Necrobot

A charismatic tech billionaire invites top shareholders to his Antarctic dome colony, promising eternal life through technology.

I couldn’t believe it worked, even as I crossed the gangplank from the icebreaker, at last setting foot onto Antarctic soil. Gravel really, mixed with dirty snow. Even the peak of Antarctic Summer hadn’t yet melted the final few traces. A slender white haired woman of perhaps sixty with a tight, smooth face approached, wearing a bright orange parka.

“So you’re the bigshot writer, are ya?” I tugged at the drawstring on my hoodie, trying and failing to maintain eye contact as I turned away from the bitterly cold wind. When she handed me the parka she carried under her arm, I thanked her and eagerly pulled it on. “Bigshot? I don’t know about all that. The artists and writers residency program seemed like the only way I could realistically see Antarctica in person, that’s all.” She smirked. “A tourist, then. I thought as much.”

Her name turned out to be Nora when introductions were made on approach to McMurdo. The impressive compound sat atop the buried foundations of 85 smaller buildings, torn down to make way for the future. It looked the part, too. Lots of metal and glass, something like a cross between a modern college campus and an airport.

“Get a load of all those pampered grad students. They have it easy!” Nora grumbled. “Used to be, walking between buildings during blizzards was a rite of passage. Now you can go anywhere on base in your jammies.” I made a show of paying close attention, picking up on the paradoxical pride she clearly took in her seniority despite also having work done. What a relief it was to be inside, brushing snow off our parkas before doffing the heavy garments and hanging them up by a heater to dry.

Aside from rows of identical parkas, the mud room, or “boots room” as Nora called it, contained racks of walkie talkies on their chargers. So many little LEDs glowing green, orange or red. There were also some first aid kits, megaphones and other assorted equipment I’d never thought about the need for in a place like this. I felt briefly ashamed that my knowledge of McMurdo didn’t extend far beyond the packet I found in my cabin on the ride here.

Sensation slowly returned to my face, at last bathed in warm air. Numb before, now starting to ache. “This is the new guy?” A thin but sturdy black fellow with white tufts at his temples approached. His gray eyes studied me through a pair of bifocals. Nora slapped me on the back. Startled to be touched by a stranger, I took an involuntary step forward. “I could’ve done with my research assistant” Nora groused, “but yes, this is who we got instead. Far be it from me to diminish the importance of the arts.”

After the handoff, Blake apologized for Nora. “She’s one of the old guard. This is her first Summer at the new McMurdo, but she’s wintered over at Amundsen Scott nineteen times.” I did some quick mental math. “Wasn’t it built in ‘08 though? Where was she staying before?” Blake looked surprised. “Did your homework, I see.” I had him fooled at least, if not Nora.

He seemed to hold her in high regard. “Nora’s the real deal, served her time in the dome and everything.” He pointed to a framed photograph on the wall of the geodesic metal dome’s deconstruction in 2010. “She still tells all the male grad students that she’s in her fifties, so don’t let her find out that I told you…but she also worked at the original station. Built in 1957, dismantled during the same summer as the dome. Nora was all torn up about it.”

I couldn’t see why. The first Amundsen Scott Station was a pitiful shack, the dome wasn’t much better, and old McMurdo was a mess to beat them both. By contrast, on our way to the dorms we passed by a lecture hall, vending machines, a cafeteria and a coffee bar. In no way would it be an exaggeration to call this an indoor town, with every amenity I could ask for and some I didn’t think to. What a difference climate funding makes.

We passed through one of the elevated skyways connecting two of the largest sections. Floor to ceiling windows lining both sides of the corridor afforded panoramic views of the barren hellscape outside. I privately wondered how much windows could really do for morale, when that’s the best the view ever gets.

Still, when I set out for Antarctica, the accommodations I envisioned were considerably more austere. Not the rec rooms, not the food selection or huge windows. The dorm we arrived at brought me back down to earth somewhat. Not that it wasn’t equally plush or well apportioned, just that it was roughly the same size as my cabin on the icebreaker.

It had a window at least, and a desk which I availed myself of. With my luggage perched atop it, I unzipped it and lifted the lid, then got busy unpacking. It was the work of half an hour, and not long after I finished, Blake came knocking. “Oh good, you’re settled. Don’t get too comfy, though.” I asked if there was someplace I needed to be. “Not until orientation tomorrow. I just thought I’d invite you for a drink in the-...” His eyes came to rest on my opened luggage, where a battered old copy of “Perpetuum Evergreen” lay nestled among shirts, socks and underwear.

“Vance Dranger, huh? So you’re one of those.” I laughed and shook my head. “No, not even a little bit. My father was, though.” Blake looked relieved. “Was? How did you snap him out of it? All the Drangerites I know are in it for life.” I cleared my throat and looked at the floor. “He…went missing some years ago.” Blake fell silent. “Ah, I see. My apologies.”

I did wind up joining him for a drink. One of the few teetotalers on base, Blake ordered a hot chocolate from the coffee bar. I followed his example, and soon the two of us were seated before immense windows lining the outer wall. For all the desolation, there was at least a view of the seafront, which counted for something. I checked my watch in momentary confusion, wondering why it was still light out before realizing my error.

“What was he like?” I translated the question internally to “what was it like growing up with a Drangerite”, which is usually what people really want to know when they ask about my father. “Obsessed with his own mortality, like the rest of ‘em.” Blake’s eyes softened. “Listen, I didn’t…” I assured him it was okay. “Yes you did, and I don’t blame you. It was losing my mother that did it. I was young and resilient, though I did suffer greatly. Not compared to Dad though, her death absolutely broke him.”

He extended an upturned hand. I left him hanging, as I rarely even hug friends. After a moment he withdrew, instead reaching under the table and producing a copy of my latest novel. “I thought maybe it was something like that. Your protagonists have a habit of losing their mothers.” It caught me off guard. “You’re a fan?” Blake winced. “I’m not sure if fan is the right word. Nobody reads your stuff for pleasure, exactly. Would it kill you to write a happy ending?” We shared some laughter, and the mood lightened.

A strange and exclusive sensation, to sip hot cocoa in Antarctica. Insulated from the ravenous cold by a technological barrier, on a continent which remorselessly consumed the lives of the first pioneers to explore it. Blake vented to me about Dranger and his army of fanboys. Dwindling since the disappearance of their great golden emperor, but still a common and pestilent contingent of the life extension crowd.

“Didn’t one of ‘em attack a colleague in the elevator? At the recent conference? Some nonsense about invisible parasites.” I shrugged and took another sip. “I didn’t hear about that, but I believe you. Even among Drangerites, there’s a relative lunatic fringe.” He chuckled, with an air of smugness. “And for what? At the end of the day, what’s so special about the man? Like clockwork, every few decades some charismatic tech guy with a funny name makes headlines. Nothing new, this world has seen many men like Vance Dranger come and go.”

