vaulted skylight. Glass partitions filled with rainbows of colored sand directed people off into multiple directions. Directory signs were etched into the same glass and painted with a brushed gold gloss to make them stand out against the canyon like the colors of a hundred different sea beds behind them.
The registration desk stood imposingly at the north side of the entryway. Two women that might as well have been supermodels sat behind it, elevated on a platform to easily look down upon those that checked in as guests. Tina strode past them, already directed by Dr Harris to head straight in. He would be waiting. Somewhere on the top floor he was expecting her, and Tina felt strangely calm. Even through all of her accomplishments as a researcher, she typically found herself nervous even when meeting professionals much less decorated than he was. Today though, Tina felt at home. Ready, with no apprehension to claim the project that awaited her.
A short walk and a long elevator ride later, and Tina was greeted by Dr Harris’s private secretary. She sat behind a mammoth desk in a small annex to the Doctor’s office. Tina clicked a subtle clear of her throat and the woman perked up upon seeing her.
“Ooh, Ms. Breslin! Dr. Harris said to see that you were allowed straight in! So good to see you again!”
The comment struck her as odd, until memory from her days at the Sanford Naval Academy snuck up and pinched her into realization.
“Cassie, right?” Tina felt a quizzical look on her face that she instantly wanted back. Was it rude not to remember someone you went to school with?
“That’s me! Well, I go by Sandra now. How are you? Its been ages.”
Her bubbly giggle tone reminded Tina quickly why she didn’t remember her outright. Cassie was a flake. Tina had no room in her life for girls like her back then and most certainly didn’t have time for them now.
“Going great.” She forced a smile and hoped it didn’t look too fake. “Happy to be here, I can tell you that.”
“I’ll bet.” Cassie / Sandra smiled again, and Tina figured she could count about three brain cells for every tooth she saw. “I won’t hold you up, we can catch up later. Dr. Harris will have my behind in a sling if I delay you from seeing him. Go on in!” She winked. Tina hated people that winked. “You look great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” She feigned interest again and headed swiftly past Sandra’s desk toward the door to the Doctor’s office.
There wasn’t much of a greeting. Tina entered and found herself surprised by how minimal the office was. The monstrous double doors that parted to allow her entry were more impressive than the entire room ahead.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Breslin. Please have a seat.”
Tina moved through the empty space of the office and sat softly into a deceptively comfortable wooden chair directly in front of Dr. Harris’s desk. The room was flanked by two huge saltwater aquariums, illuminated by piercing blue lights that shone clearly even in the daylight pouring through the windows behind where the doctor sat.
“I see that based upon your summary, you have a pretty thorough understanding of the surface of this project.” Dr. Harris pushed the intensity of his eyes directly into hers. Tina felt a shade uncomfortable. The tone of the information seemed overly serious. It felt somehow dreadful.
“Yes, Doctor.” She crossed her hands on her lap and tried to regain the relaxation she felt when entering the building. “It’s quite remarkable.”
“Certainly.” Dr. Harris swiped his hand across the black glass top of his desk which promptly came alive into a brilliant display of files and documents. The whole thing was a built-in touch screen computer. He swiftly tapped a photo file and images of the oil plumes fell into a slideshow. He got right to business. “Here is VN-30, the smaller plume. Our tests show it is actually tethered to a feed from VN-31, the deeper, larger plume. 31 is actually fissuring toward the surface, but for some reason it is collecting here.” Another swipe of his liver-spotted hand brought up a full screen image of NAVSAT pictures of each plume, side by side. Depth and pressure information was typed in the upper right corner of each image.
Tina leaned over the screen for a closer look. “Have there been samples taken? Are we sure of the origin of this oil?”
Dr. Harris swiped the photos away and tapped another file that brought up information on oil from the Deepwater Horizon well. “Our tests show it matches the oil from the BP well, but tests from their scientists revealed some conflicting information.” He swiped back between chemical blueprints of the confirmed oil and the new VN plumes. “You can see that our tests indicate a virtually identical molecular structure to the pre-dispersant oil from the original spill.” He swiped to a new blueprint of the oil dispersant. “The Corexit spiked oil shown here has a significantly different map.”
