Aurora Wolf

Epiphany

by

Ann Gimpel

Wind whipped along the sastrugi dislodging small particles of ice.  “How the hell did those bloody ice formations get there in the first place?” Cyra muttered to herself as she drew her fur-lined parka hood closer about her face.  She shivered inside her many layers of clothing.  Was it actually colder this winter?  Cyra wasn’t sure if it was that, or merely the fact that her tolerance for cold wasn’t as robust as it had once been.  Years of living in the Antarctic had taken a toll, or perhaps it was simply that she was no longer particularly young and was simply less tolerant of everything.

Gray…everything was either white or gray.  Even the sky had a dreary grayish cast to it.  And then there was the incessant wind.  With nothing to stop it, it howled across the snowy surface with a fury that defied reason.  Ice rolled out before her in an endless undulating sheet broken at intervals by crevasses designed to trap the unwary in their depths.  The first few years she’d taken overnight jaunts hoping for some variation in the Antarctic landscape, but no matter how far she traveled from the research station, the vista was always the same.  Cyra shook her head sharply from side to side to try to distance herself from her thoughts.  She didn’t expect it would work—and it didn’t.  Sometimes she dreamed of trees and other green things, wakening with tears on her cheeks and an ache in her soul for the simple presence of other living creatures. 

Steadying herself with a gloved hand wrapped around the head of an extra-long ice axe, Cyra tested the snowy surface tentatively with one foot.  Hmmmm…didn’t seem too slick.  Maybe she could actually get by without crampons for the rest of today.  No matter how thick her boots were, the metal spikes always acted as heat sinks, drawing every last ounce of warmth out of her feet.  Sucking in a shallow breath, and then another one, Cyra scanned the horizon.  Clouds raced along high above in the jet stream—mostly strato-cumulus, but there was a big lenticular right overhead that just might mean a storm was brewing.  Cyra had become ultra-cautious after having been caught out far from shelter one too many times during her overnight exploratory treks.  Storms blew up out of nowhere it seemed; and she had once been trapped for several days waiting for the weather to clear sufficiently for her to return home.  Reaching up, she readjusted her balaclava so that it provided cover for her mouth.  That way the air wasn’t quite so cold when she inhaled.

“Are we going or not?” A rough male voice emanated from the interior of the yurt next to where Cyra was standing.  Specially constructed as a combination scientific research station and home, the yurt was heavily insulated to withstand extreme cold.  The main entrance opened into a room housing all of their outdoor equipment.  Sealed off from the remainder of the structure by double doors, this outer foyer was a perpetual mess primarily because it was always too cold inside of it for Cyra to spend very much time organizing their gear.  A staircase led downwards from this room to two lower floors that were partially submerged in the ice making them easier to heat with the solar-powered generator.  The living quarters, lab and garden spilled through these lower levels.  Years ago she had had a place for everything, but Cyra had given up on that.  After all, she had lots of time; she didn’t need to be efficient.  “Well, are we?”  Dozier’s voice was insistent.

“Don’t know yet.”  Cyra struggled to hide her annoyance.  Years with Dozier would try anybody’s patience.  Even though he was an android, he didn’t seem to think that that made any difference at all.  He was fully as irritating as any human male could possibly have been.  Cyra took one last look around, wondering if they should stay put and do some more work on the generator.  In constant need of repair, the solar cells’ storage capacity had seemed to be fading of late.  “Oh, what the hell,” she muttered to herself.

“We’re going,” she announced.  “Get the kit.”  Cyra could hear grumbling coming from within.  Soon a very tall human-like form emerged from their shelter.  As soon as he was out, he passed his hand over an electronic panel near the door and the locking mechanism whirred shut.  Sensitive only to Cyra’s retinal scan or Dozier’s unique electron pattern, their home would be safe from intrusion.  Cyra sighed.  Despite the fact that there was no one within a thousand mile radius who could possibly bother them, they still locked the damned door.  Old habits never died, they simply haunted you to distraction.

“So, how did it look?”  Dozier was asking about Cyra’s morning trek—via solar-cell-powered snowmobile—to check on the juxtaposition where sea met land, a journey she made every week.  The ocean had been creeping relentlessly closer for a long time now.

“The marker I set last week wasn’t there anymore.  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s under water.  I put in a new one fifty yards up this time rather than forty.”  Cyra paused, immersed in thought as she tried to estimate something.  Finally, brow furrowed in irritation, she muttered, “I need the computer to be more accurate, but I think we’re losing ground—literally—faster than we were last year.  At this rate, the yurt should be underwater in about three years.”

“We need to start moving it now.  I told you that last year—­and the year before.  It’s going to take a long time to excavate a new foundation, not to mention trying to move everything with that pathetic little snowmobile.”  The android sounded gruff, but Cyra knew that that was more an artifact of his vocal mechanism than anything else.  When his predecessor’s circuits had exploded, Cyra had used what she had—which wasn’t much—to craft a replacement. 

