My fingers were cold on the keyboard. The air was only getting cooler with the coming of night. It was going to only get colder. Morning was nearly twenty four hours off. I had a long night ahead of me.
The arctic research station was nearly empty. Staff members were switching out, so we just had a skeleton crew. I was monitoring changes out no the ice. Something had shifted deep in the arctic. We didn’t know what.
I tapped the keyboard and switch to a different camera. The feed was grainy. The camera hadn’t switched to night vision yet. Eventually it would need to switch to thermals, as night vision wouldn’t cut it in the deep night.
The wind kicked up a swirl of snow. It was hard to tell if the snow was coming down or going up. It was probably both. It didn’t matter, really. I was going to keep the doors locked. The heater on low. The less attention drawn to the facility the better.
I switched cameras. The Aurora was out. I yearned to see it in person. It’d been a few weeks since I’d last seen it. I shook my head. I might never see it again. No, I can’t think like that. The next crew will be here in a few days. I’ll be off duty in twenty four hours. Nothing will happen to me.
It’s been an hour. Nothing is moving out there. It’s so beautiful. It’s bleak. I love the arctic. It’s magical. The pattern of the snow fall is enigmatic. I tap on the screen. That looks like it’s falling in a pattern. That doesn’t happen.
I switch cameras. I don’t want to see whatever it is that is making that pattern. Maybe someone left a tarp up above the camera that I can’t see. Maybe they left some heat lamps on under all that snow and it’s melting like that.
The wind moans through the camera feed. It’s ramping up again. I sip my coffee. It’s too hot to drink still. I can barely taste the coffee. It mostly just tastes hot. It’s been in the damn thermos for an hour already. I leave the top open to let some steam escape. I need to judge it carefully though. Leave it open too long and it’ll cool down too quickly.
I switch cameras, again. This one is a wide range shot of the facility. All the equipment is wrapped up tight under tarps. There wasn’t enough room in the garage for all the gear. Some of it had to be left mostly in the elements. It made getting it up and running a bear. The damn things would need to be put onto sleds and dragged into the garage to warm. Then they will need to be checked top to bottom for frozen lines. It’s ugly when something’s frozen. It’s happened before. I wasn’t here then, but Tom over there will never walk right again. I’m surprised he’s allowed to still be out here. Let alone when it’s just Tom, me, and Sue.
Another hour has passed. I’m writing up a report. I’ve bounced back to the strange snow fall. The patterns is still there. It’s grown now. It’s probably 15cm tall or something like that. It’s hard to tell from the angle, but it’s growing faster than the snow on the other feeds.
Of course we all watched the Thing, the ’82 version, because it’s the best. When you’re alone like this, you can’t help but think of things like that. It’s not just because of the lonesomeness. It’s the strange lights.
The aurora isn’t the only thing in the sky. Oh no. There are some ‘drones’ flying around out there. How they are flying in the cold we have out there, is beyond me. Ice ought to be forming on the drone’s body fast enough to drain the battery and cause the thing to crash to the ground. Hell, the cold should do the battery in itself.
That’s the other problem with leaving that equipment under the tarps in the weather. The batteries die in each and every machine. We of course use rechargeable batteries, but even those get damaged by the cold. I’ve taken to pulling the batteries out before leaving them out there for an extended period of time. I didn’t wrap all of them up though. There’s no telling how many are going to be deader than that animal there.
Wait, where did that come from. I switch through the camera feeds. I look for foot prints or something. With the wind and the snow kicked up the way it is, all traces of footsteps are gone. I pull up the history for two cameras on another screen. I rewind. The animal just appears. I rewind thirty or so seconds before the animal shows up and advance frame by frame. Thankfully, this is only 30 frames per second, so it’d only be 90 frames. If it was 60 frames per seconds I’d be more upset.
About two frames before the animal appears, I spot a blur of motion on the feed. The animal looks like it fell down in front of the camera. I pull up the facility layout map. I change views so I can see multiple miniaturized camera feeds in realistic spacing.
The camera is mounted on a light post. There is no where to fall from to land there. I pick a camera feed or two and check to see if we have full coverage of the lamp post. We do. Our security team is good. They knew what they were doing.
Another hour has past. The storm has picked up. The animal isn’t getting buried. I leave the camera up with the animal’s corpse. I pull up on another screen the two cameras with unobstructed view of the first camera. One of the them is well zoomed out with a full view of the entire lamp post.
The animal flies into the frame, two thirds up. it briefly clips out of the frame and falls suddenly. The arc of the fall is unnatural. Nothing should fall like that. The animal should have cared at least another 20 feet before it crashed to the ground. It looks like it hit a wall.
I slow down the animal’s landing. No, it looks more like it hit something and slid backwards towards the lamppost’s camera. Towards the other camera. The third camera looks to have an unobstructed view, but the animal doesn’t appear. It should appear, right, there. Next frame. next frame. There’s a shadow, there’s the thing falling. there it landed.
It’s four frames late. That’s not too long, but it means something is obscuring the view that I don’t understand. I return to the map, I try to trace where the animal would have come into that frame. I’m excited. I’m not even sure why. That animal is big. It may not be the size of a full grown polar bear, but it is a big ass sea lion if it’s what i think it is.
I drink more coffee. It’s finally at a reasonable temperature. It’s passable coffee. Nothing to write home about. I have a few pounds of coffee coming in with the next crew. The good stuff. I’ll keep it in the freezer so it stays fresh. Eash to do when the whole fucking lab is in a freezer.
I return to the camera feeds. I find the feed where it might have come from. I rewind to match where the animal comes into frame on the second camera. Then i rewind frame by frame until i can see whatever it is, being launched in the air.
There is nothing there. A blur of motion. the animal a blur in the air, but nothing else on the camera feed. I switch over to the night vision mode. It’s better. I can see something moving a bit more on the screen. It’s impossible to tell what it is beyond a bloby grainy green shape.
I switch to thermals. Nothing much there. Which could just be a well insulated something. It’s not like polar bears or other artic animals have much of a heat signature.
I switch to the camera with the snow building up. It’s still making that same shape. Now, though, it’s starting to conform to a specific three dimensional object. I can make out two legs forming with a mess of equipment around the legs.
I switch back to the animal. I check it in thermals. There’s a quickly cooling spot of heat. Suddenly there’s a plume of hot air over the animal. I can see the outline of a canid like snout. Maybe it is a polar bear. Suddenly a well of heat surges out of the animal. Gouts of high temperature spatter all over the canid. An outline appears and quickly ebbs away.
I switch cameras to let the animal eat in peace. Nothing else interesting going on. I drink more coffee. Eventually, the coffee gets to me and I need a quick break. I, of course, take the opportunity to refill my thermos and grab a bite to eat. Sitting like this was boring and food, especially noddles, made the long wait better. They were entertaining to eat with chopsticks.
I sat back down. I dropped my thermos in shock. Something was staring at the camera. hot breath periodically misted over the lens. The canid face was still present. The height was all wrong for a wolf or other sort of dog. A bear could certainly stand that high, but the ears were wrong. They were big and tall, like a fox or wolf. Not the small rounded that bears had.
The animal seemed to know I was back. It smiled. It was a toothy grin. I switched my camera to the accumulating snow. It’d grown quickly while I was gone. It was a man sitting at a desk. Nothing offensive or anything like that. It looked like the desk would be home to a computer and a few monitors.
It was then, I saw the pattern on the socks. It was the same was the ones I was wearing. I rocked back in my chair. I nearly lost balance as I was physically hit with this realization.
The canid stomped onto screen. Clearly satisfied with whatever terror it could have provoked in me. It sat next to the figure. Watching it grow. It turned to me with an evil grin. I continued to cycle through the cameras. Each feed more ominous than the last. This was not the only canid here. there were more. Some fought, some mated, but most waited. It wsa unnerving. I continued to cycle through the cameras. more and more of the same. The only view without a growing scene of the canids was the one partially blocking that original animal.
Two more hours pass. It’s been five hours. I leave my desk and heat up my food. It’s lunch time. or is it dinner time. It’s impossible to tell on days like this when it is or what day it is. Either way, I’m hungry. I bring back a bowl of soup. I’m still cold. I hope the soup may warm my frigid fingers.
The animals have surrounded the figure at the desk. It has resolved into a man. It has resolved into me. It has a bowl of soup. I can see snow falling into the soup, vaguely looking like the steam i see rising from my own bowl.
I cautiously eat my soup. Without any warning, a canid launched itself at the snow man. I expected it to pass straight through. I felt its teeth clamp down on my arm. My forearm bones shatter. The canid aggressively shakes its head. My arm rips off. I fly backwards from my seat. The snow man does too. The pack attacks. I’m devoured. The pain is sublime.
I look at the camera. I see a man looking back at me. He looks vaguely familiar.