Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  We asked the Fire Chief for one of the old CPR training dolls. We didn’t know what it had to do with Black-Ops, but it seemed like a good prop. He brought it to the Barn one day with an extra suitcase full of fake blood, wounds, and make-up used for victims at Mass Casualty Drills. Astonishingly, rubber lacerations and burns had been requisitioned, flown to Antarctica, and entered into inventory. The frontier required this equipment. One of the wounds had a tube poking through it that ran to a bulb at the other end for squirting fake blood.

  The Fire Chief stayed for a few minutes. He told me about a disaster training class he had taken in Montana. The instructor took them out to lunch, and when they returned to the classroom several of the students found fake bombs planted in their belongings. This was a lesson to them, the instructor said, in how easy it is to plant bombs. The Fire Chief spoke of the meth labs of Missoula. He said many of them were boobytrapped to injure intruders or destroy evidence. The Fire Chief was excited about these meth labs. So was I.

  I had acquired a taste for Disaster Culture in Texas, training to be on McMurdo’s Spill Response Team. Solid Waste, Haz, and Remediation workers were flown to Galveston to attend a week-long course in Spill Management at the Texas A&M extension college. We slept in the Hilton, swam in the pool, and woke up early to gather in the lobby and drive out to our classroom, a small building tucked between the freeway and some filthy body of water. In the mornings our instructor showed us videos of successfully managed oil spills and taught us how to reclaim “product” in various environments through the use of containment boom, sorbent, and little oleophilic balls that soak up oil but not water. Everyone loved the word “oleophilic,” and we used it whenever possible.

  Our instructor was an expert on managing spilled contaminants. He wore cowboy boots, had a white ring on his back pocket from a tobacco can, and always tucked his t-shirt in. He continually smiled shyly, as if permanently embarrassed, and a Texas accent bobbed on his patient voice. He looked like a boy but occasionally mentioned his wife. He taught us about the properties of benzene and diesel and other common solvents. His repetitive lecture style dulled the subject somewhat, but there was usually enough enticing jargon to make up for it. We learned about the Incident Command System, the pros and cons of each oleophilic system, how to set up decon stations, and how to keep journalists satisfied with minimal information.

  An array of brochures filled the cabinets at the rear of the classroom. A trade magazine called Fire Talk had a picture of a state-of-the-art emergency response dummy of a person with a severed leg, and articles mentioned “local, state, and federal players.” The magazine showcased the Communimeter, designed to measure “communication effectiveness,” and had an article on an emergency response cartoonist who does a comic called Manimals “about animals doing or saying things common to humans.” The cover story was about “Disaster City,” built solely to train for disaster. “Disaster City will provide a realistic city infrastructure,” it read, including a strip mall, an apartment building, and an office complex “all in various stages of collapse.” A map of Disaster City marked “Freight Train Derailment,” “Single Family Building Collapse,” and the “Weapons of Mass Destruction Office.” When I asked our instructor if he had been to Disaster City, he said, “Oh yeah. And I tell you, that place is somethin’ else.”

  In the afternoons we cleaned up ruptured barrels of pretend benzene or scrubbed orange soap contaminant from each other’s chemical suits at a rehearsal decon station. Our instructor had us walk around the building in the heat to illustrate how uncomfortable and cumbersome the suits were. As I walked around the building, looking something like a tottering white robot, a man watering his garden watched me from across the murky slough. I waved to him, but he just glared, so I wondered if these strange processions had crushed his property value.

  Other times our instructor took us to a beach on an even filthier body of water crowded with shipbuilding yards, repair docks, and disused oil rig platforms. We trained for Antarctic spills on this beach in Texas, where it was always at least 100°F and black flies ate us alive. A man in a motorboat spilled cotton seed in the water to simulate fuel, and we contained it using boats and boom and assorted oleophilic devices, while our manager pretended to be a journalist who interfered with our operation.