Preaching to the choir. I didn’t interrupt though, it felt affirming to hear the same thoughts I’ve had many times since Dad disappeared, echoed by a stranger. “Each time they amass their own small army of dazzled followers ready to make excuses for his deficit of humanity, because he’s brilliant. Such men never need to perform a moral inventory, never to self reflect, as nothing in their life forces them to. Many more voices in their ear tell them they’re always right and to ignore the haters, than the opposite. It’s the easiest thing in the world to believe that the friendly, supportive voices are the correct ones.”

I nodded along, ticking the boxes in my head. “Vance Dranger wanted to make an impact” I added, “and for better or worse, he certainly did. You know, Jesus said he came not to bring peace, but a sword. That his followers should expect to make enemies in their own household on account of him, and that only those who chose him over their families were worthy of him. A discomfitingly familiar ultimatum to anyone who’s lost a family member to the Vance Drangers, the L. Ron Hubbards, or the Joseph Smiths of the world.”

Blake tensed up and shifted his posture subtly. “I dunno if that last name belongs in your list. Or Jesus, for that matter. We should take care not to make reckless comparisons when we don’t have all the facts.” I puzzled over it until Blake clarified that he’s a Mormon. It suddenly tracked that he didn’t order anything alcoholic. “Thought you guys couldn’t have hot drinks?” I joked. Still smiling, but now strained, Blake answered that undoubtedly I held many such misconceptions.

“Forgive me, that’s likely true. I didn’t mean anything by it, except that Dranger left his mark on the world in both constructive and destructive ways. Even twenty years after his disappearance, I still sometimes receive invitations to support groups. The grown children of parents lost, physically or mentally, to Vance Dranger’s siren song. Trying to find some meaning in it, I suppose.” A fool’s errand, I thought. I’ve been down that road already, there’s nothing at the end of it. Dranger no more had the goods than any of the other infamous hucksters throughout history, that promised immortality to whoever would follow them.

“Do you think he was onto something?” Blake inquired, as if reading my mind. I finished up my cocoa and set the mug down on the little table by the arm rest. “No, I don’t. I think he was a pied piper who led my father, and many other romantic fools out here to freeze. I don’t think he had any particular endgame except not to die alone and irrelevant. Leveraging man’s most primal fear, our mortal anxiety, to surround himself with adoring groupies in his final moments. He didn’t invent that game.”

Blake somberly absorbed the outpouring, then offered his own take. “Your father died chasing a dream. That’s not the worst way to go. Nor would I characterize him, or any of Dranger’s followers, as fools necessarily. It’s the most human thing in the world to look for leaders. To organize under someone so that we’re no longer solely responsible for the outcome of our lives. So we don’t have to make hard decisions. That’s the fantasy, isn’t it? That demigods walk among us. Fundamentally different from and beyond us puny mortals. All knowing, omnicompetent. Dynamic, charismatic and infallible, possessing all the answers. Like some cross between an orchestral conductor, a stage magician, and a ship’s captain.”

“Or a dictator” I interrupted. Blake grimly acceded. “Yes, or a cult leader in this case, not that very much distinguishes the two.” I wanted to mention Joseph Smith again in the worst way, but I bit my tongue. “Brighter men than you or I, or your father for that matter, have fallen under that spell” Blake continued. “Many high ranking Rahjneeshis were accomplished western academics. Many of the 9/11 hijackers were doctors, mathematicians and engineers.” I shot him some side eye. “This is supposed to make me feel better?”

Behind us in the cafeteria, uniformed workers filed in. Many had their neon yellow jumpsuits unzipped to the waist, the upper half of the garment tied around their hips by the sleeves. I didn’t expect such a lopsided ratio of mechanics and janitors to scientists, but it made some sense upon reflection. A base this size in the harshest environment on Earth is constantly under siege by the elements. A war of attrition it would surely lose in time, if not for the never-ending upkeep.

I retired to my dorm at 10pm, per my watch, though it was of course still bright outside. It’s one thing to know of, and expect, polar weirdness in the academic sense. It’s another thing entirely to live it. Mercifully there were heavy curtains. Upon closing them, I settled into my cramped little bed, and soon surrendered to unconsciousness.

It took me a minute, the following morning, to remember where I was. Then another, to fully accept it. That uncanny lurch you feel when waking up in a hotel, or at a sleepover, only greatly magnified. I disabled the alarm on my watch, got dressed, and headed for the bathroom. Dorms didn’t have individual bathrooms, a cost and space saving measure. So it was that I waited my turn, at the end of a long line of groggy maintenance technicians and academics.

Showers weren’t timed, thank goodness, on account of the base being surrounded by melting snow. Nevertheless I felt hurried as I went about my morning routine, always conscious of the surly fellows waiting just outside the bathroom for me to finish up. Clean, rested and refreshed, I had a bagel and coffee in the cafeteria alongside many of the same grumpy faces I saw in line earlier. Also Nora, who picked me out of the crowd and took a seat directly across from mine.

“Got anything for me to read yet?” Bright eyed and chipper, but with an unmistakably passive aggressive intonation. “Give me a break, I just got here.” She dipped a tea bag into her steaming mug. “No kidding! I saw you cozying up to Blake. Here for one day and already brown nosing. I hoped you would make better use of your time. Lots of people might’ve gone in your place.” I asked if she meant her research assistant. Her fake smile faded somewhat. “Yeah, I guess that’s as good an example as any.”

I put my hands up. “Look, Nora. I’m not your enemy, okay? I come in peace.” I only didn’t say I meant her no harm as prior experience taught me that people tend to interpret that to mean the opposite. She relaxed her posture, though her face remained conspicuously taut.

“No, I suppose you’re not. It isn’t you I’ve got problems with, specifically, but the AAW program. If you were staying at McMurdo, that’d be one thing. Why do they need to send you out to Amundsen Scott to write poetry, or whatever? You can do that just fine here at McMurdo, and there’s only so many beds out on the ice.”

Having humanized myself to her, at least to the extent that she was no longer hostile, I agreed with her analysis. “Probably yeah, I don’t need to be out there to write. It’s not like the view will be that different, compared to McMurdo. But Uncle Sam was willing to send me on the taxpayer dime. Having been out there nineteen times, may I not go in your stead even once? Have you not had your fill?” She managed a wide smile, despite the botox. “That isn’t what it’s about, kiddo. Of course I’m happy for you, Antarctica’s a special place. Ethereal, even dreamlike. But that’s not to say it’s a place for dreamers. Serious research goes on here, artists just get in the way.”

