Antarctica

Not long ago, civilization ended. Not with a bang, but with a gasping, aching whimper. Amid the boiling seas and the poisoned air, Doctor McMurdo and I watch and wait for something, anything to happen. Living at an abandoned research station in Antarctica, one of the last habitable places anywhere on this ball of dirt, I keep hope alive as best I can that something, anything, will happen to save both McMurdo and myself. McMurdo, my friend and colleague, is more hopeless about the situation. McMurdo enjoys sandwiches, or did when things were worth enjoying. Nothing is worth enjoying anymore.

 

We’re here in the frozen desert of Antarctica. There is a fiberglass tent (called an apple) here with some crates set outside it. We opened the crates long ago. They were full of winter gear, coats that were too big and boots that were too small, parkas and mufflers, gloves and hats, an array of ugly, heavy clothing that was all manufactured somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore.

 

Today, we stand side by side gazing over the landscape. We look back and forth for a while, our eyes getting used to the glare, but focusing on nothing because there’s nothing to focus on. Every day is exactly the same. Our ritual is always the same.

“Antarctica,” I mutter, feeling my breath collapse in the frozen air.

“Antarctica,” says McMurdo in reply, not bothering to look at me.

“Frozen wonder of the north.”

“South.”

“South,” I repeat, quietly. The mind tends to wander.

“It’s cold here,” McMurdo says, rubbing her hands together.

“It was colder before.”

“Can’t tell the difference,” she says, “Once you go forty below.”

“It was colder yesterday.” I’m lying. I don’t remember yesterday.

 

McMurdo makes an awkward gesture in the direction of our tent. “Hand me a sandwich,” she says.

I don’t even have to look. “They’re all frozen up,” I remind her.

“Chip one off and give it to me.”

I open my pack and start chipping away with a pick at the icy clump inside. “We should have put it in overnight.” It was my turn to put the sandwiches inside. All the days run together. That’s no excuse.

“Hurry up, I’m starving,” whines McMurdo. I look at her for what feels like the first time. It always feels that way, for both of us. There’s no memory here. It’s too cold. I face my task once again, and realize I’ve made no progress at all. “It’s no use. It’s stuck firm.”

“Throw it inside,” she suggests.

It’s a good idea. I unzip the front of the tent, throwing the bag, sandwiches and all through the portal, then quickly zip it up again. It’s best to lose as little heat as possible. “It’ll thaw in a bit,” I assure her, “You can have lunch in a bit.”

“I suppose.”

“It won’t take long. We’ll have the stove running.”

I’m lying. The stove stopped working eons ago.

 

“What time is it?” McMurdo asks me.

I shrug. “What time do you want it to be?”

“How long has it been day?”

I check the datebook that we both keep up as part of our daily chores. “Our calendar says it was night in September.”

“What month is it now?” she asks.

“What month do you want it to be?”

There is a long, silent pause between us that feels like it could mean everything and nothing as we endlessly scan the horizon. It feels like hours before we speak again.

 

“Anything?” McMurdo asks, shaking me out of my meditative state.

“Nothing,” I reply.

“Ships?”

“Too much ice.”

“Planes?”

“Not enough air.”

We stand there and stare out into nothing for as long as our necks hold up, before they start to ache with the strain of holding our heads up.

 

“I’m going in,” she says.

For some reason, this terrifies me. “Don’t yet.”

“I’m cold.”

“It was colder yesterday,” I remind her.

She considers this, thoughtfully. “Do you think tomorrow will be different?”

“Not really. No.”

“It has to be some time. Chance, probability, something has to change.”

“Tomorrow will be warmer.” This time I am not lying. I am playing the prophet.

McMurdo begins to wax philosophical. I am not sure if the cold has gotten to her, or if she is the most brilliant person in the world.

“Of all the worlds that fly round and round the sun…

“It always gets warmer,” I go on.

“…life has to spring up on a death-bound planet.” I hate it when she gets like this. To my surprise, I can’t help but agree with her.

“Death by degrees. One at a time.”

 

For a moment, I think the light has changed, that the endless season has finally shifted to something different. I stare into the sky, closing my right eye, then my left, alternating back and forth, trying to decide which slight variation of colors is true; which of my eyes is more accurate, which one is lying.

“I hate it out here,” whispers McMurdo, a stage whisper, loud enough for me to hear but hissed in such a way that only I understand her.

“Maybe we should go back to the station,” I suggest.

“What? Why? There’s nobody there.”

“We need to look harder. If we’d looked harder…” I do not know anymore if what I say is true, nor if I believe it to be.

“More broken machinery. More iced pipes. More emptiness!” She has raised her voice. This is unusual, even in moments of frustration. She catches herself, and turns her eyes downward, blushing. “Chip me off a sandwich,” she quietly commands.