  In the middle of an uneventful day, Jane and I were cleaning out a skua bin in the barn. Some evil fucker the previous summer had brought down hundreds of little plastic E.T. figurines, which had infected the station like a virus. No one could resist putting one on top of the computer monitor, or by the phone, or on the counter next to the pencil holder. Whether you went to get a part at the Heavy Shop or to put in a work order at FEMC, or to ask a question at Finance, one of these things would be there, somewhere on the desk, looking cute. They infested the skua bins: I found them fallen in Tupperware containers and coffee mugs, in boxes of food, trapped in folds of clothing, or scattered at the bottom of the bin. We surmised that it would be years, maybe even a decade, before the alien-figurine population normalized.2 I didn’t know if these things had made it to Pole yet, but I was determined to stop their advance, so I threw them away whenever I came across them.

  In one of the bins Jane found an old boot with pills in it. Later we got on the Internet and in a few minutes determined by their identification code that they were meclizine, a boring old antihistamine. It would have been much more difficult to identify the bootful of pills were it not for the Internet, which has of course changed the stations deeply. Since the Internet arrived, Antarctica is just down the street from Denver and Washington. Directives from off-ice managers are disseminated to all relevant persons and have immediate influence. Bulk threats against the employees’ bonuses can be administered daily rather than at occasional meetings. Even the lowliest supervisors sometimes report to off-ice managers, and easy communication exacerbates Denver’s tendency to think of the Antarctic stations as mere annexes to its office park, where Midwinter’s Day is no longer an observed holiday.

  When the Internet first arrived, people took handwritten messages to the Chalet, where the National Science Foundation censored them, then typed and sent them to the specified email address, which was, for many people, that of a man in Pennsylvania who for years printed or retyped emails from the stations and mailed them to the specified physical address.3 Internet access has long been commonplace, and these days workers can easily write stories for their hometown papers, even in the winter.

  With communal computers, problems inevitably arise when people forget to log out of their accounts. Some of the stunts are mild, as when the Safety Guy didn’t log out and someone sent an all-station email from his account saying that ice had been renamed “Safetywater.” Some of the pranks have been far more abrasive, however. When a winter-over survey was taken and a happy-go-lucky woman won a “Good Citizen Award,” she received an American flag that had been flying on one of the buildings for many years and had recently been replaced. One of the town Stamp Collectors, whom I will call “Scott,” protested that he deserved the flag, presumably because of his dedication to preserving local historic relics. An unwitting bystander, whom I will call “Shackleton,” forgot to log out of his terminal one day, and someone wrote this message to “Scott” from “Shackleton’s” account:

  From: [Shackleton]

  Subject: American Flag

  Dear Miss [Scott]. I say “MISS [Scott]” because you are obviously a very little girl hiding inside an amazingly ugly man’s body. I’ll keep this brief…

  Fuck you and your American flag bullshit!!!!!! You claim to be a veteran? Maybe a veteran of cocksucking and having a dick shoved up your ass but other than that you are less than human you piece of worthless white trash motherfucking shit!!!!!!!

  How fucking dar [sic] you claim to be more deserving of anything at all including an American flag?

  If it will make you happy, I will gladly buy you a flag of your own and then shove it up your fucking ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!r />
  You suck! Your whole existance [sic] is an offence [sic] to all that is good and pure in this world! If you love this place so much then why don’t you throw yourself into a crevasse and become a part of it!!!!

  I shit on you! I jerk off and shoot sperm on you! You probably like that though don’t you because you are obviously a sick and perverted individual!!!!!!!

  Cry Baby [Scott]! That is how you will be remembered down here! Do you like that?

  WHAAAAAA!!!! WHAAAAAA!!!! WHAAAAAAA! I want a flag too!!!!!!!!

  There is nothing in this world that can be done to you that is horrible enough to compensate for the sick, useless life that you have lead [sic] so I pray to God that he will see fit to punish you in a very deserving fashion.

  [Scott], you are the woest [sic] excuse of humanity that has ever walked the earth!!!!!!!!!

