There was one last roll of the dice left on the way home, Project CONSERVE consortium of institutes spread across Gotham, Yunnan and one last hope.
Bruce was en route to Sweden, headquarters of NordGen. The Nordic Genetic Resource Center's commission was to conserve genetic resources of plants and animals. This was akin to the 'Noah's ark' efforts at the XTBG, a collaborative effort of the Nordic country governments.
One of NordGen's most striking projects was the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Seed Vault was in the world's most northernmost settlement, on a far-flung island in the Arctic Ocean. The edifice was a concrete wedge jutting out from the permafrost hillside, illuminated by a fiber-optic network of cables.
The NordGen lead for Project CONSERVE was Dr. Yelizaveta Romanenko, a protégé of Victor Fries at Gotham U in the field of cryogenics.
NordGen's main location was a castle among landscaped grounds now serving as a university campus. Built in the style of French Renaissance architecture, it resembled a modest château, ivy climbing on its facade. The castle was in a village in southern Sweden, overlooking the shore of the Oresund strait to Copenhagen.
Dr. Romanenko greeted Bruce on the lawn of the castle's entrance, continuing to her lab.
"I appreciate you making the time, Dr. Romanenko," began Bruce.
"You're welcome," she replied. "I made the time without knowing what you needed, other than you're a beneficiary of Project CONSERVE."
"Yes, the project lead, Kirk Langstrom, has been missing. I've been doing my best to find out where he might be, contacting the other institutes for the project in Gotham and China. NordGen's the last on my list."
"I hope we can be of some benefit, though I'm sorry to say, I'm not confident how. I don't believe Dr. Langstrom ever visited our institute in person."
"Could you tell me about your dealings with Kirk throughout the course of the project?"
"I've been the sole contact from our institute with Dr. Langstrom, though I've not met him, either here or elsewhere."
"Your involvement was in the context of providing cryonics?"
"Correct. I'm a cryobiologist. I study what happens to life in freezing temperatures."
"How do the cultures native to the Arctic manage to adapt?"
"The temperature inside a well-built igloo lined with fur on the walls and floor can be between 10-20 degrees Celsius. Also, their fur clothing keeps them very warm. Those communities and cultures have adapted to such conditions over a thousand years."
"Langstrom engaged your cryonics expertise for the conservation of animal genetic resources?" queried Bruce.
"Yes."
"In what form?"
"Germplasm, a genetic resource in the form of living tissue. He wanted to create a gene bank, a repository of DNA and RNA. For plants, the seeds are in a seed bank, and for animals, we store the reproductive cells, embryos, or germplasm."
"Do you have any idea what samples he intended to collect?"
"He said he wanted to try to harness the genetic material of close to all the bat species, which from memory, was some number over a thousand. A frozen zoo. These genetic resources preserved by cryogenics would allow for the protection of the gene pool. If a natural disaster or climate change affects a species, and it becomes endangered or extinct, the genes would be on hand. I have no idea if he had any of the samples he intended to preserve, or if it was all fanciful."
