Days of Night

by Jonathan Stone

  So what is it? What’s happening?

  Is it, as science has long projected, not one cause but a combination of things working detrimentally together?

  And though unplanned for and unpredictable, it seems that it could have happened, be happening, in exactly the ways that have always been predicted. That science has long warned of. The scientists around him understand the possibilities perfectly. Are cursed, in a way, by their advanced degrees, by their highly informed imaginations, to so quickly and thoroughly and intuitively entertain the possibilities.

  In the way that Heller has predicted—feels, knows, based on his vast and ingrained experience—that he is dealing with a serial murderer (held at bay for whatever reasons) about to be either unleashed or contained, some of the scientists feel, know, based on their vast and ingrained experience, based on even the scant information gleaned by the radio silence, the information of no information, what the dark scenario might be.

  It would be God’s irony, wouldn’t it, thinks Heller, or perhaps proof of God (he is starting to have such odd thoughts, right off, right away, he notices) that it is scientists who are left to witness it. But also not to witness it—not to scientifically observe, which would be at least some consolation, something to do, instead of mere speculation from afar. From very afar. Useless. Unhelpful. Probably dangerous.

  “We don’t know anything” Hobbes needs to remind them almost hourly.

  But we know it’s something. That’s the problem. We know it’s something.

  25.

  “Sir?” It’s Dolan and Pritchard.

  Heller is standing near Hobbes in the cafeteria, when Pritchard and Dolan approach.

  Pritchard, the more talkative one, moves closer. A bounce of hopefulness in him.

  “Listen, Manny, we had a thought. Well, actually, Dolan had the thought. Tell him.”

  “Sir,” says Dolan, shifting a little sheepishly, “you know how being cut off, isolated like this, sort of sends us back to the old days of Antarctica? Well, it got me thinking. We’ll keep trying to figure out if anything’s wrong with the equipment, recheck every connection, but at the same time, we can assemble a simple Morse code device—and I think even cobble together a ham radio.”

  “Morse code? Really? Why?”

  “Communications students all over the world still start by learning Morse code,” says Pritchard, jumping in. “Some of those radio systems must still be up—unreplaced, still operable.”

  “Plus, Morse code SOS is still the default method in an emergency at sea. If this is a catastrophe, like it appears it might be, people may be using it right now,” says Dolan. “And there are still amateur ham radio operators all over the globe. Including New Zealand and Argentina. Not a lot left, I know. Lost art. But enough to reach.”

  Heller hasn’t ever heard Dolan say so much. There’s an odd formality to his speaking style—a private person, a voracious reader, a quiet but excitable nerd.

  “You can do that? Build it from scratch?”

  “Hey, Dolan’s a genius,” says Pritchard. “My partner’s modest, but he’s a genius. He taught me everything I know.”

  Dolan smiles a little, aw-shucks shuffles his left foot a little, and elaborates: “It’ll mean cannibalizing some other equipment for parts, some music components and a computer or two, to jury-rig a transmitter, but we’ve got components to spare.”

  “Go to it,” says Hobbes. Unable to fully hide his enthusiasm.

  Heller is more cautious. He worries that what they may learn from a successful communication could turn out to be more harmful than what they don’t yet know.

  26.

  “What do you think?” Trish asks him.

  They are sitting together in the office Hobbes gave Heller. They jammed a second desk into it when Trish joined him. The two small desks face each other, lamps on each, their interview transcripts spread out. A miniaturized precinct.

  “Really. What do you think?” she asks again. Inquiring of a colleague, asking a friend. Asking him out of his wisdom, but mostly out of his honesty.

  He shrugs. He doesn’t know if the shrug—a short, noncommittal nonanswer answer—is meant to try to protect her. She doesn’t know either.

  “I’m thinking about my family,” says Trish. Eyes tearing, but unblinking. Looking at all the facts. But allowing all the emotion. “You’re thinking about your family too, Joe. I know you are. Everyone here is thinking about their family. How can you not?”

  “We don’t know anything, Trish,” Heller says gently.

  They look at each other. Each one of them knowing by now that each will find a warmth and connection awaiting in the other’s eyes across the tiny closet of an office.

  “We all hope it was quick, uneventful, mercifully instantaneous,” says Trish. “Like a pinprick to the back of the neck . . .”

  “Trish, you’re getting ahead of yourself . . .”

  She holds up her hand, to stop the blandishments, the appeasement. “Won’t I be pleasantly surprised, then. Won’t we all be pleasantly surprised when it all turns out to be okay. A big, silly mistake. A mass hallucination.” She narrows her eyes. She stares wordlessly. We know it’s not a mistake. Or a mass hallucination. Don’t we, Joe?

  They have grown close to each other. A natural closeness from working together, on a life-or-death matter, on something consequential, meaningful. But also a surprising closeness in spirit, a camaraderie that both are completely surprised by and pleased to discover between a Southern California Asian girl and a crusty Northern Vermont cop. They have discovered a capacity for laughter, for lightness in one another that Heller, for one, would never have suspected of himself—and that is still a kind of secret between them, which makes it even more special. An affection that springs from the situation, from the cold, from the loneliness, from the boredom—but equally springs from nowhere, is mysterious, unpredicted, magical.