  The only good thing is that you are obviously impotent and cannot get an erection with a woman therefore you can not [sic] breed more fucking dick-drip assholes like yourself!!!!!!!!!!

  You just keep fucking other wasted old men like yourself. Up the ass is what you like and deserve. You are the sickest thing ever!

  If you fuck with [the good citizen] and her flag again then be prepared to die you shit eating enema loving dick licking fuckwad !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Hey! I heard that you love to eat forskins [sic] for breakfast. That does not surprise me because you are the most fucked up person to step on this rock.

  PLEASE DIE [SCOTT]! PLEASE DIE [SCOTT]! PLEASE DIE [SCOTT]!!!!!!

  Receiving an email like this in the middle of winter in an isolated community of 200 people is troubling. “Scott” immediately reported this correspondence to HR, who hauled in “Shackleton” for questioning. “Shackleton” had obviously not written the email, but regretted not logging off; he apologized to “Scott”, and all was forgiven. News of the event trickled through the grapevine. In an uncanny turn of events, “Scott” one day forgot to log out of his account, from which someone sent this message to “Shackleton.”

  Subject: A Lifetime of Mistakes

  [Shackleton],

  I must admit I have made a mistake. When I first received your message I was taken aback.

  I was taken aback for two reasons. First by the fact that someone would hate me as much as you obviously do. Secondly I was disturbed by the fact that someone I barely even know has seen beneath the facade I have carefully constructed over an entire lifetime.

  You are absolutely dead on in your characterization of me. I do love to eat foreskins. I do love to fuck and be fucked by old men. My dick does drip relentlessly from years of self abuse. I realize now that if someone I hardly know has seen beneath my facade I should do away with it completely. It takes a tremendous effort to maintain and, as you have pointed out, I am an old man.

  Thank you for showing me the error of my ways. It’s bold people such as yourself that can truly help people and allow them to take a real look at the way they are.

  Thank you again so much [Shackleton].

  Love,

  [Scott]

  PS If you are ever lonely and need to talk please feel free to approach me.

  Right after work one night at 5:30, Jane and I went to Southern. It was a special occasion; usually the bar didn’t open until 7:30. This rare Happy Hour at the bar was renamed “Social Hour” so as not to suggest drinking. We all showed up in our work clothes to eat tacos and jalapeño poppers and drink beer. Even though all the food came from the same frozen inventory, it was a welcome change from the routine of eating in the Galley.

  At Southern, Jeannie reminded me that I was subbing for her on the bowling team that night. Their bowling team, consisting of Ivan, Nero, Jeannie, and Kevin, was called The All-Hand Jobs until someone complained and the HR Guy told them to change their name.

  Both of the McMurdo lanes are warped. The pin-setting machines are operated by attendants, who get paid about five bucks an hour after work to sit on an elevated shelf behind the lanes until the ball smashes through the pins and thuds into a carpeted barrier, whereupon the pin-setter hops from the shelf, rolls the ball to the bowlers on a track between the lanes, gathers the pins into the pin-setting machine, then manually lowers them onto the lane in the usual formation. Rumor has it that these are the only two manual pin-setting machines in the world, and that Brunswick has tried to get their hands on them by offering to replace them with fully automated lanes. In the bowling alley are about a hundred balls, an old ballwashing machine, a stereo so bowlers can argue over what to play next, and a fridge full of beer that works on the honor system, with each bowler paying one of the pin-setters, who emerges rattled from his post at the end of the match.

  After bowling that night, we went to Southern for a drink. The team trademark was to wear afro wigs procured from the Rec department’s costume closet, and we wore these at the bar also. While Ivan and I waited at the bar for drinks, Nero and Kevin went into the bathroom. While they were taking a piss, Ted the Racist came in.

  Antarctica is difficult for white racists, because there are almost no minorities to hate. So, in the quirky spirit of ingenuity at the last place on earth, the devout racist must improvise.

  “What is this,” said Ted, “some kind of nigger-pissin’ convention?”

  Though no urinal was free, Ted already had his dick in his hand.

