Frozen Solid A Novel

14




SHE BOOTED UP THE COMPUTER.

“Talk to me, Em,” she said again, and accessed the hard drive. Found the usual: Word, Excel, Explorer, Outlook. All the libraries—documents, music, pictures, videos—were empty. Someone must have cleaned them out as carefully as they had scrubbed the room. Not surprising, really—standard procedure in any organization after an employee left. So she would find nothing on the hard drive.

Wait.

Not on the hard drive.

What about in the hard drive?

From her own laptop she transferred to the room computer a program called Golden Retriever, given to her by Bowman. It was like the data-recovery programs you could buy on the Web but much more powerful. She searched for documents created by “Durant.”

In 0.976 seconds, it displayed a message: No matches.

She would try more search terms. First, an adjustment. The computer keyboard lay flat on the desktop, and Hallie preferred typing on a tilted keyboard. She turned this one over and unfolded the plastic legs from their compartments on the underside. When she popped out the right one, something fell, hit the desktop, and bounced to the floor. The light was so dim in the room that she had to crawl around on her hands and knees to find the object. It was a blue microSD card the size of the nail on her little finger.

She was about to insert the card into a port in the station’s computer. Then she stopped and disconnected her laptop. She pushed the tiny card into one of that computer’s ports. There were thirteen folders, “date created” numbers showing that they started with the previous year’s January and ended with January just past. The folders held varying numbers of files—all .wmv format.

It was a video log. Emily had been an avid amateur shooter, loved video calls and YouTube. It was natural that her journal would be in this form. She had arrived in January of the previous year. Hallie opened the first file from that month and suddenly there was Emily looking back at her from the screen. She double-clicked on the image, and Emily spoke.

“So. This is January sixth. My first full day here at Pole and my first entry into the video log.”

Hallie hit the Pause symbol and wiped away the tears that were filling her eyes. Emily looked like the young woman Hallie had known at BARDA—auburn hair, freckles, lively green eyes, an infectious smile. And a honey-sweet Georgia accent. So full of energy that Hallie could feel it coming through the monitor. Involuntarily, she found herself smiling back through the tears. She recalled things she and Emily had done together, the great climb on Denali, the avalanche, Emily digging her out, their decision to keep going, making the summit, all the hard-ass climbers cheering and buying them endless rounds when they stumbled back into the Talkeetna Lodge.

“Emily,” she said.

She touched one finger to the side of Emily’s cheek on the screen. Gave herself a few moments, then hit Play, and Emily started talking again.

“This is such an amazing place. It’s dark twenty-four hours a day and cold as hell—seventy-one below outside right now, according to the intranet. Makes Alaska seem almost tropical. Everything is just … extreme. I can’t wait to look around more. It’s like being out in space, totally alone. There’s even a greenhouse where they grow vegetables. Somebody said they grow pot in there, too.” She frowned, shook her head. “The vegetables are a good idea, anyway.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I’m going to keep a record of my time here. I can record footage of other things in the station and here in the room and outside with my video camera and produce something later when I have time.”

Emily stopped, yawned again, rubbed her face. “But right now I need to get some sleep. I am just about out on my feet. Nap time. More later!”

The image faded.

Hallie jumped to an entry from July, seven months into Emily’s stay. Dark circles had developed under her eyes. The freckles, brighter against pale skin, looked like little scabs. Her lips were cracked, and when Hallie hit Play, Emily came to life, but her smile did not.

“Let’s see. It’s July twenty-ninth. About halfway through my stay. What’s the big news? Not much. Unless you count the partying. I’ve never seen so many people walking around drunk and high. Pot, of course, but not just. You wouldn’t believe the booze they stockpile here. I mean, gallons and gallons, all top-shelf—Chivas, Jack D, Stoli, you name it. And they make moonshine! Some of the Beakers built a still. The stuff is clear like vodka, but it’s about 160 proof and tastes like I think jet fuel would if you drank it. They call it Poleshine.

“I’m tired. No, exhausted. Everybody said this is a hard place to be, and it is. The disgusting food, being dirty all the time, annoying people, so much darkness. And getting sick. If you don’t have Polarrhea you have a cold, and vice versa. There are scientists from so many different countries, who knows what kinds of bugs are floating around this place? I’m the only one from North America this year. Pure luck of the draw, the way grants shook out. We just keep swapping germs back and forth.”

She looked into the camera without talking for several moments. “Need to get some sleep,” she said, and the screen went blank.

Hallie jumped ahead again and opened a video from early in the January just past. Emily’s appearance last time had been disturbing. Now it was shocking. Weight loss had sharpened her face to points and edges. Her hair looked dirty and uncombed, and her teeth were yellow, with little wedges of plaque between them. There was a scabbed scratch on one cheek and blue-black circles under her bloodshot eyes. Her lips were chapped and cracked.

Emily stared blankly at the camera for several moments after turning it on. Her eyelids fell and rose slowly. She ran her tongue over her lips, grimaced, and then did something that struck Hallie as odd: she half-turned and looked over her shoulder. Was someone in the room with her who the camera wasn’t showing? Had someone knocked on the door? After a moment, Emily turned back.

“The New Year’s Eve party. Unbelievable.” She rubbed her face, ran fingers through greasy hair. “Ambie got totally f*cked up again.” Her eyelids drooped and she nodded forward in a microsleep. Then she came back.

“It’s getting harder to think straight. At first, when I heard people talking about being crisp I thought they were exaggerating to freak out a fungee. They weren’t. I can’t wait to get out of this goddamned f*cking place.

“But it’s important to record what’s happened while I’m here and it’s still fresh.”