Big Dead Place

by Nicholas Johnson

  When Jane called the HR Guy that morning to ask why the item wasn’t included in the minutes and why the bonus criteria were being changed midcontract, the HR Guy told her, “You’re a supervisor. Just buy into it.” When Jane got off the phone, she remarked that sometimes coming to the ice felt like joining a cult.

  At the same POC meeting, the Quality Assurance Representative reported that a project in which he was physically involved had been postponed the week before “due to weather.” He was cleaning out 157, which is used mainly for storage and thus minimally heated if at all. The temperature inside, he said, was down to zero. He was canceling a project “due to weather” inside a building, out of the wind, with the luxury of zero. We amused ourselves for a few days with that one. We decided that this warranted the addition of Conditions 4, 5, and 6, to denote indoor weather states with safety criteria based on nippy drafts or whether a building had plumbing with hot water.

  No one seemed to know what the Quality Guy did or why he did it. People said he showed up at their work centers and wandered around looking at things and watching people work. His Quality Assurance investigation reports turned up problems with the quality of brooms and proposed “Flag detail—acquisition and installation of new flag to fly over McMurdo.” I first met Quality Guy when I went to Pegasus with Laz to collect some Herman Nelson heaters after the April medevac flight. Quality Guy was out there for some reason. I asked him if he was at Pegasus when the plane landed.

  “Yeah.”

  “That must have been pretty cool,” I said.

  “It wasn’t much.”

  “Yeah, but I heard there were burning drums along the runway so the pilots could see and there was black smoke everywhere when the plane landed.”

  “It was just smoke,” he said. I suddenly understood why boredom was a problem in Antarctica.

  I met him again while loading half-ton triwalls of food waste into a milvan with the pickle. Two triwalls barely fit side-by-side in a milvan, so a maladjusted pallet can require fancy work to avoid splitting one of them open. I had been loading waste for a few hours and thus was in the Zone, where speed and quality of physical labor unite in job satisfaction. Inside the pickle, and in the winter dark, you are essentially blind and deaf to the rear. Because the pickles are old, everything in the cab rattles, adding to the loud engine noise.

  I rolled backwards from the milvan, barely seeing a red-coated figure in the dark walking around. Workers know not to fuck around near machines without making eye contact with the operator. I was annoyed. I put the parking brake on and opened the door, and looked out at the figure. It was Quality Guy, with his digital camera. He came over to the machine.

  “I’m just taking some pictures,” he yelled over the noise.

  I looked at him quizzically. “I told Jane about it,” he yelled, waving his hand toward the break shack where Jane was working in the office. He felt no need to explain it to me because he had already explained it to my supervisor. “Let me just get a picture of you,” he yelled. I declined with a wave of my hand and shut the door of the pickle.

  Once I had finished loading food waste, I went into the barn where Quality Guy was standing with his camera, watching Thom and Jane work. I walked over and introduced myself. He said he was there to do a QA report on Waste Management for Denver, so I explained our most recent project to him as we watched Thom use Terminator to flip a metal dumpster over on the floor of the barn.

  “We’re fixing broken dumpsters,” I explained. “Some of them have bent latches, missing braces, and severed tongues. If a rocking dumpster has a bent latch, it can sometimes roll during transport and dump trash on the road. If a dumpster has a missing brace it can be troublesome when trying to fork it, and when tongues are missing it takes more time to dump them because you have to chain the dumpster to your forks. So we’ll use a grinder, an acetylene torch, and a welder to reshape the latches, attach new braces, and mend tongues. They’re basically minor repairs, but when we move thousands of dumpsters a year the repairs can save a lot of time and annoyance.”

  Quality Guy nodded his head. He later explained to Jane that he was just there to do a “warm and fuzzy piece for Denver.”

  Later in the week at the end of the day, Laz stopped by the barn to tell me there were auroras in the sky. I crunched beside him in the cab of his loader, and we drove out to the Pass, away from the town lights. A half-mile from town we stopped, switched off the lights, and stood outside next to the idling machine and stared at the fading and intensifying green lights in the black sky. Streaks of green rose vertically, as if the earth were inside a cone of charcoal smoldering with green fire. When the aurora changed, we were in a vast box with green light leaching through a black lid barely cracked. A science writer for the San Francisco Examiner (funded by NSF for a one-week visit) once wrote that “scientists risk their necks” to “analyze the shimmering aurora that flickers across the night sky like a great curtain.” The radio in the cab of the loader crackled with voices. “Auroras at the Pass,” someone reported. Every minute or so another vehicle would speed up, park, and turn off its lights, and doors would slam in the darkness before another truck did the same, some speeding by to go further toward Scott Base and some driving up the Ob Hill road that leads to where the old nuke plant used to be, looking for the optimal view.

  After about ten minutes we got back in the loader and headed back to town.