  “Hey man, what are you flapping about?” Nero asked.

  “Nigger, nigger, nigger,” Ted spewed.

  “Whatever, man…”

  Kevin made robot noises. They finished pissing and left.

  At the bar Nero told me what had happened. Later he described how HR had recently ordered him to remove from his door a photo of two bunnies humping in the wild.

  One Saturday in mid-May we had an All-Hands Meeting, our first since the medevac plane had left in late April. We crowded into the Galley in our work clothes. The first speaker was the technician who maintains lab equipment. There was not a single scientist in McMurdo this winter, but if anyone could be labeled a “researcher” to make it easy on the newspapers in the U.S., it would be he. He showed us some video footage of the volcanic activity in Mt. Erebus accompanied by the Pink Floyd song “One of These Days (I’m Going to Cut You Into Little Pieces).” Afterwards he told us that the green laser in the Crary Lab had been fixed, and that if we wanted to see it we could call him and he would turn it on for us. He reminded us not to climb on the roof to look at it from above, because it would permanently blind us.

  In the winter the green laser shoots from the top of Crary into the sky while everyone goes about their business. To see this green laser while I hauled garbage was the central reason I had decided to winter. In a strange world hardened by routine, the rub between the fantastic and the mundane creates a spellbinding itch.

  The next speaker was the winter Galley Manager, with whom I had worked my first year down here, when he was the baker. I would take breaks from washing pots to hear his stories about being a chef in the Playboy Mansion, where he spent much of the time making hot dogs and PBJs. Now he told us that his new oven had been stolen. Parts of it had been sent to him with ransom notes, threatening its destruction unless he sang “I’m a Little Teapot” at the All-Hands Meeting. He sang one verse and sat down, but everyone cheered for more, so he did it again, and we cheered even louder.4

  Then the Operations Manager took the floor and reminded us to check the hours on our machines, and to remember to bring in our machines for PMs, or Preventive Maintenance. “Also,” he said, “if you have an accident, you need to report it.”

  Then Franz, the new Station Manager, stood up to talk. He had replaced the previous station manager, who went out on the medevac flight. Before his new appointment he had been working as a supervisor in Materials. Though he was a fingee, Denver liked him for his management experience in a hotel in suburban Denver.

  I had first met Franz in the summer, when he was Butch’s roommate. One day after work Butch and I were hanging out in his
room shooting the shit. When Franz came in from work, he busied himself on his side of the room for a while before saying to Butch:

  “So, I’m going to take a shower now. I’ll be five or ten minutes. Then the place is yours.”

  Butch looked at him without understanding.

  “I’ll just be five or ten minutes,” Franz repeated, suggesting that we leave the room so he could take a shower, in the bathroom, behind a closed door that had a lock.

  Franz read some statistics from a study he had scavenged on the Internet concerning the psychological effects of wintering in Antarctica. “Many of you at this time of year will have sleeping problems,” he said, “and may become depressed, irritable, or bored. Five percent of you,” he said, “will suffer effects that will clinically categorize you as in need of psychological treatment.”

  I was excited to see what personal dementias I would face, and realized that if my disrupted circadian rhythms or thyroid activity were to show any symptoms, since it was May now, they should be kicking in any day. I wondered if I would collect pictures of animals, or draw eyes on all my belongings, or come to despise asymmetrical shadows.

  In the dark ages a withered priest might have warned us that the Devil was on the loose and that we had to purge ourselves of sin. Now we had scientific evidence to remind us, via a former hotel manager, that the individual’s predetermined behavior and aberrations are the product of devilishly powerful external forces, such as the planet’s tilt. There was little practical reason for any manager to warn us of winter psychological effects, since they are disregarded in daily affairs. You would still be written up for tardiness, regardless of “sleeping problems.” A “support program” for the “depressed” would not be authorized until the end of winter. And “irritability” would still be met with dorm room inspections in your absence. Whatever the initial intent of these academic psychological studies, their field application is as an orientation to employee culpability.