  But that laughter is now hidden, tucked away. Maybe, Heller thinks, forever.

  Maybe the closeness is inevitable, given the hours together, discussing the case, going over the interviews, projecting possibilities for each other. The working relationship turned quickly into something more than respectful and cooperative, polite and collegial. Her bubbly intellect and upbeat spirit probably pushed away the big drinkers, the professional roustabouts, the temperamentally cynical and experienced Antarctica hands who are more her own age. They have grown close working side by side, but closer for how each offers the other an instant sense of connection, of stability and security, out of cold, thin air.

  “I think about my sisters. All their potential. The boyfriends they won’t have. The experiences they won’t have. I think about my grandmother . . . thinking she is leaving the world to a new generation, thinking her sacrifice has always been worth it for the future . . .”

  He holds up his finger to cut her off. He can’t take this pain. “Trish,” he says, trying to calm her, distract her, reason with her, “what do we do here? What’s our job, the two of us? We gather evidence, right? Well, is there any real evidence about what’s happened? No, there isn’t. Radio silence is not evidence.” He wants to say Be a cop, Trish. But he knows that would be harsh, wrong.

  She seems to only half hear him. “I know I’m doing this, thinking about my family,” she says, more hushed now, “to avoid thinking about anything broader. I know that in a way I can’t think about anything broader. That none of us can.”

  Her intuitions are probably right, he thinks: one probably can’t fully see it, can’t get adequate perspective. It makes sense that our mental capacities have subconscious self-protective limits in a situation like this. She is so smart, which doesn’t, however, stanch or compress or divert any of her raw emotion.

  “What do you think?” she asks him again. Her tone of upbeat curiosity not hiding the sense of terror forming, lurking, just beneath. Balancing, tentatively, above confusion, above despair. Stretching her long, beautiful neck to peer over the edge into the abyss.
Needing an answer.

  He has none. And, of course, she knows he has none. He has only a partial answer, a nonverbal one. Because in answer, he extends both hands to take, to hold, both of hers, and she looks at their hands together, and then up at him, as he draws her in to him, and it is suddenly, clearly, to both of them at once, exactly what she has been waiting for from him.

  They hold each other, silently. A moment of knowing and not knowing. A moment of comfort, solace that they knew would be there, and a moment of surprise to discover it, to feel it. A moment of both focus and necessary distraction. Of being alone in the world. Of being together in the world. Of hanging on for dear life. Of plunging into dear life head-on.

  27.

  The news goes around McMurdo quickly when Pritchard and Dolan succeed in configuring a Morse code device that, they say confidently, can broadcast up to fifteen hundred miles. This will give them the Argentine mainland, the South Island of New Zealand, the western edges of Australia, and—most promising of all, according to Pritchard and Dolan—several shipping lanes, whose ships still maintain Morse code capability, more out of tradition than necessity. Suddenly, tradition has become necessity. Suddenly, the primitive is back—and is a lifeline. How appropriate for Antarctica, thinks Heller.

  Pritchard spreads the news about the Morse code key. Reports it to Hobbes. Dolan doesn’t take the time to stop. He keeps working on the ham radio components. Pritchard says they are getting closer on that too.

  According to Pritchard, Dolan tapped the Morse code key every three minutes, hour after hour. They started with the international dots and dashes of SOS. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. The original international signal of distress.

  For the first thirty-six hours, there were no responses at all. Pritchard asked Dolan how they could be sure the signal was projecting. Dolan assured him it was. Showed him on the graph, on the dial, where its reach was, where its signal was reflecting.

  Pritchard described how they traded off. Dolan showed him how to work the key. How to minutely direct and redirect the transmission.

  They decided to switch from a simple SOS to an actual message.

  They debated it a little. They crafted it. Needed it short but specific, for practicality and because of their limited skills. They theorized that the SOS might have been too general, might seem like a residual signal mistake.

  They settled on MCMURDO STATION—SEEKING ANY SIGN OF LIFE.

  Again, Dolan taught the code to Pritchard, and Pritchard, a quick study, picked it up almost instantly.

  Again, they traded off. Kept awake, kept going, with coffee. Kept at it, hour after hour. With a little amphetamine too, well, more than a little, they confess, when they relate all of this in detail to Hobbes and Stanford and the rest of the leadership.

  Relating first, of course, what has just happened. What they have just heard.

  Nothing. No responses.

  An ocean, a planet, a drifting marble of silence.

  And then.

  A flurry of dots and dashes.

  Dolan jotting them down furiously.

  YES, MCMURDO, RECEIVING YOU.

  Pritchard describes the feeling to Hobbes. A dizziness. A dizzying dopamine release.

  They show Hobbes and the senior staff the text of the full communication, in Dolan’s hand.

  FIRE STATION #4 RANGER POSTED AT MOUNT USBORNE, FALKLAND ISLANDS.

  HAVE LOST ALL RADIO COMMUNICATIONS. NO OTHER CONTACT.

  AFRAID TO GO BELOW 2500 FEET INTO TOWN.

  NOT SURE WHAT’S HAPPENED.

