A Holocene Affair

"Elena, over here!" echoed the voice of the expedition leader, eerily muted and bodiless in the morning fog.

I stumbled and cursed as I tried to climb the muddy berm. The newly sprouted foliage had not yet had the time to cover the exposed earth, making the terrain treacherous. My university-provided boots were clearly substandard for this type of work. I crested the hill and called out into the fog, "What is it?"

"I think we found something you're going to want to see," came Dr. David Jankowski's reply.

More cursing followed a sideways slide down another muddy berm. My jeans were now more dirt than denim at this point. I followed the disembodied sounds of my fellow scientists, tromping through a stream bed that had not seen the light of day in more than twenty-thousand years. A few more steps and the gaping maw of a massive cave opening loomed before me.

"In there?" I asked, faintly.

"Yeah, stay in the stream bed and follow it up," David's voice beckoned.

I regarded the cave opening with equal parts disfavor and growing curiosity. It yawned before me, the only notable feature of the granite cliff face that defined this side of the valley they were currently exploring.

The valley itself was a new addition to the landscape, a byproduct of the retreating glaciers in the area. Up until last year, this entire region had been blanketed under hundreds of feet of ice. This particular valley was an anomaly, in that the exit was a narrow gorge that prevented any outflow of ice. In effect, the valley had been under the same unmoving glacier for longer than human civilization had existed. It was prime real estate for anthropologists looking for remnants of early humans in the area; Doubly so for one Elena Murakuma, aspiring Cryo-archeologist, looking to test her experimental low-temperature decrystallization device at the lab and provide the necessary fodder for her academic dissertation. A dissertation which, if accepted by the academic community, would complete her doctorate. A doctorate was respect, possibly funding from the university as well as a shot at her own lab. A real one, not the extra space she leeched off of the rear-office of David's research division.

Dr. Murakuma. It had a nice ring to it. I especially wanted to hear Dr. Schneider say it. All six delicious syllables coming out of that prudish, disapproving mouth.

For that I needed samples and the the only way to get those was out in the bush. Normally this was the kind of grunt work that undergrads were good for, but there was a real dearth of undergrads willing to go into northern Canada by prop plane and haul heavy refrigeration equipment into the wilds of the Taiga.

All of which brought me back to the reality of standing ankle-deep in glacial runoff, staring at a cave that was half ice, half stone and all dangerous. I slogged forward and began to climb the rocks at the base of the opening, quickly getting drenched in the process. After a few minutes, I managed to wriggle over a small ledge and stoop to enter the cave proper. I ducked down a narrow passage, smooth blue ice overhead and the crunch of stream bed gravel beneath. After a minute, I rounded a curve and entered a much larger chamber.

I was greeted by the sight of both team leaders, Dr. Jankowski and Dr. Schneider standing side by side, lanterns on max. They stared at the rimed ice before them. Anna and Jenna, the only others to join the expedition were efficiently setting up a series of lamps as well as unpacking the thermal insulation they would need to carry artifacts without destructive uncontrolled thawing. There was only one reason to unpack that kind of equipment. They'd found something.

"What is it, David-" I said.

"Dr. Jankowski," Miriam corrected frostily.

"Ahem-Dr. Jankowski," I amended hastily.

David started out of his trance and glanced back at me. "Oh, Murakuma. Yes, you are going to be quite interested in this find. What a stroke of luck. Unparalleled preservation and right up your alley, what with the find still being encased in ice." He scratched his temple absently before adjusting his glasses before murmuring, "And didn't I mention it before? Just call me David."

I opened my mouth and Miriam shot me a glare of pure malice. I shut it with an audible click.

The two post-grads stifled a chuckle at the familiar byplay. I scowled at them and they quickly went back to unpacking. Jenna held up a thermal laser cutter and fiddled with it, adjusting the calibration. Anna returned to hanging the site lantern, what would be our main source of illumination in the darkness.

Unwilling to subject myself to any additional abuse, I stepped forward to look at the ice wall as well. The surface was smooth and wavy. It had been melted by flowing water, the same which was even now sloshing over my boots and numbing my toes. I grabbed my little field flashlight from my belt-clip and shined it over the wall.