“Don’t ask about her face, don’t ask about her face” went my internal monologue. Instead, I asked her what sort of research she does. Partially out of authentic curiosity, but partly to further defuse her resentment. “Quantum gravity. There’s a neutrino observatory not far from Amundsen Scott called Ice Cube.”

I remarked that the name was apropos. “Indeed” she continued, “anyway, this is the only place on Earth sufficiently free from interference for such an observatory to operate. What we do is compare the composition of neutrinos incoming from space over many years, to what models predict it ought to be, if quantum gravity modified the structure of spacetime they passed through on their way to Earth.”

I blinked a few times. “I…uh…I understand…completely.” That pried a laugh from her unnaturally plump lips, and with it, the last traces of animosity left her. My experience with academics is that most don’t often get the chance to share their passion except with colleagues at seminars, or when they publish. Showing a little interest and letting them info dump buys you a lot of good will. Besides which, Nora struck me as someone hungry for attention from younger men.

Blake surprised me during orientation, taking the seat next to mine. When I remarked on it, he raised an eyebrow. “There were assigned seats. It’s new, your seat number was in the email.” The cross looks I received earlier from a number of other stodgy looking scientists and grad students suddenly made sense. I motioned to get up and relocate, but Blake urged me to stay put. “Everyone’s just about seated now, you’ll only piss them off worse.” I sank back into my spot, dejected.

The bright side was, I wouldn’t be here much longer. Two days doesn’t furnish sufficient time to build a bad reputation, unless you’re really trying. Orientation was all stuff I felt as if I could’ve worked out on my own, but hindsight’s 20/20. The buddy system for exterior travel, how to use rope guideways during storms, on-base drinking and sex policies, that sort of thing. It had the same vibe as the first day of college, and from the sounds of it, there would be just about as much drinking and fucking.

Not for me though, nor for Blake presumably, and I took some of the comfort which misery is said to love in that fact. While the speaker went on about safety protocols, Blake discreetly slipped me a copy of the Book of Mormon. I tried my best to politely decline, but he just left it sitting on my armrest. “I’ve been thinking about your father”. Oh good, here we go. “Did you know there’s a way you can be sealed to him, eternally? Families can remain together, the grave need not divide us.” I whispered back that “presumed dead” isn’t the same as finding the body. “Anyway, now’s not a good time. Probably there won’t be one.”

I didn’t make a bigger deal out of it because I knew he had to try, and his heart was in the right place. It struck me as unprofessional, though. An overstep I never would’ve expected from a man of his station, based on our earlier discussions. I reflected on it, wondering how much of his friendliness was genuine and how much was calculated to build trust. I still had to figure out what to do with the little navy blue book. I couldn’t just bin it after orientation without wounding him. So I tucked it into my pocket. Blake noticed, and seemed pleased.

He saw me to the Sno-Cat garage after orientation concluded. “Oh yeah, I meant to ask why you’re not flying me out there.” Blake ran his hand along the chassis of the nearest Sno-Cat. “Used to be, we’d send all icebound personnel in LC-130s, taking off from and landing on compacted snow runways. But with Summers getting warmer every year, only blue ice runways can safely bear the weight anymore, and Amundsen Scott hasn’t got one.”

The part left unsaid was that even if those planes were still flying, I’m not important enough to ride them. It’s why they didn’t spring for the standard flight from New Zealand to get me out here in the first place. Not that I minded taking the slow, scenic route. “Listen, about earlier” Blake whispered. I waved him off. “Christ calls you to be fishers of men. If I thought I had all the answers, I’d want to share them too.”

It came out a tad more sour than I intended, but Blake seemed to take it in good humor. “We’ll be in touch, if you have any questions, about…you know.” He winked and pointed to my pocket. In fact I’d left the little book in a drawer back in my dorm.

I thought once or twice about taking him up on it, during the nearly thousand mile journey inland. He had some local pull that might be helpful, and one should never pass up a new friend in the loneliest place on Earth. But I knew from experience with a Jehovah’s Witness in my writing group that it was a bad idea. She and I agreed initially not to discuss religion, until it became a sticking point. Then somehow, the agreement changed such that she could explain her religion to me, but I could not explain my doubts to her. Blake’s invitation to questioning also wasn’t likely to include the sort of questions I might actually wish to ask.

Dad was an atheist, and didn’t hide his disappointment when I failed to arrive at the same conclusion. Not that I ever found particular fault with his reasoning. I’ve simply not studied every religion, so it seemed lazy and presumptuous to assume they’re all identical to Abrahamic religion in the ways relevant to credibility. He would say “atheism is not certain disbelief”, which is true. But it does say “probably not”, and even that feels like a leap to me.

A muscular, bearded old man with an ear chokingly thick Russian accent unlocked the Sno-Cat door for me. I handed him my luggage, and he laughed. “Luggage service costs extra.” I stood there still holding my luggage in outstretched arms for a moment longer before realizing my gaffe. Whatever, I wouldn’t see him after today either. I swallowed my embarrassment, stuffed my luggage behind the seats, then climbed in. Bit of a struggle to get over the treads, the cabin proper sat about three feet off the ground. Didn’t seem that way as we trundled out of the garage, shutter lifting to admit passage, since the treads sank pretty far into the snow.

“Do you uh…enjoy your work up here?” Down here, he corrected, then adding “Conversation also extra.” So, we rode in silence for a time, until he unexpectedly broke it. “You know what, I wanted to complain anyway. Now I have the ear of someone who can’t get me fired, I may as well. Do you hear that?” He raised one gloved hand to his ear, and I did the same. “I don’t hear anything”, I confessed. He slapped the dashboard. “Exactly. No engine. Converted to electric last Summer.” I opined that it was surely to diminish contamination of sensitive experiments and local wildlife, but he didn’t see it that way.

“No, no. It’s because they study climate. It looks bad to study climate, traversing the South Pole Highway in a diesel tractor.” I asked if it wasn’t at least more efficient. “That’s the thing, it isn’t! The diesel ones were more efficient!” I disputed that, as I knew combustion engines to in fact be notoriously inefficient machines. “Because of waste heat, right?” I nodded. “It isn’t waste in such weather. All goes to heat the cabin.” I mulled it over for a moment before confessing that he’d blown my mind a little bit.

I asked if we’re in any danger. “Summer? No, not in Summer. Range is still only about two thirds of normal because of cold, even with pre-heating in garage. Huge metal box behind us is three megawatt hours of batteries, that’s why you had to bring luggage into cabin with you. Even so, range drops further in winter. Very stressful. I don’t winter over any more because of it. Kharkovchanka much better, used to drive one in another life. Drink gas like I drink vodka…but there was toilet, beds and kitchen! Much better than this thing. Anyway, there is answer to how I like my job.” By now I thoroughly regretted asking, although at least he wasn’t trying to win my soul.