Tina looked at the changes in chemical consistency. This was information she had already known from her first trips into the Gulf, as well as her most recent time aboard the USS Nevada. She had an idea of where the doctor was headed.
“May I?” Tina gestured toward the desktop screen. Dr. Harris nodded and sat back slightly. His eyes never left her. Tina swiped the images away and reopened the original chemical blueprint, quickly bringing up the files from BP alongside it. “Are they suggesting that this isn’t their oil? We can clearly see the properties of Corexit dispersant use in both maps.”
“Not quite, Ms. Breslin.” Dr. Harris didn’t offer another word. There was a conclusion to be drawn here, and Tina could see he would allow her to decipher it on her own.
She minimized the current photos and brought up the original BP documents. She scanned through them with the ease of a speed-reader, looking for the line she thought might provide the question du jour. Scrolling through several pages of corporate rhetoric, she stopped on a page near the end and double tapped it to fill the screen.
“They show a chemical map consistent with the Navy’s study, except for the base ingredients of the oil. It shows as a….synthetic?” She sat back and thought for a few seconds and understood what Dr. Harris was looking for.
“The BP teams say Corexit collided with the VN plumes and created a new kind of oil altogether?”
“Correct, my dear.” Dr. Harris cleared the screen and opened a new document which analyzed the differences in structure. They were minute, but they were there. Tina began to look them over before realizing that the amount of information would require more time to study.
Seemingly reading her mind, Dr. Harris spoke. “You’ll be provided all of the documents you see here before we get you out to sea.” He slid his chair away from the desk and stood up, craning his neck. Tina could hear the crackling of muscle and tendon in his shoulders. The man had decades of stress built up in his body. “Ms. Breslin, we selected you because we need samples of marine life that have contacted the VN plumes. The only way we can know for sure what has happened to this particular patch of oil is to test it from the cells of plankton at the sea floor. The life at the hydrothermal vents will be the only biological sample that won’t be clouded by other plumes and previously dispersed BP oil. The infected creatures will require full genetic mapping for us to yield the results we need. We need to know if…”
Tina cut the doctor off, unintentionally. Her mind was already working at a unconscious level. “If the VN plumes are a hybrid oil that cannot be dispersed. And if they are, are there more?”
“And what can be done to collect it before it settles into the vent field at the bottom of the Sigsbee.”
Tina sat back in her chair. If the oil was allowed to collect at the sea floor, covering a base of hydrothermal vents, the ocean would, in theory, become a toxic propellant. The super-heated, sulfur rich water would drive the oil outward and expand it, creating a natural oil well that would be impossible to cap.
“One other thing, Ms. Breslin.” Dr. Harris slowly fetched the back of his leather office throne and leaned on it. “The plumes are growing.”
Tina glared upward. “I beg your pardon?”
“By ten percent a week since discovery.”
How could that be? Tina was stumped. How does oil…reproduce?
“You choose a research partner and a diver. We will compensate anyone you choose. I will have the full scope of the project E-Mailed to you by the time you arrive back at Pensacola. You will not be monitored any more than a daily report pulled electronically by my staff. Your vessel will be fully equipped for surface and deep dive sampling, complete with manned and unmanned ROV’s. Full NAVSAT satellite technology. A laboratory built specifically for this project. State of the art everything will be at your disposal.”
Tina stood up. Her nerves were again calm. There was a task to consume them, and an interesting one at that. She was all in, and there was a lot of work to do. “Thank you, Dr. Harris.”
“May I make a suggestion, Ms. Breslin?”
“Of course. Anything.”
“You know a particularly experienced diver that I believe may be out of work at this time. I think he would be an excellent fit for this project. Despite your…differences. There will be no personality curve, and the two of you should be able to hit the ground running.”
There it was. The catch. “Certainly, Dr. Harris.”