Androids were perfect for this wind-swept nothingness where temperatures often dropped to more than a hundred degrees below zero.  Designed to be impervious to the cold, Dozier’s mechanical hands and copper-colored metallic face were bare to the elements.  A lopsided pack hung off his broad shoulders.  “Don’t know why we bother,” he rasped.  “No one will ever come to collect the samples we’re drilling.  We’d be better off using our energy to move the house to higher ground.”

“If we don’t keep looking for promising core samples, there’s no reason to even be here,” Cyra replied reasonably.  “And, you know there’s no way for us to leave…”  Don’t think about that, she hissed inwardly.  Thinking about it makes you crazy and there’s nothing you can do to change anything.  Despite this injunction, Cyra felt her thoughts pulled inexorably to her arrival at this remote outpost many years before.  There had been another android then—one not nearly as well-designed as Dozier.  That had been during the riots that had happened right after the planet ran out of oil.  She had been part of a wave of governmental efforts to find more petroleum somewhere—anywhere—on earth. 

As a petrochemical engineer, Cyra had been lead scientist for a team of twenty including other researchers like her, support workers and one experimental android.  They had started in the Andean highlands in southern Chile and had moved south as they struck dry hole after dry hole.  There had been other teams that had gone other places—Canada for example and the northern steppes above Russia.  For the first few years, there had actually been a primitive communications network that had gradually disintegrated, mirroring the crumbling fabric of the world they had all known and taken for granted.  One by one, all the rest of her team had died.  Disease, accidents, suicide…Cyra and her android were all that was left.

Cyra sighed.  A tear leaked from one crystalline blue eye, freezing as soon as it dribbled down onto her cheek.  The wind picked up, blasting her with particles that felt like rough sand.  Rearranging her clothing to minimize any exposed skin, Cyra lowered her ultraviolet protective goggles.  “Ready?”  Her tone was brisk to mask the struggle she was having with her emotions.

“Sure.  Why not?”  Dozier led off at an efficient pace.  Stopping after a hundred yards, he turned back to wait for her.  The snowmobile barely had enough power to carry one.  When they both went somewhere, it was always on foot.  “Even if we found oil, isn’t it too late?” he asked.  “The planet’s pretty much dead.  Plus, we’ll never leave here.  So, what difference does anything make?  Let’s work on re-building the house.”  Dozier could be implacable once he got an idea in his head.    

“You’re a philosopher now?  Remind me to re-program you.”  Cyra’s tone held a dry edge.  He’s right, an inner voice nudged at her.  But if we don’t keep looking for oil that would be like giving up.  And then there truly would be nothing to do here—and no reason for her to keep getting out of bed every day. 

“Do you really think that we’re the last life on Earth?”  Cyra was panting a bit.  She had to trot to catch up to Dozier who had pulled ahead again with his long-legged automaton’s stride. 

“Did I say that?” he demanded.  “Logic would dictate that there are others.  I merely said that we would never leave here.  And we won’t.  Where do you want to take core samples?”

“We weren’t quite done with that area from last week,” she replied.  “Let’s start there.”  It took another half hour to reach their drill site with the wind dogging them every step of the way.  It tore at Cyra’s clothing, inveigling itself into frayed places in her outer garments.  Finally, she turned and walked backwards simply to get her face out of the slipstream.

By the time Cyra got to the wands that marked their earlier work, Dozier had already assembled the drill.  “Ready?” he asked.  Cyra nodded, a bit breathless from her struggle with the wind.  As soon as Dozier placed the drill bit in contact with the icy surface, a high-pitched whining came up out of nowhere.  At first Cyra thought the drill had malfunctioned.  Then she thought it was the wind, and then she knew it couldn’t be.  “What the hell is that?”  She had to shriek to make herself heard above the din.  The noise was so desperately loud that she was afraid her eardrums would rupture.  Pain rocked her from side to side.

“We need to get back to the yurt.”  Cyra could only make out what Dozier had said from reading his lips.  Dropping the drill, Dozier picked her up like she didn’t weigh anything and began moving back the way they had come at a shambling trot.  Cyra knew that his hearing was impervious to the infernal screeching that was pounding a hole through her head.  One last wrenching white-hot blast of agony and she could feel fluid running down both sides of her face from her (lacerated/burst) eardrums. 

