Cold

The research station existed as a tiny speck of humanity in a screaming white wasteland. The temperatures were relentlessly inhospitable, regularly hitting fifty degrees Celsius below freezing, gale force winds shifted constantly trying to find some purchase on the station to blow it away. At this time of year, the darkness was never ending.

I arrived seven months, three weeks, and two days ago. Life before felt like a fading dream of warmth and abundance.

The isolation was acute and would have been completely overwhelming if it wasn’t for my colleague Dr Blomqvist. A tall man, he subconsciously stooped as if continuously worried about banging his head. Friendly, neat, and considerate, he was as good a companion you could wish to have for company in such claustrophobic conditions.

Laconic by nature, he would always pause when spoken to before replying, as if carefully savoring every word that had been said. A formidable intellect, the only tell of the ceaseless mental activity taking place behind his eyes were his restless fingers. Always fidgeting with a pen, or turning something over in his pocket, his hands seemed to be the only aspect of himself that Dr Blomqvist had not been able to discipline in line with his general presentation of steady composure.

This unexcitable demeanor was why I didn’t initially worry that anything was wrong when he woke me unexpectedly.

“Dr May.”

This is my name.

“Dr May, wake up please.”

I blinked up at Dr Blomqvist, momentarily disorientated.

“Dr May, how is your temperature?”

I didn’t answer.

Seeing me nonplussed, Dr Blomqvist clarified, “are you warm?”

Having had a moment to fully wake up I considered the question and found that yes, I was warm, I was quite warm indeed. I could see that in my sleep I had kicked my blankets off me. This was very peculiar. While the station had heating, it was just enough to make the space survivable, the internal temperature tended to hover just over freezing. Dr Blomqvist and I wore heavy jackets throughout the day and slept in woolen long johns under layers of blankets. To be dressed as lightly as I was, with no blankets and to be positively hot made no sense.

I looked up at Dr Blomqvist, “Am I sick?”

“It’s possible we both are. Use this and join me in the control room.”

He handed me a thermometer which I placed under my tongue, and we made the short journey of a dozen or so steps to the room where we spent most of our time. The presence of several large and intimidating computers had the natural effect of causing the control room to always be a few degrees warmer than the rest of the station. Normally those few degrees were a god send, now they made the temperature positively tropical.

Dr Blomqvist systematically made his way around the room, checking every screen and instrument while scribbling in a small yellow notepad he carried everywhere.

Slowly and, I must admit, somewhat less efficiently I followed his path and took in the readings for myself. They were unanimous in their agreement, every one of them said it was still as cold as always, as cold as almost anywhere on this planet can be.

After completing his lap Dr Blomqvist took the thermometer from my mouth, nodded once, scribbled something in his notebook and handed it back to me. I looked at the small digital screen, 37 degrees Celsius it said.

“So, I’m not sick,” I thought out loud. “We’re having a systems malfunction, that’s simultaneously overheating the station and impacting the temperature readings of multiple independent devices………….” I trailed off.

A thought occurred to me, several in fact, “are our heaters even capable of getting the internal temperature this high? What temperature would you estimate this to be? Twenty degrees maybe?”

“I estimate the temperature to be approximately twenty-two degrees and increasing,” stated Dr Blomqvist, “and no, we do not have the capacity to generate that level of warmth.”

We stood in silence. Both of us searching for possible answers.

“There’s more,” said Dr Blomqvist. He pointed to the small table at the back of the room where we usually ate our meals. In the middle of the table was a solitary ice cube.

I immediately understood the inference.

“How long has this been here?” I asked.

Dr Blomqvist looked at his watch, “One hour and thirty-seven minutes.”

The ice cube was totally intact. No pool of water around it. No sign that it was even beginning to melt.

“Before I woke you up my best working theory was simply that I was losing my mind. Now that doesn’t appear to be the case, I’m at a complete loss.”  

We both knew what the next test must be. The main door to the station was heavy and looked like it belonged on a submarine. Before we opened it, I peered out the porthole like window beside it. Everything looked sheer white, which was normal. It was hard to tell if it was windy or not by sight alone, but audibly there was no suggestion of the screaming winds that sometimes battered the station for days at a time.

