They had told me what to expect. I came anyway.
Through the lacerated, parched surface of the view pane, a glimmer of white slips through, trailing the piercing echo of a harsh landscape outside. My eyes instinctively squint, expecting light – but the outside world is dark. It has been for a long time. I prop myself up, and gaze out, scrutinising whatever is visible. Among the murky haze, I can just make out the indistinct outlines of the barren plains, covered in silver snow, shaped by years of abrasion. They stretch into the distance, endless.
The peaks blur into the ashen sky along the jagged horizon, seemingly seeping into a swirling, monotonous mixture. Perhaps it’s the wind, messing with my eyes, sweeping up flurries of loose snow or ash. Or maybe that really is what it looks like now. My eyes are drawn to the crevices. Those sunken mounds, tipped with a dark outline promising the existence of secrets hiding within. A curious glint of muffled blue. How I long to venture out and discover for myself, the mysteries plaguing me for all this time.
It’s lifeless, totally motionless. Even the cloud-smothered sky remains still and unending, having long settled. To think that I had thought, that I could find some hope, some semblance of life, in this accursed, isolated, forsaken outpost, devoid of anything, even the slightest hint of activity... futile.
No one had expected things to turn out like this. We had been so preoccupied with global warming, fixated on the rising temperatures, that we had never even considered the prospect of cold being our downfall. The focus was always on the wildfires, the droughts, the impending solar storms the scientists were always warning us of. Heat death. That’s the name they gave to the fate of the universe, and then us ourselves. The name was misleading. In heat death, the true conqueror is cold, the absence of heat – not heat itself.
There’s no snow to fall anymore. Those clouds aren’t the chasms of thunder legends tell of, but streams of scattered soot once dispersed into the stratosphere, driven by the fury of nuclear warheads. The consequences of our discord. Most of us don’t know what natural light looks like. They have observers, the sentinels who remain and watch – just like me – as if there’s a chance some sliver of sunlight will slice through the blanket of darkness, a ray of hope. But we’ve been waiting for long enough now. Most of them have lost hope.
My shallow breath leaves a puff of white on the pane. I raise my sleeve to rub it clear, cringing at the freezing glass. Still a somewhat welcome sensation compared to the draining warmth of inside. I lay a finger on the cold metal rim. Arterium, they call it. Despite the incessant frost and creeping cold, it remains remarkably intact, albeit heavily scratched. A testament to our endurance.
I take one last look outside. Nothing’s changed. Maybe this will be all we ever know. It’s all my world has been for as long as I remember. Down here, in the desolate depths of Antarctica.
(March 2022)