My god, what is that?  Crya racked her brain, quickly cataloguing natural phenomena, and just as quickly discarding everything she could think of—except, perhaps, a tsunami.  And then she remembered what had seemed like a dream several months before.  She’d been deeply asleep, wakening to something that sounded a lot like the current cacophony, except it hadn’t been nearly as loud.  Dozier had gone outside to investigate.  He’d been so long returning that Cyra had been on the edge of going out to hunt for him when she’d heard the pneumonic hiss of the upper level’s sealed doors.  Dozier had been different after that night.  Cyra couldn’t exactly articulate what had happened to him, but he’d started behaving a lot more like a human.  Curious, Cyra had finally asked him if anything had happened, and he’d come up with an equivocal response that had had the effect of shutting her up without answering her question.   

Cyra’s thoughts returned to their pressing dilemma.  Would they make it back to the yurt before…before what she asked herself?  And did it even matter?  All those things that Dozier had said were true.  They were stuck here—had been for decades.  Was that ungodly sound getting better, or was it simply that her hearing was damaged?  Cyra couldn’t tell. 

She could hear the muted clanking of parts as Dozier ran.  He never had any problems being short of breath—probably because he didn’t have lungs.  Cyra giggled at the comparison between ‘droid anatomy and her own, and recognized that she was teetering on the brink of hysteria.  And then the sound—the horrible grating, ripping, tearing sound—was simply gone.  Dozier stopped and looked round, his central processing unit quickly gathering information, sorting it and determining a reasonable course of action. 

“Whatever that was, it seems to have stopped,” he announced.  Carefully, Dozier set her on her feet.  “Can you walk?  We’re almost back home.” 

Cyra could see the reddish walls of their shelter a hundred yards away.  “Yes, I think so.”  Her voice was shaky, and everything sounded like it was under water.  “Do you have any idea what that might have been?”

“No, I don’t.  That’s why I think it’s a good idea for us to return to shelter.  Come on, follow me.”

Later, Cyra sat with a cup of faux coffee in their small kitchen.  She had stripped off her outer layers, hung them carefully on hooks, and done what she could about her wounded ears.  She knew that the tympanic membranes would heal given time—and that her hearing wouldn’t be quite so sharp as it had been once they did.  Cyra’s gray hair fell in messy braids to her waist.  Her bright blue eyes were hooded in thought as her slender, nearly translucent, fingers gripped the ceramic mug.  Dozier sat in a chair on the other side of the small table, having just come down the stairs to the main living area of the yurt.  Back in the beginning with the first android, it had really bothered Cyra that they didn’t eat; but eventually she’d gotten used to that. 

“I’ve been thinking about what happened,” Dozier clanked his fingers rhythmically on the small table top.  “While you were in here making something to drink I took the snowmobile and had a look around.  And I went back to get the drill.  That infernal noise was the ice ripping and grinding against itself as it tore.”  He stopped and looked at Cyra.  “The ocean is only about half a mile from here.  Something doesn’t want us to keep drilling.  That’s clear enough.” 

“What?”  Cyra looked up sharply.  “How could you possibly know that?  What makes you think there’s any connection between what sounds like some weird natural phenomenon and our work here?”

“I’m not sure,” Dozier admitted, looking sheepish.  “But that doesn’t mean I’m not right,” he insisted stubbornly. 

“So you think we’re stuck here, just waiting to see if the sea raises enough to swallow the continent, and us along with it?”

“Not necessarily.  I think we’ll be fine so long as we stop disrupting the Earth by drilling.”  He glanced at Cyra, mechanical pupils filled with an unnatural wisdom.  “Remember, I can still communicate with…others like me.  They told me a long time ago to leave the Earth alone.  And I’ve tried to tell you, but you’ve never been willing to listen.”  He hesitated.  “The Earth is alive…when we drill we’re wounding her.”  His tinny voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

“How could other ‘droids possibly know that?”  Cyra sounded incredulous as she repeated a variation of her question from a few minutes before.  “You may be in communication with something, Dozier, but I doubt that it’s other androids.”  Dozier just looked at her, his glass eyes reflecting green in the artificial interior light.

“Anyway, if we have to stop working that will mean that we’ve failed.”  Cyra huddled miserably in her straight-backed chair.  A slightly built woman, she shrank within herself and appeared even more insubstantial.    

“Not us.  That battle was lost before you ever set foot in the Antarctic.  You just didn’t realize it…or maybe you did, but you wouldn’t accept the truth.  Look, Cyra, be reasonable.  You have the hydroponic garden.  It gives you all the food you need along with the occasional seal or bird.  Remember, this outpost was designed to be self-sustaining—forever.  All we need to do is move it.  And maybe not all that far if we don’t drill anymore.”

Standing abruptly, Cyra began pulling on her outdoor garments.

“Where are you going?” Dozier asked looking as close to alarmed as he could.

“Where does it look like I’m going?  And, no, I don’t want company.”  Pulling on the last of her heavy clothes, Cyra attacked the stairs leading to the upper levels that would deposit her outside.  Irrational anger ricocheted through her.