  “Not sure what’s happened.”

  In the meeting room, they feel an inextricable mix of elation and gloom.

  At the success of the communication, at Pritchard and Dolan’s efforts, at life—some proof of life, at least—across hundreds of miles.

  But confirmation, it would seem, of a catastrophic event of apparently broad proportion.

  The ranger’s name is Winslow, Pritchard tells them. They continued to reach out to him, Pritchard says. Explained McMurdo’s communications isolation. The senior staff would pore over Dolan’s transcriptions.

  Ranger Winslow said his supply situation was not critical.

  Pritchard and Dolan agreed with Winslow’s judgment to not venture forth. To shelter in his current location, for the short term, at least. Until there is some indication of safety in descending to a lower elevation.

  Had Winslow had any other communication from anyone else, in any form at all?

  No, he had told Dolan and Pritchard. He had been trying, reaching out, exactly as they had on McMurdo, but he’d had no response.

  HANG IN THERE. KEEP LOOKING.

  YOU TOO.

  In two days, Morse code responses from Station #4 Ranger Winslow suddenly stop.

  The presumption is inevitable. Hard to escape.

  Whatever “happened” has now happened to him.

  28.

  They are crammed into the cafeteria, shoulder to shoulder. One hundred fifty-seven people. From what Heller can tell, everyone at McMurdo.

  The cafeteria is the only place that can hold them all. They have gathered together here before only for parties, for special events. A couple of weddings. And the time-honored annual New Year’s Eve tradition of screening The Thing, John Carpenter’s horror film set in Antarctica, a reliably raucous evening. All occurring during the busy, upbeat, productive high season. When McMurdo brims and bustles with close to a thousand people.

  Occasions of predictable happiness. This is neither happy nor predictable. One hundred fifty-seven people, gathering together amid the darkness. Against the darkness.

  In the room there is silence. The speculation has already spread, and there is a strong, shared undercurrent of fear and panic and confusion that everyone in the room is trying collaboratively to keep at bay. They are scientists. They will turn to science. They will immerse themselves in science, in the currency of facts, to keep other considerations, other terrors, at least for the moment, in check. To “lock themselves in the lab.” They are essentially locked in the lab now anyway. A big laboratory, a big experiment that no one applied for.

  “First of all, we have enough food and rations for well over a year,” Hobbes says to them, right off. His voice, his manner, poised between authoritative and familiar, Heller notices. Part leader, part friendly neighbor. “And we’ve already begun discussing the expansion of our hydroponic growing experiments. Expanded hydroponics can be up and running in eight months. We have the seed stock we need. In spring, we can convert and configure the extra growing space. Our sense is that if necessary, we can be self-sustaining.”

  The subtext: we can survive.

  “What about fuel?” someone calls out.

  “We have fuel for ten months, and we have the materials to expand our solar. I’m told we can increase our natural-gas efficiency easily by twenty-five percent, and we actually have extra solar panels in storage for two new buildings that we haven’t yet constructed, so we can deploy those, and we have the manpower. If we limit ourselves to the main barracks by next winter, our energy situation is sustainable.”

  We can survive.

  “We have plenty of antibiotics, sulfa drugs, and essential medical supplies. I’m going to have Doctor Calloway and Nurse Sorenson train two more of you in nursing and medical intervention.”

  We can survive.

  “Of course, this is without knowing the status or the supplies of our Russian and Argentinian counterpart stations. We’re not going to know those until winter subsides enough to get to them, or for them to get to us, or as soon as we get any kind of weather window.” In deep winter, the other stations are effectively as inaccessible as the rest of the globe. And any communication with the Russian or Argentinian stations normally routes digitally through Russia or Argentina, which seem to be part of the same communications outage, so for now there is no contact.

  And left unsaid: This is without knowing if the Russian and Argentine stations are
going to be our allies in this experiment of survival, or if they are going to see us as enemies and come after our supplies. Or if any interaction with them poses a threat of infection for us. Or if we will have to actually turn them away. Fight them off. Or if they are even there. And in what condition. All unsaid. But not unthought.

  “What about our colleagues down at Amundsen-Scott?” someone else calls out. “Any contact with them?”

  Hobbes swallows, pauses before answering. He knows it’s been on everyone’s mind. The tiny sister outpost at the South Pole, reduced to their forty-person winter-over contingent. “No, no contact. But there’s every reason to believe they’re in the same situation as us. Meaning plenty of supplies, plenty of food and medicine, no immediate peril. They—and we—will just have to wait until the weather changes enough for the Traverse Highway to be passable.

  “Look, everybody, we are in very good shape here, until we get to a seasonal point or position where we can better ascertain the extent of what’s happened or is happening north of us. And it seems unlikely that whatever has happened is universal. It still seems that this is largely a combined effect of some major event, natural or pathogenic or even radioactive, coupled with, primarily, its immediate effect on communication.”

  First and foremost, a communications event. That is still indeed most likely. What Heller can’t tell, what he can’t process, and suspects that no one can adequately process or calculate either, is whether this is just as likely a total global event or whether they simply can’t clearly conceive, as humans, a total global event.