There wasn't much power behind the beam but I was able to discern a shape behind the ice. I squinted, playing the beam over it again. The dark form was fairly large, possibly the size of a very large dog. Whatever it was , it was solidly encased and several feet from the surface. I blew my breath out in frustration. "I can't see what it is."

"Hmph," muttered Dr. Schneider. "You would have missed it for sure. Good thing you tagged along-"

"Now Miriam," David interrupted gently. "Let her have a look at it. I'm quite interested in her opinion. Once we get some light in here, that is."

As if on queue, Anna finished with the site lantern and turned it on. The bright glow provided twenty times the illumination of my flashlight and suddenly, I forgot all about Miriam and her needling.

Deep in the ice, a human face stared back at me. It was a woman, tiny as most were back then, eyes sightless, dark and perfectly preserved. She was huddled in a primitive wrap of fur, her body protectively hunched over her middle. Her right arm was clasped across her body, as if protecting herself. The other was outstretched, fingers spread. The hand was only a few inches from the surface. It must have been what had caught David's attention.

I stared back in awe, my hand unconsciously mimicking hers, fingers splayed. My fingers touched the ice, the tips just a bare space from twenty-thousand years in the past. She and I were strangely similar, both Asiatic and young women. The mirror of time was one way only, though. Strangely, the thought made me sad. She had died here, cold, maybe alone. Would it have eased that final passage into darkness that on the far end of time, someone would at last find her and see her again?

"I would have saved you if I could," I murmured quietly.

"So would I," came David's voice from just behind me. "As it is, all we can do is learn from her. It behooves us not to waste that chance."

I half expected another barb from Miriam for my sentimentality, but she turned away silently and began arranging the thermal insulation.

"Let's work safely, but make haste. This is not a safe location to stay for any length of time," Dr. Jankowski said. "Let that be the first lesson this young lady teaches us."

We set to with a newfound urgency. This was the find of the century, a prize of unbelievable value to the scientific community. It would make our careers, as well as put the university on the same map as its Ivy-decked peers.

Yet for us, it was a window of nearly perfect clarity into the past. It was that view that captivated us and we labored to preserve it.

In the end, we extracted the woman in one piece along with a series of camp artifacts, several sacks as well as a large clay-fired pot. We wrapped them and called in a helicopter to a pickup point several miles away. Once we returned to base-camp we managed to get the find into a freezer for preservation. At the time, I thought that we merely found yet another relic of a dead past, no matter how well preserved. I had never been more wrong.

*******

I've traveled a lot in my time, but this was the first time I found myself on what amounted to a scientific rescue mission. No, we weren't under any illusions that 'Nina', our name for the frozen woman, was in any way revivable. However, she was frozen and that was her only preservation. Should she thaw outside of laboratory conditions, she would quickly begin to decay and nearly all the knowledge that was hidden within her preserved form would be lost.

The journey from our base camp at Destruction Bay to Fairbanks was a twenty-seven hour nightmare, as we restricted our speed to below thirty the whole way. Even on the paved roads, there were plenty of potholes, causing the refrigerated truck to lurch alarmingly. Everyone was terrified the ice would crack and damage the specimen so we sucked in our breath and clenched our teeth at every jounce.

Once we arrived in Fairbanks, it took eleven days to charter a plane suitable to return our find to the mainland states. I saw 'we', but in actuality, it was me. Both doctors and our post-grad helpers were able to quickly get tickets back home to make arrangements. I, the refrigerant expert, was left to ride with the cargo, the last line of defense against a breakdown and total destruction of our precious find.

So it was that from that fateful day in the mountains of Kluane National Park, in northern Canada to Orinda University in downstate California, I traveled in a state of near-panic for almost two weeks. I was dirty, disheveled, covered in grease from a quick emergency repair mid-flight and bone-tired. So naturally, the first thing I did upon arrival at the university was ensure the precious cargo was delivered into the care of Dr. Jankowski as well as lay claim to my portion of the find, a large leather sack; contents unknown.

