Going all the way back to the days of the tombs of the pharaohs – or at least going back to that time Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault – mankind has been fascinated by time capsules. It’s innate in us: What treasures lie buried which were left by those who came before?

And so it was that a group of us recently gathered in a parking lot, eager to gaze upon the contents of a metal box.

It had been unearthed from beneath Swanson Hall Plaza. The time capsule had been buried and “sealed” (more about those quotation marks in a minute) 20 years ago, on June 3, 1993, just after the Durham Outpatient Center opened in May of that year. But the campus continues to make way for the new cancer center. So, the guys from the UNMC facilities management and planning department had dug it up.

Don pries open the time capsule.

As we walked up, they had the box tilted, and water was draining out.

Ooh. That can’t be good.

Don Dickmeyer pried it open, peered inside.

The verdict? Ick.

Ick.

“It’s not very pretty,” someone said.

“History ain’t pretty sometimes,” said John Schleicher, UNMC’s resident historian.

Mud. Water. Muck. Junk. But Schleicher dug in. Someone went to get gloves, but Schleicher couldn’t wait. Then Dickmeyer donned the gloves and got elbow-deep. They pulled stuff from the muck. UNMC shoelaces. College of Nursing playing cards. VHS videotapes, ruined and soaked.

Let’s go to the videotape!

“We couldn’t play these even if we had something to play them with!” someone said.

Old, soaked newspapers. A floppy disc.

“That reminds me of a joke,” Schleicher said.

(And suddenly, we find ourselves in a Charlie Sheen-era episode of “Two and a Half Men.”)

But no jokes were required. Everyone had already laughed, at the mere sight of a floppy disc.

Ha ha! Look! A floppy disc!

Don consults the plans found in the time capsule.

There was more. What’s that? “Photos,” Dickmeyer said. “But they totally washed out.”

“They disintegrated,” Tom O’Connor said. “It looks like kids’ water colors!”

That’s all that was left.

It was as if someone’s old basement had been flooded – for 20 years.

John Keenan, UNMC Today editor, is a serious journalist. He gets to the bottom of things. What, he asked, was the technical mistake behind what had happened to the time capsule?

“It leaked,” Don Dickmeyer said.

“Challenging the Future.” The future won.

T-shirts. T-shirts from 20 years ago, muddy and disgusting and soaked.

Schleicher held them up: “People were smaller back then,” he said, sounding like an archeologist.

Or, maybe cotton shrinks after 20 years in muck.

There was a Pepsi can, eaten through. From the dirty water without, or from the soda within, we’ll never know.

The newspapers were unreadable. The videotapes were unwatchable. The photos may as well have been invisible. The floppy disc was a punch line.

So much for treasures.

Maybe they thought in the future we would inject the caffeine directly into ourselves.

And yet … it was still fun. Something about seeing what was left by those who came before.

Schleicher stuffed the shirts into a trash bag, hoping to salvage them with a trip (or 10) through the wash. Dickmeyer tried to brush the muck off his button-down shirt.

We started to disperse, shaking our heads. “Here’s the last line of your story,” Schleicher said: “ ‘And then, they threw everything in the dumpster.’ “

Maybe it’s just an accidental headline, and nothing more. Maybe this is just the way they talk in India. Still, the words we use mean something, even when we don’t know it. And so, the way The New Indian Express, an English-language newspaper and website, summed things up recently said it all:

“US Varsity comes forward to assist state government in water management.”

It’s fair to guess that in this case they are probably using the word varsity in its original meaning as “university.” That’s fine. Doesn’t matter.

Here in the U.S., the varsity means the big boys (or girls). The No. 1 squad you’ve got. The best. The top line. The first team.

And so in this usage, it’s perfect. Because in this headline when it says “US Varsity comes forward,” it means UNMC.

Think of that phrase: U.S. Varsity comes forward. This is UNMC’s best image of itself summed up in four words.

As in: Not just the best team in the country, but the one, when help is needed, that is already on the way.

Alan Kolok, Ph.D., interim director of the Center for Environmental Health and Toxicology in UNMC’s College of Public Health, displays UNMC’s sentinel fish.

The story went on to say that UNMC, which is helping the Asian Institute of Public Health set up India’s first public health university, has offered its expertise in eastern India. UNMC’s College of Public Health could assist with “developing systems for effective water management for agriculture and drinking, flood and draught management as well as cropping patterns and soil toxicology.”

UNMC has developed sentinel fish-based systems – scientific sentinel fish! – which let you know right away whether your water has unwanted levels of toxin, metals and pollution.

Pinaki Panigrahi, M.D., Ph.D., director of UNMC’s Center for Global Health and Development, was quoted: “Water availability is evolving into a major threat for the future that could fuel war,” he said. “The focus across the world, thus, has shifted to proper water management. Strategies are being oriented toward addressing the problems of pollution and contamination of water and making it usable for varied purposes.”

Dr. Panigrahi

Water. UNMC is going to make sure that people have water.

That’s public health. That’s health, period. That’s life. Period.

If where you live there is no clean water, and someone helps you get some, that is quite literally a breakthrough.

Dr. Maurer has long set the goal of becoming world-class.

As much as Chancellor Harold M. Maurer, M.D., has talked about the concept of being world-class, it still can be a tough idea to grasp hold of. Many of us find ourselves falling back into seeing things in terms of UNMC’s standing here in Omaha. It’s more comfortable for us. And, here, in Omaha, we’re unquestionably awesome. Of course.

But now, maybe a headline from a newspaper on the other side of the world shows us once and for all what that means. Those words show us who we want to be.

Sure, the Indian editor who wrote it may not ascribe the same meaning to the verbiage that we do – doesn’t matter. Even without knowing it, he or she was right.

If there is a problem of ingenuity somewhere in the world, anywhere in the world, if people need help, who are you going to call on? Who will step forward?

You send in the U.S. Varsity.

That’s us.