Mother Russia

Chapter Six

Things were going well, or at least as well as expected. Over the next two weeks, Arkady oversaw the gradual implementation of a wide array of security procedures. A secondary lab in Building #3 was designated as the temporary lab area for the new department for handling the viral samples, and it was methodically shut off from the rest of the lab complex. Construction workers literally built walls across doorways and hallways within the complex to limit the number of access points to the lab. New security scanners were installed and new codes were programmed. Signs and warnings declared in bold red letters that the lab was off-limits to unauthorized personnel.

So far, only six people were allowed in the new lab area – Arkady, Pavel, Konstantin, and three other Senior Project Directors with knowledge of the project – but Arkady was already doing meetings to determine which other employees might be suitable to be promoted to the new department. In time, he would supervise a research group of twenty people, but right now his main concern was getting the viral samples safely stored and organized. They were still in the process of building the protective systems and procedures that would keep the scientists safe.

Arkady was in a pretty good mood. He spent most of the morning in meetings, but when he went out to lunch, as he always did, he got to spend some time with the attractive brunette he had been seeing at the diner lately. Earlier that week, the diner had been busy and she asked to share his table out on the patio. Her name was Jeanette something. She was French, but she spoke Russian passably well, and they had a nice conversation. She was some kind of business consultant and had only been in Yatovska for a few months.

He had met her for lunch every day since then, and today he asked her if she was busy on Friday. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Jeanette said she had no plans, so he asked her out to dinner, and to his surprise, she said yes. Arkady hadn’t gone on a real date in eight years, since his last relationship ended, so he felt he was a bit out of practice. But he was looking forward to it, and came back to work thinking about the upcoming date.

He made his way to the lab and went to a central chamber that had been chosen as the room where the samples would be stored. Entering the room required going through three other lab rooms, and once they had all their security protocols in place, Arkady felt it would be quite secure. Pavel was waiting for him when he got there.

“I wanted to wait until you got back,” Pavel said. “I’m going to start the system and I didn’t want to do anything without you saying it’s okay.”

“Good idea,” Arkady replied, looking over the equipment. “Let’s go through it one more time.”

The eight pallets of samples were still unopened, although they had transferred all the information from the computers into their own database. They had to manually verify every sample to make sure each one was properly logged into their system. That meant removing all the samples and scanning them one at a time to verify that it was in inventory. If a sample was listed in the computer, but it was not manually scanned, then the system would flash an error message that there was a sample missing. All of this was done to make absolutely sure that every single sample that was shipped from Turkey was accounted for here in Yatovska.

While Arkady was at lunch, Pavel had rolled one of the pallets into the center of the room, directly underneath a large robotic arm that was installed in the ceiling and ran on a track along both walls that met at that corner. The two walls were lined with long shelves of plastic fixtures similar to cup holders, which would each hold one sample. A computer console with a laser code scanner was set up on a cart and rolled next to the pallet.

Using the robotic arm, Pavel would pick up each sample, hold it out to be scanned by the computer, and place it onto one of the shelves. It was sure to be a slow process, and Arkady figured that scanning all eight pallets’ worth of samples would take a few days at least.

Later, when all of the samples were scanned and organized, a plexiglass wall would be installed to separate the samples from the rest of the room. If someone needed a sample, the robotic arm would be programmed to grab the correct sample, scan it, and place it in a tray where the scientist could get it. But right now the arm wasn’t programmed, so they had to do it all manually.

“Everything looks good to me,” he said. “I think we can get started.”

“Do you think we should put the suits back on?” Pavel asked.

“Yes,” Arkady said instantly. “Yes, thank you, I didn’t think of that. There’s no sense in being careless about it now.”

They both put the bulky hazard suits on and checked to make sure they were airtight. Until they received authorization and additional safety training, it was probably best to just wear them at all times, as awkward as they were.

The green light in Arkady’s facemask lit up, telling him the suit was functioning properly. “All right. Start up the arm and make sure it does what we want it to.”

Pavel stood at the control console and clicked the mouse. Over their head, the robot arm hummed to life and swiveled around. Pavel controlled it with a small joystick on the keyboard, although it was harder to do while wearing the hazard suit with its thick gloves. He moved the arm back and forth along both rails all the way down each wall, extended and retracted it in all directions, and rotated it around several times.

Arkady said, “Seems like you can control it pretty well.”

“It would be easier without the suit,” Pavel said, but he continued moving the arm around until he felt comfortable with it. “Okay, let’s open the first case,” he said.

Arkady went over to the stack of metal cases and typed his security code into the small number pad built into the case. Gripping the edge carefully, he lifted the lid, and held his breath when he looked down at the rows of small glass samples embedded in the foam. Arkady held his breath until he walked back to Pavel, even though it was silly to do when he was wearing a hazard suit. Even if one of the samples fell to the floor and shattered, both he and Pavel would not be exposed. But the instinct to be afraid was too powerful to overcome.

Pavel slowly lowered the arm until its plastic claws closed on one of the samples. Arkady felt Pavel tense up beside him, but he resisted the urge to do the same. Each viral sample was a glass cylinder about the size of a can of soda, with three separate sections visible inside that contained the actual viruses. Pavel took a breath and then lifted the sample up.

“Okay, bring it over to the scanner,” Arkady said.

Pavel controlled the arm, moving it very carefully over to the computer console. He held the sample next to the flickering red laser and it beeped affirmatively. On Pavel’s computer screen, a screen popped up to show that the first sample was scanned and logged into the system.

After that, Pavel used the robot arm to gently place the sample in the first fixture on the lowest shelf on the wall to their left. They would fill one shelf before moving onto the next, and since the computer would track the order in which the samples were scanned, they would use that to keep track of where each sample was located.

Pavel returned the arm to its neutral position and let go of the control stick. He took a deep breath and shook his arms to loosen them up, as if he’d been doing heavy labor for hours.

“How do you feel?” Arkady asked.

“I’m sweating my ass off in this suit,” Pavel said.

“Well, we only have like a thousand of these things to go.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me. It’s gonna take forever.”

Arkady looked at the computer that controlled the arm. “Can you program it to do some of the sequence on its own?”

Pavel shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I can take a look at it.”

“Well, don’t rush it. Take your time and be careful. Get some more practice with the arm and see how many samples you can get scanned today.”

“Sure thing,” Pavel said, and took hold of the joystick again to scan another sample.

He worked at for the rest of the day, and by the time he went home, he had only managed to scan forty samples. Each one took almost five minutes, and it was boring, frustrating work, so he took a short break every five or ten samples. Arkady scanned a few later in the afternoon, to give him a break from the monotony. When they finished all the samples in one case, they moved onto the next and put the empty cases in another room for now.

Eventually, after some trial and error, they managed to program the robotic arm to do some of the movements automatically. However, they couldn’t program the entire sequence, simply because it was too complicated and none of them knew how. But they could set specific positions for the arm and save them as starting points. So they set a starting point for the arm directly above the case of samples, another starting point next to the scanner, and another starting point at the beginning of the row they were currently placing the samples. It saved them a little bit of time, at least.

“I don’t want to do this again tomorrow,” Pavel said before they left.

“I don’t blame you,” Arkady said. “But don’t worry. Tomorrow Konstantin can do this while you get the new analyzers installed. I’ll clear my schedule on Monday and take a turn. We’ll alternate every day and hopefully we’ll be done by the end of next week.”

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