I had Perpetuum Evergreen out, some light reading to make the trip pass quicker. Only gave it a chance after Dad disappeared, on account of the guilt I felt for not putting in the work to understand him better back when it might’ve made a difference. The deeper I got into it though, the more I began to wonder how much differentiates this book from the one Blake gave me. It came off like more or less the same pitch, but tailored to the STEM crowd. The kind of guys who think they’re too smart for religion, but still need something along the same lines to subdue their mortal anxiety.

Ray Kurzweil is a good example. It’s not coincidental that all his predictions had digital immortality arriving just in time to spare him the grave. Just take the Bible, replace all mention of God with AI, and trade “souls” for “uploads”. Same basic message though: Everybody else in history died, but you won’t. You’re special, privy to hidden truths. A narrow path to eternal life, which only the chosen few will tread. I turned the page, revealing a bookmark with a latitude and longitude scribbled onto it. The driver noticed, casting a sidelong glance. I hastily closed the book, then tucked it into my pocket.

I slept through much of the journey. When I wasn’t sleeping, I closely studied his hands as he worked the controls. Taking note of which switches did what, how he started it all up, resolving also to memorize how he shut it down on arrival. He gave no indication that he noticed my attention until hours later. “Can I help you with something?” I apologized and asked if I was making him nervous. “No…should I be?”

There was some sort of commotion outside as we approached Amundsen Scott. I recognized the familiar, standard orange parka on about half of ‘em, the others were wearing…black…uniforms? ”Are those cops?” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Not exactly” the driver answered, “US marshals. They’re the only law enforcement out here.” I balked. “So what, every base has its own officer?” Marshal, he repeated. “And no, they’re based out of McMurdo. See, there’s the Sno-Cat they came in.”

Lo and behold, another boxy orange tractor sat ten yards or so behind the group, treads buried in snow. We pulled up alongside and immediately, one of the marshals was on us. He sought identification from the driver, then my own. “Can I offer any assistance?” the driver inquired. The marshall gave him a canned answer thanking him for being a samaritan, but assuring him they had the situation under control.

While the two of them spoke to one another, I peered out the side window at the focal point of all the hubbub. A strange figure lay in the snow amid the gawkers, pale blue and frozen solid. My breath caught in my throat when it dawned on me that I was looking at a dead body. But something was wrong with it. Only the torso and head were blue, frostbitten flesh. The arms and legs appeared to be plastic. Articulated, like those fancy electronic prosthetics that soldiers come home with. It was difficult to say from this distance, but at one point, I thought I saw movement.

I got out my phone and began recording. To my dismay, the marshal noticed, and demanded my phone. When I wouldn’t give it up, he ordered me out of the vehicle. I complied, dreading the ordeal I apparently signed up for by impulsively getting my phone out in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Asking what the grounds for confiscation were got me nowhere. “You’re AAW, aren’t you?” I looked around anxiously. “What does that have to do with anything?”

He smugly tucked my fairly new, expensive smartphone into his breast pocket. “Did you check the waivers you signed before they shipped your ass out here? It’s in there right after the medical stuff.” I confessed I didn’t read it. He laughed. “Typical of your generation. Scrolls to the end, clicks accept, then cries about it later. You can have your precious phone back when you leave.” I felt all sorts of things, but none more strongly than the desire to find what I came for. So, I swallowed my pride and watched the uniformed goon leave with my phone.

“Why are they even out here to begin with” I grumbled. “Since when is Antarctica a criminal hotbed? Who are they arresting, polar bears?” The driver wagged his finger at me. “You mean penguins. Wrong hemisphere for bears. As for the marshals, until ‘89, technically nothing was a crime. There didn’t exist a legal basis to prosecute, being that Antarctica’s not the territory of any single country.”

I dimly recalled a stretch of land in Yellowstone, likewise lawless as a weird consequence of zoning, such that not enough people lived in that jurisdiction to make up a jury in the event of a serious crime. “Yeah, and do you wanna go camping there?” he asked, pointedly. When he put it that way, despite the resentment I felt over the confiscation, I did begrudgingly grasp the importance of having something like cops, even out here.

All the excitement from earlier drained out of my body, little by little, during the onboarding video. Unbelievably, after already sitting through orientation back at McMurdo, I was now doing so at Amundsen Scott as well. The video actually did touch on this, the narrator explaining that the film was an interim revision made for use during the period when McMurdo was being demolished, with nothing yet built to replace it. Evidently they’ve not received the newer film yet.

There wasn’t a lecture hall here, as there was at McMurdo. Instead all the newcomers were packed shoulder to shoulder in the media room. I heard a few of the locals call it a “movie theater”. Aspirational language, though there was at least a projector and pull down screen, as well as a pair of recliners. No use to me, both claimed well before my arrival by winter overs, who after all didn’t have to ride a Sno-Cat to get here.

I expected Amundsen Scott to be more than it turned out to be. Not that it wasn’t an impressive facility, I’d just been spoiled by McMurdo. This place looks so big from the outside, this…rectilinear, cobalt blue monolith. Like an IKEA without the yellow sign. Only to then find out that the crew is rarely more than 200 people, and as little as 50 during the winter months. At a Summertime population of 1,000, McMurdo is a city compared to this.

Looking at a row of little models and photographs on my way out of the media room helped put things into perspective. There was a 1/50th scale replica of the ill-fated 1939 Snow Cruiser next to a tiny plastic Amundsen Scott, and… a complex resembling a robot centipede? Neon blue chunky space age modules connected in a straight line, with a sort of squat orange pyramidic module in the center, dominated by a huge cluster of windows.

“Oh, you like Halley VI?” I nodded, happy to let the stranger assume I knew its name already. “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet” he gushed, with a light Irish accent. “I’m more of a Concordia fan, but I see the appeal. A bit more cramped than these digs, but they’ve got a rock climbing wall.” He swung open the front half of the center module. “I didn't realize until now that we’re allowed to touch them” I confessed. The bearded ginger smiled, knowingly. “You’re not. Anyways, check it out. Right there, built into one of the internal support columns.”

I squinted. “What is this, an Antarctic base for ants?” He didn’t laugh. “Halley VI is what, the Australian base?” He pointed to the flag under the placard at the base of the diorama. “Oh, British. Similar flags, it’s really tiny.” I asked why we don’t have a rock climbing wall. “Tell me about it” the bearded stranger sighed. “I’m always telling the USAP suits that we could just screw some plastic rocks into one wall of the basketball court, but they never shut up about “load bearing” this, and “liability” that…”

I hate being interrupted myself, yet couldn’t help but cut him off there. “Excuse me, did you say there’s an entire basketball court somewhere in this building?” He flashed a conspiratorial grin. “...Do you want the grand tour?” Upon learning that in fact I’d been speaking so candidly all this time to none other than the base administrator, I could hardly decline his offer.

