South Pole Station

*

Lisa Wu told Sal her team was going to comply with Stanford’s directive to follow the evacuation order and return stateside, and would have to abandon the joint experiment. Upon hearing this, he disappeared to the Dark Sector, kicking even Alek out. Cooper knew Sal had received the same directive from Princeton.

That evening, he burst into the Smoke Bar, where Tucker was comforting Alek and the rest of the remaining Polies. Sal locked the door behind him and looked at them.

“I’m staying. I won’t abandon this project. I’m going to caretake the experiment for both teams.” He looked over at Tucker. “Lisa knows.”

Tucker tugged on one of the low-hanging strands of fairy lights, loosening it so that it swayed just above the table. “Does the NSF know? Scaletta?”

“No comment.”

“I assume you understand the potential consequences of defying an evac order.”

“I can always seek asylum at CERN.”

Without thinking, Cooper said, “What if we all stayed? Like Alcatraz but in Antarctica.”

Someone pulled at the door a couple of times. Tucker, who was leaning against it, reached behind him to unlock it. A new VIDS admin who’d been flown in the week before from Denver walked in, her brow furrowed.

“Why’s the door locked?”

“Sorry,” Tucker said. “Sometimes it sticks.” Cooper noticed the woman’s eyes were searching the room, as if she were looking for a fugitive. Distractedly, she handed Tucker a manila envelope and exited the bar.

Everyone watched as Tucker opened the envelope and pulled out the caretaking roster—the names of those who would be allowed to stay at the station in order to keep basic operations running.

“Floyd. Bozer. Pearl. Doc. Marce. The rest are on the last flight out.” Denise’s child-like sobs shattered the silence, and Bozer pushed all of the darts into Karl Martin’s face and went over to comfort her.

Tucker handed the roster to Sal. “Scaletta wants me in Washington. Let me know what you decide.”

As soon as Sal had locked the door behind Tucker, Floyd said, “If we do this, none of you will get paid. They’ll stop depositing your paychecks.”

“I don’t care,” several people said at once.

“Can’t they force you onto the planes?” Pearl asked.

“They’re not going to walk us out at gunpoint,” Dwight said. “They trust us to follow the rules. By the time they realize what we’ve done, it might be too late.”

“What do you mean ‘too late’?”

“Every hour we delay, the closer we get to the event horizon,” Dwight replied. “Too cold to fly. No flights in, no flights out. If we can wait this out—”

“And create enough confusion and administrative chaos,” Cooper added.

“—if we can do that, then there will be no chance of flights to haul us away. It will be too late.”

Cooper noticed Sal watching her closely.

“What?” she asked.

“You sure you want to stay?”

Cooper rolled her eyes.

“No, this is serious, Cooper,” he said. He looked around the room. “This has to be worth it to every single person here. If you violate this evac order, you probably won’t work here again. You may even face federal trespassing charges.”

“And what about you, Doc?” Bozer said to Sal. “You’ve got more to lose here than any of us.”

Sal shook his head. “Me? It’s this or nothing.”

“When’s the last flight?” Pearl asked.

“Monday,” Dwight replied.

“That’s Valentine’s Day.”

Dwight looked stricken for a moment. Then he shrugged. “So?”

“I’m just saying that locking ourselves into the station and occupying a federal research facility isn’t exactly in the spirit of the holiday,” Pearl said mildly. “It’s like getting a Dear John letter.”

“Nah, Pearlie,” Floyd said. “You’ve gotta think of it more like a box of chocolates hand-delivered to the Congressional Budget Committee. Except instead of chocolates—”

“We get it, Floyd,” Sal interrupted.

Bozer turned to Cooper. “You didn’t answer your man’s question. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“No finger, and no prospects after this is over. You good?”

Everyone in the room turned to see what she would say. She looked from face to face. Floyd’s poorly groomed mutton chops and Doc Carla’s slightly askew Yankees cap. Bozer’s veiny nose and Alek’s Fu Manchu ’stache. Pearl’s white-blond eyebrows, Marcy’s laugh lines, and Denise’s frizzy curls. Sal’s beautiful but tired eyes. Here were the faces that would surround her for the next six months, the brains with which she’d have to contend.

“Right before Halloween, I asked Sal why the station didn’t just replace Frosty Boy instead of sending techs in every season to rebuild it,” Cooper said. “He told me ‘We grow attached to these temperamental pieces of crap.’ Well, let’s just say there are a number of temperamental pieces of crap in this room that I’m oddly attached to.”

Everyone laughed at this, and this laughter seemed to form an agreement. They’d do this thing, no matter the consequences. They agreed on a password to ensure secrecy: Occupy or Die.

*

Pearl went into a baking frenzy in preparation for the Valentine’s Day Exodus. She didn’t want the Polies who were being forced off the ice to go home empty-handed. She and Cooper stayed up all night baking trays of jam tarts, sheets of heart-shaped sugar cookies, raspberry linzers, a two-tier red velvet cake studded with fondant roses, and mini-cupcakes frosted in crimson and white. (Cooper had to talk her out of making pavlovas when she realized the effort would require almost all the eggs left on station.)

The Valentine’s Day dessert buffet raised the morale of the departing Polies—the goodie bags filled with handmade pralines and Captain Morgan rum truffles almost made them smile. Birdie, who had been utterly broken since receiving notice that he was being ferried off the ice and who, thanks to Pearl’s fear of the repercussions of a naturalized citizen getting involved in a federal crime, knew nothing about the plans to occupy, received extra goodies, including an extravagant peach melba that brought him to tears.

One other gesture of goodwill took place in the days before the evacuation commenced: Bozer had, according to Denise, “surrendered to the better angels of his nature” and challenged Sri to a game of pool before he left for Madison. Everyone crowded into Skylab, gorging on Pearl’s homemade delicacies, and watched as Sri entered the room. He stood on one side of the pool table and gripped the polished top rails. His eyes were full of emotion. Finally, Bozer tossed a cue over the table toward Sri, who caught it smoothly. “Rack ’em up,” he said.

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