Miriam scowled at me as I departed, but I was not about to let it go. I knew she was mad because my method for defrosting the artifact was experimental. To her, experimental meant risky. If I had been feeling more generous, I would have agreed, but I was most certainly not. They would have to be content with the find of the century. I took my frozen sack like the miser I was and departed for my 'lab'.

Lab was a bit of a misnomer. I occupied what was essentially a set of storage quarters off the rear end of Dr. Jankowski's research department. Since I was still pretty broke, my lab doubled as my living quarters. The main area was taken up by my own invention, a 'decrystallizer', set in the center of the room. It looked science-y enough to satisfy even the most dubious of beneficiaries. It comprised of a tabletop set on a special 'low vibration' dais. Surrounding the center was a series of plates comprised of special sensors and nitrogen-cooled lasers. If that wasn't enough, a server-bank worth of processors fed more wires than I cared to count to the array. It looked cool as hell. I was the one who built it and I was damn proud of that.

Now there was only one way to truly test it. I placed the frozen sack on the center pedestal and entered a series of commands on the station keyboard. A tiny light on the board flicked from red to green. I quickly vacated the room, but not before activating the slow motion, high resolution cameras. One way or another, I was not about to miss this.

Time for a break.

I truly wanted a shower and about eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep, but the decrystallizer was in motion and would deliver its result, hopefully, in less than two hours. After years of waiting for a chance like this, I was not about to sleep through it.

Instead, I realized, there was yet another need I could take care of while I waited. I grabbed a towel, my laptop and headed to my bedroom.

Some people needed space and nice furniture, but as a burgeoning scientist, I had long given up on anything approaching standards. My bed, a single, was jammed against the wall with only a small nightstand next to it. Except for the tiny folding chair against the wall, that was it. I smiled possessively at my hovel and made ready. The laptop went on the chair, which I scooted next to the bed. The towel, I draped across the bed, right about hip-height. A few quick tugs and my top, bra, shorts and panties hit the floor in a heap.

Don't forget to take care of yourself. It was common advice to aspiring scholars and scientists. Damn right, I thought.

I flopped onto my bed and adjusted my laptop for a better view from a horizontal position. A few clicks and my browser opened up. Images of sexual acts both intriguing and appalling cascaded across my screen.

Most people, at least most 'proper' folk, don't really associate women with porn. We aren't considered heavy users like men are, and so the entire field is skewed towards the fantasies and ideals of the male persuasion. Some of which really are terrible. I couldn't for the life of me understand what the fascination was with choking, rough-play and facials, especially when the female subject to them didn't look like she was actually enjoying any of it.

I was, however, more than able to glean the gems from the dross. My tastes ran the spectrum of erotica, from the mundane to the exotic. So long as all participants looked like they were having fun, I was all for it.

Today the hunt was on for something different. Self-pleasure is an inherently hedonistic act, much like a gourmet would consider a fine meal. I never skimped when it was time to do myself proper. My fingers started at my breasts, slowly circling my nipples, teasing the very beginnings of arousal from my nervous system.

On the screen, I clicked through video after video, looking for that one that would engage my interest and bring things to the next level. After several minutes of fruitless searching, I happened across something I hadn't seen before. It was an animated clip, done in the Japanese style, of a woman being captured by some kind of monster.

My eyes narrowed. This was porn? I clicked into it and watched curiously. She was a mere wisp of a thing, running down some futuristic hallway chased by a beast drawn to have way to many arms. Not arms, I quickly realized. Some kind of tentacles.

The woman's fate was quickly decided as she was captured by her pursuer and quickly ensnared, hand and foot, by the beasts many phalluses. Or would it be Phalli? My fingers slid from my breasts down my stomach to my groin, waking nerve endings as they went. I slid a digit between my lips and found my sex was already slick with fluid.

Why was I turned on by this? The animated girl was obviously unwilling. Even as I watched, the beast had sent yet more tentacle penises spiraling towards its/his prey. They converged with obvious purpose and inserted themselves into her orifices without mercy. Her cries seemed to indicate her violation, yet the vision of the tendrils moving in and out of her obviously drenched sex was causing my own body to clench as well.

Bemused, I abandoned my caresses and went to work on myself with intent, my fingers dipping within me and drawing out my wetness to encircle my clitoris with. I could feel my heart pounding as I worked myself, my breath coming shorter and faster.