Sure enough, there it was. I had to reconsider my initial appraisal of this big, boring blue brick. “Do you play?” he asked. I shook my head bashfully, while inwardly wondering how he managed to mistake someone with my build for an athlete. The gym intruded partially, treadmills and weight training equipment occupying a level overlooking the court from above. It was only when we made our way up there, in the course of the tour, that I learned the name of my guide.

“Ron MacDonnell. You might’ve already heard some of the winter overs complaining about “Ronald McDonald” riding their ass. Well, hopefully now that makes a little more sense than it did.” I could sort of see it. He wasn’t helping his case, letting his unkempt fire engine red hair grow out that far. “Do we…know each other?” I asked, surprised by his generosity and attention. “I’d like to think we do now.” I asked more directly why he was personally showing me around the station.

“Well it’s not that I knew you, per se. But I do know Blake. He called ahead and asked me to give you the walkaround as a favor.” I became mildly suspicious. “This…isn’t some sort of…thing, is it?” Ron blinked. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that.” I wasn’t willing to, and not wanting to return his hospitality with suspicion, I kept those apprehensions to myself until we were alone in the greenhouse.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that.” Ron awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I had a talk with him about keeping the church stuff to himself. I thought we understood each other. I’d write another strongly worded email, but he has seniority, and if you’ve ever tried to reason with that crowd-” I assured him Blake wasn’t a bother, that I wasn’t offended or anything, just surprised by the breach of professionalism.

“Well, you know how the FBI and CIA preferentially hire Mormons?” I didn’t, but again was happy to let him assume. “A lot of those guys wind up working for the USAP because they’re overqualified, Antarctica’s an exotic destination, and frankly a lot of them are burnt out after watching hours and hours of fucked up shit scraped off the dark web. They want someplace remote and quiet to detox from all that ugliness.”

He asked if I came from a churchgoing family. I answered honestly, adding that the question was intrusive. He held his hands up like I was mugging him. “All I meant is that you should understand what they can be like, if you did. Frankly, I’m with you. The inmates run the asylum here, and we’re all cooped up together for a minimum of six months. Seems like a good idea to me if everybody puts their religion, their politics and whatever else on a shelf in the back of the closet until we can leave. Especially when everybody drinks so much.”

I asked how many drinks deep he was right then. Deer in the headlights for a moment, before swiftly regaining his composure. “Not more than I need to be. Technically alcohol isn’t allowed on base. The thing is, it’s my job to enforce that, and I kinda just…don’t.” The more I listened to Ron, the more I liked him. “We can’t stop people smuggling in their booze, not that any administrator before me really tried to. It’s dark for half the year, and you can’t go outside. If we couldn’t drink, many of us probably wouldn’t make it through the winter.”

I couldn’t imagine it was all that bad, standing in an impeccably clean hydroponic garden, surrounded by leafy green plants. Then again, I’ve not even been here a day. “What was all of that going on outside when I arrived?” A flash of recognition. He became tight lipped all of a sudden, insisting he couldn’t comment on the situation…until I described what I saw.

He deflated somewhat. “Well, fuck. Alright, just…don’t spread it around, okay? I’ve got it mostly contained to the six who found the poor guy, and the other four I sent out to deal with the marshals.” Poor…guy? So it was a frozen corpse that I saw. In the aftermath, I’d begun second guessing myself. “Nobody knows where he came from, is the weird thing. There aren’t any bases out in that direction.”

I joked that this is how scary movies start. “Oh trust me lad, I know. You think we don’t make everybody watch The Thing during the first week? It’s tradition. But yeah, no, we didn’t bring him inside the base. We’re not really set up for, uh…we don’t have a morgue. Last time someone died on base was…2014? They just stashed the body down in the ice tunnels until marshals arrived, Nature’s fridge.”

I shuddered. Not from Ron’s casual morbidity, instead imagining the final hours of that pitiable wretch with the mechanical arms and legs. Desperately dragging himself towards the only nearby oasis of warmth in a frozen wasteland. I’ve read it’s at least a fairly merciful way to go, but I wonder how anybody can know that. Unable, after all, to interview anyone who has frozen to death.

By this time we’d arrived at an austere metal staircase in what I figured for the cylindrical section at one end of the facility, visible on the model earlier. Above us, painted right into the ceiling, was a lovely circular mural of Antarctica. “Have you eaten yet?” I asked if a bagel and coffee count. “Oh, and hot cocoa.” He playfully punched my shoulder. “Well you’ve seen most of the good stuff. I haven’t taken you down in the arches yet, but let’s get a meal in you first.”

He surprised me again, this time by ordering a hamburger. “Really? You must know how that looks” I quipped. “You’re making it too easy for them.” He finished swallowing his first bite, then answered “I’m leaning into it, you know? Making it my own. Besides, all the winter overs have nicknames, it’s not mean spirited. This isn’t highschool, although it kind of looks like it.”

I didn’t make the connection until now, but in retrospect everything I’d so far seen did look like something out of either a highschool, or a prison. The cafeteria especially, save for the row of flags from every country hanging over the counter. I pondered briefly why the two so closely resemble each other, until recalling my own highschool experiences. The ones I normally suppress until I have a few drinks in me…which apparently wouldn’t be difficult to scare up around here, a more mundane sort of danger than I thought to expect.

“So, Vance Dranger.” My ears perked up. “What all did Blake tell you?” Ron chewed up his mouthful of burger, swallowed it with some effort, then laid out his cards for me. “He told me about your father. Which, I admit, is more than he should’ve. Let me even the playing field, then: My mum was also a Drangerite.” Bombshell after bombshell with this guy. “She worked at the dome. You know, old Amundsen Scott, between ‘98 and 2004. It’s a family thing, you can’t keep a MacDonnell out of the snow. My Grandfather was one of the first mechanics at Palmer Station back in ‘68, too. We have ice water for blood.”

Never much for small talk, I asked what any of that had to do with Vance Dranger. “Oh! Right. Well, ‘68 was also when the first Centre Parcs was built, and it’s that line of indoor resorts Dranger made his fortune from.” This time I didn’t let him assume knowledge not in my possession. “You’ve never been? Oh right, American. Centre Parcs are basically artificial lagoons, beaches, waterfalls, tiki huts and so on. All contained inside enormous heated structures resembling greenhouses.”