I opened the door and braced for the freezing bite, which didn’t come. Cautiously we both stepped out of the station. It was balmy, the light morning heat of what looked to be a beautiful day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun shone down and glistened off the sheer white snow.

Dr Blomqvist turned the handheld device he was carrying to face me. A reading flashed on the screen, minus 47 degrees Celsius it said. If that was accurate then given what I was wearing I should be developing severe symptoms of frostbite any moment, instead, despite the fact I was only wearing the woolen underlayer I slept in, I was starting to get too hot.

After twenty minutes we returned to the control room, instinctively I closed the big heavy door behind me.

“What is this?” I asked Dr Blomqvist.

“I don’t know, Dr May. I have no plausible explanation I can offer. The communication window is open for the next hour, let’s report our findings and see if they can offer any insight.”

Through crackling radio static, we reported every aspect of the phenomenon we were experiencing. Each of us validating the account of the other. On the other end of the call was a Dr Chadwick, a highly respected women in her field, and something of a personal hero of mine. After our first recounting of what we were observing, she asked us to please wait for a few moments. She soon returned, listing off the names of half a dozen colleagues now present. She asked us to please repeat all that we had told her.

After we finished our report for the second time there was a long pause of static. So long we had to ask if they had heard our account. Dr Chadwick answered that yes, they had and that it was…………….” most interesting.” She asked a series of follow up questions, all were delivered in a professional and calm manner, but it was hard not to suspect a strong undertone of skepticism.

When our hour-long communication window was almost up, she asked us to please check the station thoroughly for any potential contamination, be it a gas leak, food poising, tainted water, chemical leakage. Finally, she asked us both to remain calm and not do anything “rash.” Here the worry in her voice was unmistakable.

After the call ended Dr Blomqvist and I sat in silence for a period. It was definitely hotter now than when I woke up. It must be twenty-seven, even twenty-eight degrees. I was noticeably perspiring.

“She thinks we’re mad doesn’t she,” I said.

“It is the most logical conclusion available to her,” replied Dr Blomqvist.

Without warning there was a knock on the station door. Perhaps we were both out of our mind, there had never been a knock on the door. The knock came again.

With little alternative I opened the door to see who or what it might be. Standing outside looking impatient was a small squat man. He could only have been four and a half foot tall and wore a red Hawaiian floral print shirt which went well with his shorts but clashed somewhat with his heavy snow boot foot ware.

Dr Blomqvist joined me at the door and we both waited for the small man to speak. He seemed to do the same.

After an awkward pause I ventured, “Can we help you?”

A thoroughly ridiculous attempt to address what was surely confirmation that Dr Chadwick was correct in assuming we had lost our marbles.

The small man, looked back at me like I had just insulted his mother.

“I very much doubt it,” he said as he pushed by us both and marched into the control room.

We followed him sheepishly.

“I hear you’ve been having some issues,” he said as he surveyed the room. He strolled around it shaking his head in obvious disgust. He knocked on computers, tapped the monitors, approaching the table at the back he swept the still pristine ice cube onto the ground, before turning to face us.

“Well then, out with it. What have you broken? I don’t have all day; I’m supposed to be on my holidays.”

Dr Blomqvist who hadn’t said a word since the small man appeared had begun writing in his notepad again. Glancing up at the small man intermittently as he did so.

The small man wore the expression of an exasperated schoolteacher.

“What are you writing?” he asked.

He held out his hand and the notepad was now in it, rather than with Dr Blomqvist. The notepad didn’t seem to pass through the space between Dr Blomqvist and the small man. It just was with Dr Blomqvist in one moment, and in the hand of the small man the next.

Dr Blomqvist still held his pencil, now poised to write on thin air.

“Red hair,” read the small man. He looked up at Dr Blomqvist. “It’s Strawberry blonde actually, mate!”

He tossed the notepad to one side. “Alright tweedled dee and tweedled dumb, enough pissing about. You’ve broken something you shouldn’t have been messing about with, haven’t you? Look at this one.”

Here he gestured at me.

“He’s sweating like a panda in a sauna. I’m here to fix whatever it is you’ve thoroughly botched so why don’t you be good little boys and tell me what you’ve been pratting about within the last twenty-four hours.”

“Are you from the institute?” I asked.

