Icejacked

On My Way to Work

By tomorrow, my life would never be the same. Today was the start of a mystery that would echo and re-echo across the world of history and science. Oblivious, I pushed my specs up my nose, ran my fingers through my hair, and locked my front door.

Audis are such comfortable cars. This was my idle thought as I nosed out into the early morning traffic to drive from my apartment in St. Gallen to Universität Zürich, the largest university in Switzerland. It was my normal route, and today was no different, but for some reason, I was appreciating the comfort more than usual. I smiled fondly as I ran my hand across the steering wheel, remembering the gratitude I had felt as my parents proudly handed me the keys to the A4 on the successful completion of my history degree.

“Gerhardt,” my father said, beaming first at me and then my mother, “you have made us so proud, and we want to show you just how much.”

I was delighted to get my own car and especially pleased it was an Audi into which my lanky frame could fit with comfort.

I liked living in St. Gallen. I had a cheap apartment and access to the incredible library in the Abbey of St. Gall. This wonderful place contained books dating from the ninth century, and as a history buff, this was a magnet to me. When researching, the cleaners would often find me hunched over some dusty tome in a far corner of the library. They would bustle me out, muttering that the library had been closed hours ago.

When the jibes came from my fellow university students because some got there a year earlier, I avoided socialising at their facile events. They thought I was fixed in the past and a loner.

I always consoled myself with this all-consuming thought: I will show them. I was determined I would make it one day. One day, I would be rich and famous.

I wasn’t thinking much about anything this morning as I navigated through the slow-moving traffic. It was a cold day, but I was cocooned and comfy as I flicked on the radio to catch up with the latest news and views. It was rare that news grabbed me, a history major. The nature of my work kept me in the buried in the Roman past, my specialty.

But that morning, as the radio chattered away, a news item suddenly caught my attention. I quickly turned up the volume. I didn’t want to miss a word. A few days ago on a Tyrolean mountain, a search party, while seeking missing climbers, had stumbled upon a body totally encased in ice. The report went on to state that an investigation had been launched to discover the identity and origin, as no one was missing. The climbers being sought by the search and rescue team had been found safe and well. They had returned via a different route.

Ötzi the Iceman came to mind, and I wondered, Could this be a similar find? Ötzi was found in the Austrian mountains in 1991. At the time, I was still in school and read everything I could find about this ancient man. As long as I could remember, history had fascinated me. I wondered if this newly found body was perhaps from the same era, not a recently lost climber, but someone similar to Ötzi, who became encased in ice fifty-three hundred years ago.

The traffic was crawling, but my thoughts were racing. Would this be an Ötzi II case? If so, would the university let me join the investigation? Would Archiv History be interested?

I kept retuning the radio to Italian, French, and English stations to hear their take on the story. I needed to get some facts before I ran ahead of myself. What if it is as I suspect? My imagination was gripped, and my pulse was racing. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and resolved to do some intense research on the story as soon as I reached the office. Anticipation filled me. I was full of thoughts about my iceman. I had claimed him already! I had even given him a gender, for heaven’s sake. I needed to calm down.