I struggled to picture it as anything other than depressing, and said so. “If you grew up in rainy gray Ireland, much as I miss it, you wouldn’t think that way. I lived about an hour’s drive from the Center Parcs in Longford. Da was a brick layer, mum was a scientist, so we were never going on holiday anywhere you needed plane tickets to reach. It was a godsend, having a little bottled chunk of man made tropics, brought within our reach.”

Ron had by now finished his meal and asked if I was going to eat mine. So absorbed was I by his story, I’d forgotten why we came to the cafeteria. I dug into my beef stew. “Don’t waste your salad. We don’t get fresh veggies for another six months, besides what little we grow on base.” I plucked a cherry tomato out of the salad and savored it all the more for that knowledge.

“Anyway, Dranger had his hands in a lot of related projects. Biosphere Two was one of ‘em. Eden Project was another. That was the trial run in ‘98, to prove the new design.” Design for what, I pried. “Well, hang on. Exactly a decade prior to that first Centre Parcs, when Palmer Station was finished, a Canadian named E.A. Gardner drew up plans for a settlement in Frobisher Bay. What’s now called Iqualit, on Baffin Island. Do you know where Nunavut is?” I shook my head, mouth too full to answer.

“Yeah, nobody does unless they live there. That was the proposed site for a peace time application of nuclear energy, to heat and light a far northern settlement consisting of apartment towers in a ring around a central concrete dome, 700 feet in diameter.” I was sensing a theme, and starting to understand why Perpetuum Evergreen depicts a dome on the cover.

“Concrete? You mean they couldn’t see the sky?” Ron confirmed it. “Too much heat would be lost through windows that size, and there’s nothing to see outside except darkness for half the year.” That tracked, but didn’t make the prospect of living in such a compound any less brutal. “On the contrary, the concept drawings looked pretty fancy. The dome would have a small park, shops, cafes, and a rotating restaurant mounted to the central support pillar.”

As I had with Halley VI’s rock wall, I once again asked, if less seriously, why we don’t have one of those. Ron laughed. “Outta my hands, lad. No room in the budget for rotating restaurants. What you’re eating now is what we got.” I finished up the stew as he continued describing a settlement to me which sounded better fit for the Moon than northern Canada.

“So, Dranger buys the plans for Frobisher Bay in ‘97. Forgotten project born out of cold war insanity, what does a billionaire like Vance Dranger want with dusty old drawings? Nobody at the time batted an eye though, he’s done a lot of eccentric shit. But then construction begins on the Eden Project the following year…then in 2001, he starts moving materials, equipment and personnel through McMurdo.”

I didn’t remember any of this from the book. Then again, I never finished it. “Word gets around that he’s financing the first privately operated research base out on the ice. But it doesn’t add up. These bases are all built pretty similarly. Prefab fiberglass modules on hydraulic stilts, so they don’t get buried in snow during the winter. Dranger’s shipments weren’t prefabs, except for two dozen trailers labeled on the manifesto as temporary worker housing.”

As he spoke, I was starting to put the pieces together in my head, but he saved me the trouble. “A lot of it looked pretty familiar. The same triangular sections of dome that the Eden Project used. The standard Centre Parcs HVAC system, pipes, a crane, electrical cable and conduit. But also weird stuff. Bags of soil and sand. Seeds. Bricks, asphalt, a cement mixer. And just too much of it, overall! Way too much for even a base this size.”

I ran my fingers through my hair in quiet contemplation. “I know right? What was he building out there?” When at last I spoke again, I regretted it almost immediately. “That makes…so much sense. They wouldn’t have all left at the same time if there wasn’t someplace ready to receive them. He must’ve been in the second group.” Ron raised an eyebrow. “He?” I lied hastily. “Dranger of course. He disappeared in 2004 after all, a few weeks after opening Tropical Island Resort in Germany.”

Ron mulled it over. “Oh yeah, the Aerium. Well, who knows. It’s fun to imagine, but remember who we’re talking about here. Nothing Dranger promised in that book panned out except the domed resorts and electric cars. I’ve heard those things have panel gaps you can fit your thumb into. My bet is that the polar research base was some sort of tax writeoff.” If that’s so, I responded, “then where’d your mother disappear to?”

He grew quiet, and grim. Sensing I’d crossed a line, I apologized. “No, it’s…I just…I don’t know. Do you think I haven’t thought about that? It’s all I thought about for years after she left. I only stopped in order to make peace. Because by wondering, I was keeping the wound open.” Despite the assurance, I apologized again and offered a reluctant hug as we both stood up from the table. He rebuffed me.

“No, it’s really…it’s fine. Again, I know about your father from Blake. If anybody can understand what I went through, it’s you. That’s a big part of why I agreed to the tour. It’s not something I take time out of my day to do for just anybody. In truth, I was looking for an opportunity to talk with you about…what we have in common. But now that I have, there goes my appetite for conversation. Excuse me.”

Already a naturally pale man, made worse by six month winters, Ron somehow seemed to grow a shade paler as he spoke. Then, our business apparently concluded, he brusquely pushed past me on his way to the door. I followed him, still wanting to smooth things over. But when I emerged into the hallway, he was long gone.

My lodging at Amundsen wasn’t much to write home about, somehow even smaller than the dorms at McMurdo. I understood the reason for this well enough: Shirtsleeves habitat space at the south pole is some of the most expensive per square foot, second only to space stations and submarines. It didn’t stop me from grumbling as I banged my elbow every time I turned around.

While swearing up a storm, cradling my funny bone, I noticed someone standing just outside the still open door to my room. I became self conscious, and quieted down. “Painted anything yet?” the curly haired, bespectacled intruder asked. “I’m a writer actually, and still unpacking.” He looked about college aged, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops. “Were you expecting warmer weather?” I quipped.

He glanced out the window in a moment of confusion, then down at his attire before cottoning to my meaning. “Oh, this. I’m on vacation, aren’t I? Actually if you think about it, all our lives are but a vacation from oblivion. Seventy or eighty years is the blink of an eye compared to the eternity we emerged from, to which we all one day return.” Oh boy, I thought. A philosopher. “...Anyhoo, not just anybody makes it out here. If I were you I’d get crackin’, it’ll be over before you know it. No pressure no pressure no pressure, haha.”

I thanked him through clenched teeth, got out my laptop and made a show of starting a new document in the word processor. “You want me to get this for you, or…” he gestured to the door. I didn’t answer, loudly typing nonsense until he got the hint, shut the door and left me in peace. I deleted the string of random characters, then began getting up with the intent to finish unpacking.