  Later we received this email: Please read the attached message. Aurora chasing is not considered work related travel. Please adhere to the policy regarding no personal use of Government vehicles.

  Thank you!

  -----Original Message-----

  From: Scott, Jim

  Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2001 6:28 AM

  To: [Franz]

  Subject: Vehicle Use

  It has come to the attention of DHQ that government vehicles in McMurdo continue to be used for personal reasons. Please discuss with the community ASAP that this use of government property is unacceptable. Every person on station was briefed of this when they arrived. If they respond differently they are not being honest. But to provide them with one final warning, please counsel all personnel that government vehicles are “not to be used for personal travel or convenience.”

  Any person who further abuses this policy will be given a written notice. This will be entered into their file in HR and it will impact their bonus.

  Regards,

  Jim Scott

  McMurdo Station Area Mgr.

  I had spent the morning repairing dumpsters. I stopped grinding at 11:30 and took a loader to lunch. Down the hill, three pedestrians were almost to the awkward island of the three-road main intersection in town. I pulled a quick right through the stop sign, rolled down to the Galley, parked the loader, set the forks on the ground, placed the accelerator stick so the machine wouldn’t wet stack, and walked the hundred yards or so to 155.

  One of the pedestrians was coming down the road. I couldn’t see who it was but I waved routinely. As I was going in the door, the pedestrian, station manager Franz, pulled down his hood and scowled. “You should stop at that stop sign,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said mechanically.

  “Especially with the NSF Rep there,” he added. “It looks bad.”

  “I used to work with a guy who was deaf in one ear,” Sasha told us at lunch as we fed on squares of greasy pizza and oily pasta salad. “When we became friends I asked him how he lost his hearing.”

  “You won’t believe me,” he had told her.

  “Yes I will. Otherwise I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Do you promise not to laugh? I never tell anyone because they laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh. That would be terrible,” she had said.

  When he was a kid his friend had a monkey. One day he went to his friend’s house and they were playing with the monkey when suddenly the monkey latched onto his head and started fucking him in the ear.

  “It was so hard not to laugh
,” Sasha said as we choked on our food.

  “Did the monkey come in his ear, or did it break the eardrum?” Jane snorted.

  “I think monkeys are just dirty, so it infected the guy’s ear.”

  “Well, yeah,” said Thom, “it sure was a dirty monkey.”

  CHAPTER 9 NOTES

  1 “Mesothelioma is a cancer of either the pleural lining or the lining of the abdomen. It is a fatal cancer believed to have little or no threshold limit; theoretically, exposure to asbestos through inhalation for as little as one day could spur the cancer, which may not be detected for fifteen to twenty years.”—AECOM report

  2 Appendix 2

  3 Appendix 3

  4 “Quality video production services go a long way to effectively support and expose science projects that outline the purpose for USAP. With a video production department working side by side with public affairs, we could make a useful department more effective, thus increasing exposure and possibly future funding for the NSF. The possibilities are endless. Lets [sic] put our resources together to come up with a Video Production Plan to take us into the new millenium [sic].”—McMurdo Radio and Television Broadcasting and Video Production, AFAN Affiliate Station Manager/Executive Video Producer

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE ANTARCTIC SERVICE AWARDS

  We live in a golden age of science, which we hope will continue to unlock the secrets of the unknown for the benefit of all humankind.

  —Dr. Neal Lane, NSF Director

  Great holes secretly are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.

  —H. P. Lovecraft

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  June 19, 2001

  I am pleased to send warm greetings for Midwinter’s Day 2001 to the scientists, researchers, and other professionals from around the world who are stationed in Antarctica. This June 21 observance is a special time to recognize your contributions to learning and knowledge.

  More than 40 years ago, 12 nations pledged their commitment to a unique experiment based on international cooperation, scientific understanding, and peaceful co-existence. The Antarctic Treaty brought together an international community of scientists to collaborate on new discoveries and shared global problems.

  Today, the international science community working in Antarctica is carrying on this proud legacy, helping us to learn more about global processes affecting Earth’s environment. Consequently, we will have the solid scientific information we need to develop sound environmental policies. Exciting discoveries, like the recent astrophysical breakthroughs in understanding the nature of the Universe at its infancy, also inspire young people to sharpen their math and science skills and to prepare for the opportunities of tomorrow.

  The United States is proud to support your important work in Antarctica. Your spirit of cooperation, demonstrated recently by an international effort to rescue a sick colleague at the South Pole, inspires people everywhere. I applaud you for your courage and professional dedication as you work in a tough and unforgiving environment.

  As you observe Midwinter’s Day 2001, I send best wishes for a productive and rewarding experience in Antarctica. May God bless you and bring you safely home to your families.

  George W. Bush

  McMURDO STATION

  ANTARCTICA

  July 4, 2001

  Dear Mr. Bush,

  Thank you very much for your warm Midwinter’s Day greeting. Midwinter’s Day is an important holiday for us in Antarctica as it marks the halfway point of our service to international scientific cooperation this winter. I wish to return your acknowledgment of our holiday here with the warmest greetings for you on Independence Day.

