McMurdo Station, Antarctica

It was late May--the harshest dead of winter down on the ice--when Jon and Aria brought unity to the United States and New Zealand. Not that there was a divide: the winter residents of neighboring stations often mingled when there was a weather break: chess tournaments, dining, talking, bringing the world above to its very bottom. In late April, there was a lull in the wind and snow. Other than the darkness, it was almost like summer. This is when Jon and Aria caught each other’s eyes in the common room, never noticing each other before. Each would think, where were you all this time? Then, the fury came. Winds, snow drifts, whiteout. Everybody was frozen in place. They talked, gazed, became the nearby volcanoes Erebus and Terror. Ice, nowhere, space--there was nothing but them.

***

Scott sat in his dorm, wrote letters to his wife. Over and over and over. His first winter in Antarctica. The darkness, the wind. He imagined the world around him shrinking and shrinking until he too shrunk and he could fit on the postage stamp that he put on the envelopes. The envelopes piled up. Nowhere for them to go until there was a weather break. He loved his wife. She was a universe away. Her face faded from his memory. He would stare at her picture and, after awhile, his eyes tricked him into seeing her face disappearing. He was scared. He slept with the lights on.


***


Tess fell asleep on the common room sofa one night. She awoke, everyone gone, the place silent except for outside wind and sprinkling of blown snow against windows. She walked back to her room, as she did countless times, socked feet sliding across the floor, but her room wasn't there. She swiveled, looked every direction, turned corners, walked other hallways. But it was gone. Science told her that solid structures like this don't change without intervention. But either it changed or her mind did. She went back to the sofa, slept until morning, and everything was right again.

***

Ray, when not studying the resident whales, played sleuth to discover a practical joker. One year running and no luck. The joke played on him was every now and then, he'd be walking down a hallway, alone, when he'd hear something rolling. He'd turn to find a billiard ball sized crystal ball moving his way. He collected them in a shoe box--nine total so far. All identical. He asked around, showed them to people, who shrugged, gave him puzzled looks. One day, he whispered to himself, I'll figure it out.

***

Jan found herself bouncing, a ball in an endless pinball machine game. Rebuffed by her boyfriend in Iowa, through email no less. Then by Scott. Well, he was married--he had principles, an admirable trait. Then Blair. The resident hotshot surfer dude—okay, maybe not. There was Jon, but now he was attached to this New Zealander. Jan danced around other eligible men. She talked. She played cool. She moved closer. She got nowhere. She grew frustrated. Her work suffered. The ice was cold and lonely, more so everyday; were others magically impervious? If she had a mirror, she would make advances at herself, take the bait, fall in love all over again.


***


Sam walked away from his radio monitoring station for coffee and blueberry pastry. Scratched his head, spooned powdered creamer into Styrofoam cup, talked to Blair about football, and flights home. What he missed was a transmission from space. Scratching, hissing voice filled with consonants--it was brief, almost a hiccup. Unrecorded—the McMurdo Station crew wasn't looking for extraterrestrial life. You walk away, you miss everything. He shuffled back, blueberry on his chin, sipping coffee, looking forward to another long boring day of nothing on the ice.

***

Out beyond Erebus and Terror, in the frozen fields where nobody traveled, there was a man frozen face up in the ice. The sound of his name cast into space, a weak radio signal, floating in the void, never to be heard. His ice cube eyes stare out the bottom of the world. If he were to be found, people would theorize about what brought him here: conquest, a woman, insanity. Running to, running from, running. The mind's eye would trick someone into seeing him twitch, his eye blink, a tear stream down his cheek, and think briefly, somehow, he was alive, trapped in ice, nowhere, space.