Instead I stayed put, and on a whim, started typing out my stream of consciousness. There would be time to unpack the rest later, I figured, and venting onto a blank page helps me decompress. I’ve often said that asking someone to fill a blank page is an overlooked, underrated form of personality test. It’s not what they write about which is so revealing, but how they write it. Cadence, word choice, all the little subconscious choices they make. Their literary fingerprint.

I wrote about Dad. The conversations with Blake and Ron had me dwelling on core memories of my father, trying to piece together the puzzle of why he vanished from my life. He was never materially neglectful, but he was always working on something. In my earliest memories I’m peering up from the carpet at Dad typing away at his computer. Somehow there was never time for me, no matter when I asked, or how often. No wonder then, that in adulthood I could never find time for him either.

I didn’t consciously retaliate, I don’t think. Rather, his habits rubbed off on me, both good and bad. There’s a lot of him in me, considering how little time we spent together after I moved out. Or before, for that matter. It’s funny how we soak up our parent’s flavor like tofu, without meaning to. Adopting their mannerisms, their habits, their shortcomings, without thinking anything of it until far too late. I suppose it isn’t any different for friends, or celebrities, or any other influence on our developing personalities. We are, each of us, little more than a remix of the most influential people in our lives.

Post adolescence, it was at least partly self directed. A conscious choice of which aspects of other people I deemed worthy to emulate. But like anyone else, up until that age, I thought my parents were gods. My father in particular, because of his work with computers and seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of their inner workings. It’s said to be a crucial moment in our maturation, the day when it dawns on us that our parents are human beings, no less fallible than ourselves.

That realization came later for me than it did for most people because of my father’s brilliance. I didn’t begin to see the cracks until my twenties. Some of his colleagues were under his spell back then, and likely remain so today, despite being twice my age or older. He had that strange power over people that brilliant, charismatic men seem to hold. Just as there’s much of my father in me, so there was much of Vance Dranger in my father.

While most teenage boys chafe at their father’s authority and yearn for independence, I on the other hand wasn’t ready for that comfort and security to end. Until he went off the deep end, I wanted more of my father, not less. Whenever I fucked up, he suddenly had time. Never just to rescue me, but to point out where I went wrong. A teachable moment, he called them. Like being pulled out of the sea, from the wreckage of your own vessel, by a brave and seemingly all-knowing captain.

Like Blake said, that’s the fantasy. Surely the captain knows best. His ship is still intact after all, while mine’s a wreck. He dries me off, feeds me, then charts a course directly into an iceberg. Confusing, but what do I know? I wrecked my own ship. When I ask about it, he scolds me for doubting him, but explains that the ship is actually a rocket and the iceberg is Mars. The feeling of comfort and security, being watched over by a wise and benevolent master, suddenly evaporates...replaced by a cold unease. I wonder if this is what it’s like for Scientologists when they first read about Xenu.

I still blame myself for pushing him away, when he dove headfirst down the rabbit hole. It seemed like an overnight change at the time, in retrospect really just license for the elements of his personality he kept in check until then to run wild. It didn’t help that he wasn’t alone in his beliefs, instead spending much of his time online or at lectures and seminars, surrounded by other Drangerites. An echo chamber I’ve never heard of anyone escaping from, even decades after Dranger vanished.

Such a common story, that I didn’t need to look far for support groups. Some of them met in person, the ones I attended were online, but they all told me the same thing: that my father was a lost cause. That if I didn’t cut him out of my life, he would drag me into madness with him. Being advised to disconnect so abruptly and ruthlessly from my own father made me second guess which one of us was really in a cult.

It wasn’t these voices in my ear which forced my hand though, it was Dad. Every time I visited to check up on him, the house was messier. More and more appliances broken, the yard increasingly overgrown. When I asked him how long the water heater had been busted, and if he’d been taking cold showers for all that time, he thought it was funny. Trivialities, he called them. “Nothing is more important than Dranger’s vision”.

It’s not that his reasoning didn’t check out. If immortality could be achieved in a safely reproducible way, then truly, very little else mattered. From a certain point of view, which is to say one which deeply assumes that Dranger could do what he promised, everything else in life is a dangerous distraction which threatens to delay completion of Dranger’s goal. Just long enough, my father feared, that he wouldn’t make the cut…like my mother didn’t.

“Some alive today will not taste death”, so sayeth Vance Dranger in Perpetuum Evergreen, well aware of who he was paraphrasing. I told Dad that attaining enlightenment doesn’t mean you don’t still have to chop wood and carry water. That purpose gives us meaning, but also dopamine, such that it can be detrimentally addictive. Dad wasn’t having it. He had his eyes on the prize…the ultimate prize…and would not be deterred from its pursuit.

Isn’t that always how it goes? The promised reward for devotion is conveniently unfalsifiable, because it’s always in the future. Just barely out of reach, right around the corner, if only we can hang on a little bit longer. Only for men like my father to awaken from this entrancing dream one day, hair now sparse and white, wrinkled skin covered in liver spots. Discovering too late that in all those years of searching for a way to cheat death, he has forgotten to live.

I ran into Hawaiian shirt guy again in the sauna, initially not recognizing him without it. "Finished your magnum opus already, is that it? Now it's time to relax and sweat it out. They say writers are tortured souls. You came to the right place for that." Already dripping with perspiration, he reached over and twisted the temperature control knob by a few increments.

I parked my towel clad buns on the opposite side of the long wooden bench, wrapped around the interior walls of the humid little chamber. "When I overheard someone talking about this sauna, I thought maybe they were yanking my chain." He asked when I became so cynical. "After they told me there's a casino" I grumbled, eliciting from him a knowing chuckle.

He introduced himself as Nathan. "I'm the IT department lead. I don't know if you've had a chance to visit the computer lab yet." I told him that after the casino prank, I wouldn't believe there was a computer lab, or anything else, until seeing it with my own eyes. Nate rubbed his stubbly chin. “Then I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you they stashed that frozen dead guy down in the ice tunnels?”

I didn’t, but he had my attention all the same. “What do you know about it?” He revealed himself as one of the six that I glimpsed on arrival to Amundsen Scott, surrounding the remains of that frostbitten cadaver. I asked if he could speak to the marshal and get my phone back. “Ha! Ask Ronald, I just keep the computers running. I can show you the body, though.”

I took him up on the offer, but it would have to wait until after the evening movie, as all the newbies were expected to be in attendance. They weren’t showing just any old film after all, but the 1982 version of The Thing, with Kurt Russel and Wilford Brimely. Far be it from me to break with Antarctic tradition, besides which I had appearances to keep up. So far as I could tell, everyone still believed I came here to write.