 

I exit into the tent to retrieve the pack. It’s compact, cozy, quiet, and warm enough to live in. We left the research station long ago. It was too large, too empty. Too many things inside reminded us of what had been lost, and what good were monitors and cameras, vehicles and sensors, to us? There was nothing to study. Nobody to monitor. Nowhere to go. Once again I go to work chipping away at the sandwiches. I have no luck, and return outside to McMurdo, who has moved a few feet toward the shoreline. Her footprints have already been covered up by the winds and icy fallout.

“Still solid,” I tell her.

She turns to me, a strange look in her eyes. “Let me lick the ice, then.”

“That’s not good for you. You’ll catch your death of cold.”

“I’m tired of running.”

“We’re not. We barely move.”

“That’s not true.”

I gesture to the tent. “Chipping things is hardly movement.”

“Maybe we should move farther,” she says, turning around in an odd little circle. “Toward something.”

“This is the most habitable place left. What would we go toward?”

“There has to be some other place?”

We have had this conversation before.

I sigh. “This is it. Why can’t you just be happy here? You have food, shelter, and companionship.”

“It isn’t enough.” She is staring out to sea. My gut feels like it’s alive with moths.

“Don’t you enjoy my company anymore?”

“It’s too cold to enjoy anything.”

“It was colder yesterday.”

 

We look out over the horizon, nothing but an endless black sea full of ice and death meets our gaze. This is what we do.

McMurdo doesn’t look at me when she says, “I’m going in.”

The terror returns, more insistent than before. “Don’t go inside yet.”

“I didn’t mean inside the tent,” she says, kicking off an uncomfortable silence. She begins to take off her large overcoat, still staring out into the sea. “Here.”

“Stop that!” I cry, as I slap her hands down to her sides, keeping her from removing her outerwear. “What would I do here without you?”

“What you do with me,” she says, “You’d wait and watch for signs.” I have never seen her this calm before.

“And what if nothing ever came?” I ask, “What if there are no ships? No planes? No people?”

“Then you’ll decide to join me.”

I am shocked. “I can’t do that. Neither can you.”

“Not if you won’t hold my coat,” she grins. “It’s a nice coat. Warm.”

She takes the coat off despite my efforts and puts it into my hands. I stare at it, then look up at her. I don’t know what else to do, so I hold it out to her again, even though she had just given it to me, like this was all a dance, part of some game.

“It’s cold,” I say, “Do you want it back?”

“Give me a minute, would you?”

With that, McMurdo walks down to the edge of the water. I watch her go, helpless. She stands for a long moment, staring straight down. I wonder, as I try to see it through her eyes, how deep the water is here. Then I find myself wondering how it would feel to simply go to sleep and never wake up again. Then McMurdo reaches down and touches the ice.

She jumps back as if she has been bitten. She stands up and hurries her way back to my side, stumbling and cursing over the icy, uneven ground. She stares, her anger focused into the point of a pin and aimed at me. “God!” she cries.

“Where? I’d like to speak with him.”

Her mouth doesn’t move, but her eyes smile at me. “Give it back,” she says. I am already helping her back into her coat.

“You see?” I ask her, already becoming the lecturer, “You can’t get relief that way. It’s the hair of the dog. Curing the disease with more of the same. Come on, let’s go inside.”

“Why, if we’ll just come out again?”

This is a good question. I respond, “It’s something to do. We have to do something.”

“I suppose. Everyone has to do something. Doing things is the way of the human animal.”

She is frustrated now. I decide to do something else while she calms down, to give her a moment alone. “Let me check on the sandwiches,” I say.

 

I go back into the apple. To my surprise, the ambient heat in the tent has thawed some of the ice surrounding our food. Picking up the pack, small drips of white water slowly trail off the bottom. Inside, the sandwiches look like they might be separated with a bit of effort. I take my icepick and slide the point in between two pieces of bread. Using the pack as a fulcrum for my lever, I manage to pry two sandwiches apart. I am looking forward to making McMurdo smile, letting her eat her fill and enjoy the sandwich I’ve foraged and prepared for her. We don’t know where the sandwiches come from. We never ask. We don’t talk about it much. We just know that they are there, and are always there, and that is enough. I am looking for a plate when I hear McMurdo yell for me.

“Is that something? Is it? Come here, I need you to verify that this is something!” She is leaping up and down as I exit the tent, staring at me like a rabid animal. I run to her, sandwich in hand.

“I got you a sandwich, what’s the matter?”

She takes the sandwich and throws it down. “This is more important!”

I am offended. “Those sandwiches don’t come easy.”

“Tell me! Is that something?” she squeaks. I have not seen her in this mood since I can remember. I am not sure what to do. “It’s been so long I’ve forgotten what something looks like. Is it? It has to be. It must be.”

“Where?” I ask, as she grabs my shoulders and faces me toward the sea. “I’m looking… where?”

“Where there isn’t an endless expanse of nothing! Look!”

“I don’t see! Where? Point me!”

“There!” she shouts as her muscles flex and move me like a puppet. “Do you see it? Or have I finally gotten frostbite in my brain?”