“Sure bud, I’m from whatever institute you need me to be from. You probably told them it was getting a bit toasty eh? And they sent me to help you out.”

“The nearest town is five days journey away,” said Dr Blomqvist matter of factly.

“So what?” said the little man, impatiently.

“So, it took us a long time to get here by dog sled. We only spoke to the institute less than an hour ago.”

“Well, they were extra worried about you so I hurried here just as fast as I could,” said the little man with obvious sarcasm.

While this exchange had been going on I had been giving serious thought to the little man’s question. What had we done? The last twenty-four hours had been fairly typical. The only activity even slightly out of the normal routine was that yesterday we had taken core samples. Wrapped up like we were going into space we had drilled into the ice exactly ten meters.

“Ice cores,” I blurted, providing no context.

“Bingo,” said the small man, pointing at me. “Go get it, now.”

“You!” he now pointed at Dr Blomqvist, “show me where you took it from.”

We kept the core sample we took in a purpose-built part of the station. They were not excessively heavy but were awkward to carry. By the time I met Dr Blomqvist and the small man at the sample sight, some 150 meters from the station I was out of breath and damp with sweat.

Dr Blomqvist had reacquired his notebook at some point and was busily scratching away at it with a pencil. The small man was peering down the hole we had bored in the ice tutting like a dentist who knows you haven’t been flossing.

“Open it up,” he said to me without looking up.

When I had the ice tube unpacked from its container he came over and inspected it with great intensity. Working his way inch by inch down from the newest ice at the top, towards the old, compacted ice near the end. A few inches before he reached the very end he stopped suddenly.

“Ah ha.”

He reached out to the ice and when he touched it the entire core went from ice to water in a moment. The large puddle immediately began to refreeze, a strange thing to see in what felt like thirty degrees. In the puddle right where the small man had reached out was a small perfectly black stone. It looked like an arrowhead but with smooth and curved edges instead of sharp points.

The small man held it up to the sunlight, a smile on his lips, “here’s your problem.”

He walked over to the hole in the ice and went to drop the object into it but hesitated. He looked me up and down. The buttons on my light underlayer top were undone as low as they could go, leaving most of my chest bare. I’d been in such a rush to get him the core out here that I hadn’t bothered to put on shoes. Still, I was too hot, nothing I had here was designed to do anything other than keep hold of precious, precious heat. Dr Blomqvist was similarly stripped down as lightly as possible though he did at least still have his heavy boots on.

“Boys,” said the small man, and for the first time it felt like he genuinely saw us both, “in a moment everything is going to be back to normal here, and it’s going to be very normal very quickly. You might want to think about heading back.”

Dr Blomqvist and I exchanged a look, nothing needed to be said. We were scientists, we weren’t going anywhere. Dr Blomqvist readied his pencil.

The small man seemed to understand and gave a small chuckle. “So be it,” he said and dropped the stone. It disappeared down the hole. Nothing changed for a moment. Then it did.

I thought I had experienced cold before, and maybe I had, maybe this was something entirely new. The wind that hit me felt like I’d fallen into the winter sea from a helicopter, only to find out it was made entirely of broken glass. I was running for the station before my mind had a chance to communicate that wish to my body.

Dr Blomqvist and I exploded into the station like a pack of polar bears were chasing us. It was half an hour before we exchanged words. Both of us now huddled in the control room ensconced in blankets and cradling hot water bottles like they were infants.

“Do you think he’s ok out there?” I asked, “He was in summer clothes.”

Dr Blomqvist nodded once, and I knew in my heart he was correct. Whoever the small man was it was hard to imagine he was now a frozen corpse at the sample site. It was much easier to imagine him on a beach somewhere.

“What was he? What was any of that?”

Dr Blomqvist shrugged, something I’d never seen him do before. It looked strange and unnatural, like a dog giving you a wink.

I had one more question. “What are we going to say to Dr Chadwick?”

This question Dr Blomqvist didn’t respond to for a very long time. We were both dedicated to our field of study, purists in the pursuit of objective truth and knowledge. Both of us believed passionately in the principles and fundamental ideals of the scientific process and all that came with that.

Eventually Dr Blomqvist answered.

“A gas leak is probably our most plausible explanation……….considering………..”

He didn’t have the words to finish that thought and all it encompassed, but we both understood.