An older blond gentleman in a sweater, seated in one of the recliners, groaned during the opening chase. Before I could ask, Nate whispered to me that he emigrated from Norway. “If you understand Norwegian, the plot is spoiled in the first five minutes.” I did sort of wonder what the guy trying to shoot the dog was shouting, and why there weren’t subtitles, I just never cared enough to look it up.

Nate and I waited for everyone to file out of the media room once the movie finished, not wanting to be followed. Once they all disappeared into their offices, the two of us headed for what I only now learned from Nate is called the “beer can”. That tall cylindrical module at the far end of the station with the staircase inside. He had me don a parka with someone else’s name tag, as well as a pair of ski goggles on our way out the door.

“We’re uh…not supposed to be doing this, are we?” Nate held out his arm, preventing my descent while cupping one hand to his ear. Listening for voices or footsteps, I figured. Hearing none, he hurried me down the stairwell while whispering his reply. “Ron’s supposed to keep everybody out of the ice tunnels until the marshals fill out some paperwork and take the body away. Then again, Ron’s also supposed to confiscate booze.”

On arrival to the bottom of the stairwell, he explained that while the various buried arches are kept at different temperatures, the ice tunnels stay at negative sixty degrees fahrenheit all year round. I believed him, even the cushy little logistics office we passed through was bitterly cold. Though I was grateful at least to be underground, with no freezing winds whipping at my face. In the dim lighting, I could now clearly see Nate’s breath, and a moment later emitted a few dragonesque puffs of my own. As a boy, I did much the same on cold winter days, pretending to smoke a pinecone.

“This way, don’t get separated. We’re in the food stores now. Up ahead are the fuel tanks.” I asked why they’re called ice tunnels. The floor beneath our feet up to this point was metal grating, the corridor lined in a repeating steel support frame. “No, you sweet summer child. This here’s where the ice tunnels start.” He brought me to something like a false junction. Where you might expect an intersecting corridor, we instead found a dodgy looking opening next to some ducts and pipes which passed into it from the support frame.

“There’s not even a door. Is there standing room inside?” He assured me of it. “You guys really stashed a body in there?” Nate shrugged. “Where would you put it? With the food?” He pushed me into the ominous maw, caring nothing for my misgivings, and followed closely behind. There was indeed standing room, but nothing firmer to stand upon than roughly hewn ice. It was, as advertised, nothing more than a rectilinear channel carved directly out of the solid ice sheet beneath the station.

We passed what looked like memorials. Humble little shrines with framed photographs hung upon the bare ice wall, with notes from various mourners written around the edges in differently colored ink. “Looks like Hoth, doesn’t it?” Nate’s whispering voice echoed. “All the newbies I bring down here tell me it looks just like Hoth.”

I didn’t make the connection, so he clarified. “C’mon, really? …From Star Wars. Everybody’s seen Star Wars.” I shrugged. “I haven’t. Not a science fiction guy.” He released an exasperated sigh, visible in the frigid subterranean air as a billowing cloud of steam. “Oh shit, there it is.”

Nate pointed to an orange tarp laid over what must be the body, supported up off the bare ice by a pair of wooden pallets. “Wait…what the fuck?” He nudged it with his boot. “What’s wrong?” I asked, but received no reply as Nate folded back the tarp. When he turned back to me, his face was whiter than the tunnel walls. “It’s not here.” I tensed up, as yet unbelieving.

He retrieved a flashlight from his parka and shone it underneath the air ducts running along the corridor next to us, nearly fainting as he searched for any remaining traces. I steadied him. “Maybe the marshals came for it already.” He shook his head, breathless and wide eyed. “I would’ve seen their Sno-Cat outside, from the beer can, on our way down here. Besides, there’s only one set of footprints.”

Blood stained footprints trailed off down the tunnel, one side just a smear as if the other foot was dragged. I crossed my arms, no longer spooked. “Alright, that’s enough.” He peered up at me, bewildered, cowering next to the pallets as he studied the reddish smear in the ice. “Do you think I’m an idiot? This is straight outta the movie. They bring the frozen alien inside, the ice thaws, then it goes missing, boogity boogity. You had me going, though. What’s the red stuff, ketchup? Kool aid?”

Nate swore up and down that I had it all wrong. That he brought me down here to show me the body, fully expecting it to still be there. “I get it. I do. Gotta haze the new guys, right? Especially if they’re AAW. I’d like to think I’ve been a good sport about it, but it’s starting to wear me down. Can we get this over with? One of your buddies is hiding further down the tunnel, waiting to pop out and scare me. Point me to him.”

Nate just kept staring at me, wordlessly. Blank expression, a sweat droplet emerging from his hairline. That’s when Ron spoke up. How long he’d been standing there, I couldn’t say. “One of you wanna explain what you did with the body?” I nearly jumped out of my parka. “You’re in on it too? I should’ve known.” He didn’t laugh though, nor did he budge from his spot, repeating the question more insistently. Nate spoke next.

“I swear to god, Ron. It wasn’t us.” Ron pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “I know it wasn’t him. I was talking to you, mostly. We both know this is exactly the sort of shit you would pull.” Aha, I thought. Just as I suspected. But Nathan continued to protest his innocence, pointing Ron to the bloody footprints. He knelt to examine them, calling out over his shoulder “You can go.”

When Nate motioned as if to follow me, Ron added “Not you, Nate. You and I are going to have a chat.” I left them to it, now shivering despite the parka and eager to return to the heated interior. Once inside, I put the parka I borrowed back where I found it, and headed for my room. Having had quite enough excitement, a nap was on the agenda.

I awoke refreshed, but hungry. On my way to the cafeteria, I heard the faint echo of familiar voices. Edging up to the corner, I listened in, discovering the voices belonged to Nathan and Ron. “Did you review the security footage? Well, did you?” Ron urged Nate to keep his voice down. “Yeah yeah, unclench your cheeks, I know it wasn’t you. I wish it had been, honestly. That would’ve been easier to explain.”

Nate asked how sure the base doctor was that the frozen guy’s really dead. “I’ve heard about cases of deep hypothermic dormancy, where somebody falls through the ice and is fished out of the lake hours later, but fully recovers once they warm him up.” Ron deliberated. “Well, they did find a heartbeat. But only because it was prosthetic too, still running on a sliver of battery. No pupillary response, no pulse, blood literally frozen in his veins.”

So why was he moving, Nate demanded. …Moving? I wondered if I really heard him right until Ron answered. “The arms and legs still had some battery too. Lot of fun that was, wrestling a dead guy. Those things respond to signals from residual nerve endings. It’s normal for a corpse to undergo spasms, muscles contracting for the last time as rigor mortis sets in. That, or the limbs defaulted to the last instructions they received prior to death, which was to crawl. Either way, we’ll find it collapsed somewhere in the arches, if it even got that far.”