 

I am squinting, but I do not see anything. Or do I? It’s impossible to tell. I tell her, “I don’t know. I don’t… it could be something. Is there something left for it to be? Where would it have come from? Why is it here now?”

“That depends on what it is! Is it a bird? Life? Other life?”

“I can’t see it properly,” I tell her. This is not a lie. There are no optometrists in Antarctica.

 

She rushes back into the apple while I continue to stare out into space. It takes her only a moment, and she comes scrambling back out with a heavy case. Before she opens it, I already know what it is. Inside is our telescope; one of the few pieces of technology we rescued from the frost-bitten void that used to be a research station. Anything too advanced and it would have simply reminded us that people had been there before; people with the knowledge and skill to use high-tech equipment. It was better to pretend that it had always been exactly as it is now, and always will be.

“Use this,” she commanded, pressing the telescope into my hands. “Come on, hurry!”

I slowly put the telescope together, screwing the lens into the shaft, and attaching it to its base, one small movement at a time. The look on my face, and my plodding pace must be saying everything. McMurdo’s hands hang at her sides. Her gaze is fixed on mine.

“We’ve been waiting for something forever,” she says quietly. “For eternity! This is something, and it must be seen! It must, or it wouldn’t be!”

 

I finish putting the contraption together and set it up in the dusty snow.

“You look. I don’t need to look. You can use all the equipment here, you were trained.”

“I have astigmatism!” She is shouting now. “It won’t correct for that. You have to do it. Hurry up, before it goes away, whatever it is!”

 

I am afraid to tell her that I can’t, but I do. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean? It’s what we’ve been waiting for! It’s the dream that’s been keeping us alive all this time. You need to follow through, give us closure!”

I cannot lie to her. “I’m afraid.”

“Of what? What are you afraid of? Come on!”

“What if there’s nothing there?”

 

There is a long moment between us where nothing is verbalized, but everything is said. She’s been thinking the same thing, but she was just as afraid as I was to say it. Saying a thing aloud gives it power.

I try to explain myself. “Can you stand the thought that we’ve been waiting around for nothing all this time? I can’t take the disappointment. I’m afraid it would kill me.”

 

Suddenly, we are fighting, wrestling on the ground, clamoring for control of the telescope. Her knee digs into my side as she climbs over me and tries to pull me up to the level of the eye-piece. “The truth is worth dying for, isn’t it?” she asks, hysterical.

“Unless there’s no truth, then we’ve wasted our lives!” I shout as I try to get away.

“What if it’s a ship? A plane? A spacecraft? A whale? You can’t know unless you look!” She is surprisingly strong, and roughly pulls me to my feet, shoving me at the telescope. I stumble and the device goes sliding across the frosted ground, scraping along on its base. I grab it to steady it, and hold it behind me. She tries to get at it, but I am too thick for her to reach around me in our bulky winter gear.

“If it’s nothing, then there’s nothing. That’s the end. No more,” I say, calmly.

She continues to struggle with me; I can see the frustration in her eyes, they are bright and wild and full of pleading. She sputters as she beats her fists against my chest. “What… let go… we have to… do something!”

“We are doing something. We’re waiting for something to happen.”

“What more of a sign do you need?”

Something explodes inside me. I release all my energy in a burst of flailing limbs, and we tip over in a messy heap. “This isn’t a sign! This is a speck of something on the lens of God. A nothing in the desert. And if I look and I’m right, I’m going to have to walk into the sea!”

 

We stop fighting. Our breath comes in ragged spurts, our faces hot and sticky with the moisture of the antarctic wind and our own sweat. I am shocked at myself. At first, I believe McMurdo is silent, but as I listen I come to realize that she is whimpering like a wounded animal. The wind picks up around us. I strain to listen, her words have grown quiet.

“There’s got to be something… something…” She keeps repeating this last word. I carefully work my way over to her, not wanting to raise her stress level any further.

“McMurdo,” I say, softly, putting my arm around her shoulders and letting her fall against me, “Please don’t cry… you’ll freeze.”

 

McMurdo looks out at the horizon again for a long time. Finally, she speaks. “There’s nothing there. Where did it go?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think it was there… at all.”

She sounds destroyed. I am worried about her. “You need to eat something,” I tell her.

Looking down, she picks up the sandwich and taps it against the ground.

“It’s frozen again.”

“I’ll put it in.” I gently take the sandwich from her.

“It’s cold out. Let’s go in.”

“It was colder yesterday.”

“Tomorrow will be different.”

“It will be warmer.” I’m not sure whether I am lying or not.

“Tomorrow,” she says, “something will happen.”

 

I escort McMurdo into the apple. She is the only thing left in the world that I can look at and see some part of myself reflected. We shut the doors against the wind. I turn up the heater and listen to the gentle snoring of McMurdo, but ultimately it is the sound of the freezing wind that robs me of consciousness, just as it has since I can remember.