  Though I am a garbageman and I spent Independence Day sorting through vomit-covered aluminum cans, the warm glow of your Midwinter’s Day greeting reminded me of my contribution to learning and knowledge. In your letter you addressed “scientists, researchers, and other professionals” so I have humbly included myself in the greeting. Actually, at McMurdo, the largest U.S. station in Antarctica, there are exactly zero scientists serving here this winter. There is a science tech who fixes some of the automatic data collecting machines. He must be the researcher you mentioned. The other two hundred of us contract-workers such as janitors, plumbers, and construction workers must be the other professionals you mentioned. I’m glad we are helping students become better at math and science. In all honesty, I was never very good at math or science, which might be why my clothes caught on fire today while I was grinding down the surface of a dumpster for repairs. I am very good at reading and writing though. Perhaps you could send a greeting to U.S. students to tell them that math and science will help them be a fraction of the Antarctic population while reading and literature will help them be garbagepersons with burning clothes.

  Of course, one of the greatest benefits of serving international scientific cooperation in Antarctica is the natural beauty that we encounter as we do our daily work. The storms are fantastic to see, and bright green auroras sometimes appear in the sky. Actually, because of the streetlights at McMurdo, we can’t see the auroras unless we travel about a mile out of town. Recently we have been forbidden to do so by the National Science Foundation, the government agency who runs the station, because all the vehicles, here in this cold desolate place where we eke out our existence in unspeakable polar climes in service of science, are government property and we are told that if we drive away to look at auroras for ten minutes we will be terminated. Since you are in charge of the government, I was wondering if you could give us permission to use the government property vehicles to drive one mile out of town for ten minutes when we see an aurora in the sky, not more than once per week, say, just to be fair. We could walk out to see the auroras, I suppose. Today the temperature here was -32F and windchills were below -80F. How cold is it in Washington D.C.?

  With all respect, I hope you had a glorious and heartwarming Independence Day full of amazing friendship.

  Darin Nicholas Johnson

  I realized one week in early July that it had become difficult to imagine being elsewhere. At the end of each day I stood at the fuel pumps looking down at the ice pier while my loader filled with diesel, then drove away with no one to pay. We filled five-gallon juice coolers in the office of the Heavy Shop when we needed water for the break shack. We lived within a twominute walk of a meal prepared by someone else. We knew each other too well. We received mail according to weather and season. We saw everywhere at all times ice-covered roads, tendrils of snow, growing drifts, diesel smoke, and lines of dumpsters. I practically lived in a Caterpillar—what would I do elsewhere when I needed to move a five-ton steel box? I could barely remember how things were anywhere else.

  I mumbled this to Jane (“Caterpillar allatime. No grocery shopping”). She agreed that our routines were overwhelming. She pointed out that to walk into the Galley and sit down with a table of people one didn’t normally sit with would be a very strange thing. Though we still had a few months left, the social code discouraged new relationships. If you didn’t know someone already, there was little chance left in the season of getting to know him or her, although when the Winfly crowd arrived the winter-overs would all nod at each other in the halls. Our cliques had solidified, comfortable and courteous, with a tinge of uneasiness marring any extraordinary encounter.

  Ivan and I began to play Tomb Raider on weekday evenings, whereas previously we had only played on the weekends. After playing the game for a few hours here and there all winter, we were on the last level. Once a level is completed (weapons found, foes killed, treasures collected), a short animation rewards the video-narcotized gamer with the next installment in the game’s story. The ravenous treasure-seeking and slaughter of wild dogs overshadow the finer points, but in Tomb Raider 3 the story goes something like this: You are out to collect ancient artifacts also sought by other forces, both evil and good. One of the evil forces is a company tha
t uses the ancient magic of the artifacts to mutate humans into murderous monstrosities. After three or four levels, after you have collected all the artifacts you thought necessary to complete the game, a purportedly good force shows itself to be an agent of the evil company and steals all your artifacts. Now, in order to complete the game, you must battle the company at its research headquarters to regain the artifacts that you worked so hard for. On the next level you are surrounded by ice and snow in Antarctica.

  We battled half-seal, half-human mutants and researchers with red parkas and automatic weapons. We stepped over their corpses and rummaged through their offices looking for clues to the whereabouts of our artifacts. On the office walls were maps of Antarctica just like ours.

  “Dude, do you think we’re the first in Antarctica to get to Antarctica?” I asked Ivan. “Mutant.”

  “I see it.” Ivan dispatched the mutant with a shot to the head. “Good question.” He shrugged with his eyebrows. “Even if we’re not, we’re probably the first in Dorm 207 to get to Antarctica. And if that’s not somethin’ to be proud of, then I’ll let that mutant eat my head.” Ivan shot the mutant.