On the screen before me, the tentacles had completely engulfed the hapless woman and were now stimulating and penetrating every erogenous zone she could possibly possess and then some. They thrust in and out of her anus, vagina and mouth. Cartoonish fluids were flying off in all directions, though I was unsure if the illustrator put them in to indicate her climax or the beasts. I found that I suddenly cared quite a bit which they were.

My hand feverishly circled my clitoris, deviating only to draw once more from the well of my vagina the wetness that helped my fingers slid around my clit so pleasurably. I rolled onto my stomach, eyes still glued to the screen while my pelvis began to undulate. I could feel my release building, like a wave in the distance, rumbling ever closer to shore.

My impending orgasm was preceded by the answer to my unspoken question. The animated beast had obviously reached its moment as well and began to ejaculate from all of its tentacles. The woman moaned, though whether in pleasure or final despair, I couldn't tell. She was instantly covered in monstrous amounts of goo, as well as a detailed depiction of the backflow as the inserted tentacle penises had filled her various orifices far past capacity.

Why that thought, of being filled past the point of containing, triggered my orgasm, I couldn't say. My feverish imagination supplied the images and sensations, the squirming penetration, the filling of my sex with hot fluids. My body clenched from navel to thigh, muscles contracting with pleasure that flowed through me in torrents. My breath blew out in an involuntary moan. Then the rhythmic pulsations began, conveying both my release and my cum. My hand was suddenly drenched as well as the towel I was laying on. The pleasure went on, slowly easing until there was nothing but my harsh breathing and a video that had ended while I wasn't looking anymore.

I rolled onto my back, bemused. What was that? I'd never run across something so blatantly sexual yet unrealistic. It was... I couldn't find words for it. Was it right that I'd found that so incredibly arousing?

While I couldn't answer my own question, I kept rehashing the thoughts in my mind. I must have been much more exhausted from my travels than I'd thought. Before long, I'd unwittingly drifted off to sleep, complete with strange shadowy dreams of squirming tendrils and both the promise and the threat they somehow contained.

******

I was jarred from my dreams by the harsh sound of my alarm buzzing. I sat up, rubbing sleep from my eyes and muttering baleful words. Suddenly, with a heart dropping lurch, I realized it wasn't my alarm clock that was beeping.

The laptop, still open, displayed the interface for the decrystallizer rig. That was what was meeping plaintively for attention. I brought up the display and glanced at it, dismayed. The decrystallizer was a very precise machine, scanning and then uniformly heating the target sample with a series of ultra-precise lasers. The scanners were key and they kept a very watchful eye on the target indeed. This particular alarm was only supposed to go off if the total mass of the target changed suddenly. Which was either a glitch or... something else.

I darted out of my bedroom like a naked otter, scurrying towards the lab with frantic haste. This was my ticket, how could I have been so careless?

When I entered the lab, I quickly scanned the machinery and electronics with a practiced eye. Nothing smoking, out of place or displaying any malfunction warning lights. I thought I'd worked all the bugs out previously. The last ten tests, the machine had performed flawlessly. Why now?

With nothing else out of place, I peeked over the panels onto the pedestal in the center. Had the malfunction damaged the bag? If so, I'd never live it down, especially with Miriam to remind me endlessly.

However, instead of some calamity, the bag itself was undamaged. As far as I could tell, it was nothing more than a crude leather bag. Not a single indication that it was twenty thousand years old. I reached in and delicately poked at it. Hadn't there been something inside of it? It was empty now, slumped over on its side. Had that been what set the alarm off? The bottom of chamber had a series of simple drains. Perhaps the bag had been full of ice that had drained into the pan underneath. That would explain the mass change warning on the laptop.

Relief and disappointment warred. On the one hand, the decrystallizer had again functioned perfectly and restored a frozen artifact with a minimum of damage. On the other hand, I had been looking forward to seeing whatever had been inside. There was something about being the very first to see evidence from the distant past that thrilled me to the core. I suppose all of us academics were the same in that way. We wanted to find out about our past, to know the truth and to be the first to see it with our own eyes.