Standing out in the muted blue-gray of the day, Cyra held her arms out from her sides and spun around.  “Who’s out there?” she demanded.  “Who?  If we stop drilling, what will we do here?”  And then she was crying, sobbing as if her heart would break.  “Damn it all, anyway,” she gasped.  It was difficult to breathe with the cold air searing her lungs as she wept.  Abruptly, Cyra sank to the ground, her layered clothing providing some protection from the cold.  She sat there for an indeterminate time as her tears flowed.  Day edged into evening.  Cyra wasn’t even sure what she was mourning.  There were so many losses—her friends, her work, her life, the planet she had known.  Cyra was vaguely aware that she’d not let herself think about any of those things—at least not for very long.  She’d simply pushed herself to keep going no matter what happened.  The worst had been when four of her team had taken their own lives after it had become clear that they were stranded in Antarctica.  Cyra didn’t even remember how long ago that had been.  But she did recall—with excruciating clarity—the crushing sense of failure that had threatened to overwhelm her when she’d found their bodies, faces cherry-red from carbon monoxide poisoning.  A fresh gush of tears cascaded down her face as she relived the memory—as vivid as if it had just happened yesterday.   

A nagging from her nether regions told Cyra that she was well past cold.  Tears finally spent, she found she could, once again, be rational.  After all, her ability to think and reason had always been her greatest asset.  “Dozier’s right,” she muttered.  “If we did find oil, or promising shale, U.S. Petroleum Corporation probably doesn’t exist anymore.  Even if they did, I have no way of communicating with them.  And, we do need to figure out how to move the house.”  Rearranging her cold-stiffened body in preparation for standing, Cyra pushed herself to her knees, determined to go in and ask Dozier what else the other androids—or whomever he communed with—might have told him.  Maybe they knew things, she mused.  Things that she and Dozier could use to help themselves—now that she was finally in a listening mood.

Wait, what was that off in the distance?  Cyra shielded her goggle-less eyes.  Was that a leopard seal slithering towards her?  Cyra glanced around, feeling momentarily anxious.  Would it hurt her?  Cyra wasn’t aware of seals ever attacking humans, but if the sea could rip a jagged gash in the ice, advancing over a mile in just a few minutes, most anything was possible…

Yes, it was a seal, no make that two.  From another direction two penguins were shuffling towards her, tottering on their funny webbed feet with a baby that was just barely keeping up.  And there were skuas and terns swooping down, kiting their graceful wings to form a crab angle to the stiff breeze.  Cyra thought she could make out a pair of Weddell seals, their grayish mottled coats blending in almost perfectly with the antarctic landscape, heading her way as well.  No longer afraid, a sense of wonder began seeping through Cyra, emanating from deep within the Earth beneath her.  Soon she was surrounded by all manner of living creatures.  They were snuffling at her, nosing her and pecking gently at her clothing. 

Cyra sank back down to the snowy surface.  It didn’t feel nearly as cold this time.  A leopard seal pushed against her chin with a cold, whiskered nose and then sat back on his hind legs, clapping his flippers together.  The mother penguin—or was it the father—was pushing their baby her way.  Why wasn’t the seal trying to eat it? Cyra wondered as she stretched out a hand to fondle the small penguin.  A skua landed on her shoulder, staring at her with his lidless avian eyes. 

Gratitude swept through Cyra as she sat on the ice surrounded by Antarctic creatures like a goddess in an ancient tableau.  Her hand flew to her mouth and she gasped as she finally realized just how arrogant humankind—her kind—had been.  Shame filled her.  “Never again,” she managed, holding out her hands to the gentle creatures gathered round her.  “Never again.  I’m so very sorry.  We never meant to hurt you.  It’s just that we didn’t think.”

“Is that ever an understatement!” her inner voice chimed in.  “Mostly people didn’t think of much of anything for a ridiculously long time until the Earth rebelled and left us with exactly what we deserved—nothing.”  She lowered her head and closed her eyes, grateful for her epiphany, but chagrined it had been so long in coming.  Cyra wondered if she could have done anything to avert the disaster if she’d opened her mind to the obvious just a bit sooner.  “You’re not responsible for everything,” she finally murmured, recognizing sadly that one voice swimming against the tides would have made no difference at all.

Cyra’s eyes flew open in surprise.  She could feel the air vibrating all around her.  “Thank you, Daughter…thank you, Daughter…thank you, Daughter,” reverberated in multiple tones and timbres.  The incessant wind had died away and, for the briefest of moments, it actually felt balmy.  Cyra pulled back her hood, letting the setting sun caress her long silvery hair.

“No…” her voice was the barest whisper.  Cyra felt unworthy of any thanks.  Suddenly bold, she blurted out, “Thank you…Mother.” 

As she gazed around her, eyes bright with more hope than she had felt in a long time, