Warm company from a cold and strange place. These are transmissions from Jaran, the facility manager at the Deep Earth Anomaly Department, East Antarctica. The radio may or may not work, but he is keeping a log.
Strange things happen. Figures appear at the edge of the ice. Entities arrive, sometimes out of nowhere. And a facility unit named Ingrid does her best.
Hey there. This is Johan, facility manager at the Deep Earth Anomaly Department, located on the coastal strip in East Antarctica. I'm signing in for yet another cold shift. We've been on a high level lockdown for a week now. A week that has felt more like a month and a week to be honest, and then let me tell you it's been great. I mean nothing has really changed. And for some strange reason there has been less to do than usual, which is nice, but also a bit of a mystery. Because okay, let me start from the top. Someone has been doing my work for me and during the day when I'm sleeping. And Ingrid is on top of my list of suspects, but she hasn't said anything, and and her alibi is tight. It would hold up in court a million times. It is tight like a hundred-year-old fisherman's knot, you know. Also, Ingrid would never crack during interrogation, so. Yeah. Another suspect of mine is is Thomas Grind. As he seems like a fellow who can't help himself to do the work of others if it doesn't meet his criteria. I think my work does, just for the record. You know, I don't want you, old divers from the far future, to think that I'm lazy, man or boy. You know. Joshua is also a suspect, but only because he is here. I I really don't think he would bother. Joshua is, if anything, busy. Not that he wouldn't want to help, but I think when he gets his machine working, the faster-than-light travel machine, he can travel back in time and do it all before I was even born. Anyways, the fact is that someone is doing my work while I've been asleep and uh I love it. You know, it it gives me more time to work on my music, to write some logs for the archive of logged and lost data entries, uh, Antarctic Division, which is our local facility system. A system I bet Thomas designed as well. It wouldn't surprise me at all at this point. Also, without much to do, boredom presents itself, and and let me tell you, boredom is a super motivator. So every evening um we have gathered in the common room for a get-together. First going through boring stuff, you know, security protocols, preparing ourselves to either flee or hide. If the comet thinks, you know, the the the the things maybe living inside the comet, that if anything lives inside the comet at all, you know. You know, if they or it or whatever it is should decide to harvest our organs and pluck out our eyes. Or worse, I mean, who knows? So we need a plan for that, which we have been working on. Uh be prepared, not scared, as I've always said. But yeah, we we we've had fun, you know. Every evening I've uh been performing my songs for everyone on my ukulele. Thomas Grind has been reading poems. Bleak and abstract poems, I must admit. One went like this Death is death. What life is life? I mean, it's so pessimistic, right? Joshua, on the other hand, didn't do much to begin with as I think his mind is very occupied by his latest advancement on his faster than light device. You know, he's now able to shoot color particles across millennia, and it came back faded. Amazing. He has been talking about or muttering about doing human tests soon, but I think he should be talked out of it, to be honest. I I know it's tempting to advance his project further, but he should be patient. Unless he wants to become a patient. Am I right? You know, after all, color particles are not the same as a tall, huge bear of a man. It's not the same at all. Also, I don't like the very probable risk that the entire deep earth anomaly department could go along with it. Um I just don't like it. If I did like it, I would know for a fact that I was insane. Which means I wouldn't know. Insane people rarely do, so. Anyways, what I'm trying to say, the the get-togethers have been amazing. Ingrid also did a dance on uh on one of the evenings, which Flabberg gassed at me, you know, she's a pure talent, machine or not. Just amazing. Then the other night, as I was about to announce my retirement from the Shindig, so to speak, uh Joshua suddenly looked up and began talking. And his his voice, it sounds like a ship being dragged through a mountain valley. And he looked a bit distant, like the shine in his eyes had dimmed and his lips hardly moved as he spoke. And he said, I saw no blue, he said. Then looked at us as if we knew what he was talking about. Extrapolate, said Thomas Grind. So Joshua extrapolated. He dived into every detail about his work on the faster than light device, the galactic obeyer, as he calls it. Or go sometimes. Scientists and their their acronyms, they I do love their acronyms. Anyways, Joshua said that all blue had gone. Gone away. Not a photon to be seen, he said. What? I said. Where is it? I asked. Then he told us that the galactic obeyer, or the go sometimes, uh records everything as it travels. And in his latest test run, it managed to go four and a half times around the planet in less than a second. Which is pretty fast, let me let me tell you. So fast, in fact, that it arrives a second earlier than the second it takes to go around Earth. In other words, at the same time as it leaves. In other words, to the observer, it looks like it never left. I've seen it myself, it just stood there. So yeah, Joshua continued his extrapolation. He said, the go is travelling so fast that it is in fact travelling through time, he said. Which it shouldn't, he said. But that's not important, he said. Because the galactic obeyer, he told us, or the go sometimes, is equipped with a camera that shoots a few photos every second. When I say few, sixty-eight thousand images per second to be exact. And it doesn't know it it also collects dust samples, molecule samples, uh photon samples, air samples, organic matter samples, rock samples, radiation samples and whatnot. Um but yeah, in in none of the photos it took, or in none of the containers containing samples it sampled, were there any blue to be seen and no color, no photon, nothing. Which means, Joshua began, that the atmosphere is too dense to have photons coming through. Thomas finished. Then there was silence. Just for a little bit though, because I didn't understand the implications of it. So I said, sorry, I said, but I am blueless. Not that the others laughed at that joke though, not even Ingrid. So I asked in a more formal manner, I said, What does that mean? I asked, but at that point Thomas had already gotten up, he he he grabbed a pen and a bottle, and got up and was on his way to his office in the blink of an eye, and every step was very intentional, let me tell you, like the engine of a steam machine. Joshua, on the other hand, just shrugged, took a sip of hot chocolate brandy, and retired to his lab. Night, he said, but I don't think he ever sleeps. So there I sat, listening to the ambience of the outside blizzard, the fans inside, the dark rumble from the main corridor, and the electric bus from the copper wires running through this facility like blood vessels in a body. It it all feels alive and connected. It's a nice feeling. It's relaxing and meditative, uh meditative. I quite like it. And Ingrid started putting away the cups and porcelain, so so I I helped her out. I I gave her a cup, she put it in the cleaner. I gave her a plate, she put that in the cleaner. All while we were singing, you know, too much on your plate will be your fate. So grab a cup and don't give up. Let's sing until our ears ring, then we're sleeping. We repeat that for every item we put away. And when we had finished, I asked Ingrid if she cared for a dance as the rhythm of the cleaning up gave me a little bit of extra energy, but she was already connecting herself to the common room charger and powered it down like a funfair closing for the night. So I spent the rest of the night playing chess with whatever it is that moves the black chessmen. Which, to be honest, should be called chess people, in my opinion. I mean, the most efficient piece on a chessboard is, after all, the queen. The king is basically the rubbish. I I always lose a game because the king gets confused, tries to flee by moving one square in any random direction before having no other choice than to admit defeat and give up the crown for good or face execution. The queen, on the other hand, that's where the real power lies. But yeah, neither of the pieces helped me out, and uh I lost after twelve minutes, then I spent another twelve minutes studying the results and why I had lost. Which I found out was because I'm not very good at chess at all. Then I went to bed. So yeah, that was two nights ago, and I I I I haven't seen Thomas or Joshua since. Somebody's still doing my chores during the day though, and uh I don't think it's English. She's on my list of suspects, but I don't think it is her. You know, I'm I'm I'm very grateful though. Uh whoever it is, and I'll give this mysterious daytime working bee a ration worth of silver line cookies when I find out who it is. Which I hope isn't very soon. You know, I I hope they keep it up for a little bit longer. It's it's been quite nice with the little vacation. It it's the first one, real one in sixteen years. It's been great. And for the record though, um when she, him or or it decides to stop, I will be ready to take over, you know. I am, after all, the facility manager at the Deep Earth Anomaly Department, and uh yeah, I'll do my job, of course. Right now though, this Deep Earth Anomaly Department facility manager is uh getting tired. Also, the blizzard outside is wiring up, which means it's time for me to wire down. So yeah, this is Jan. Signing off yet another cold shift.
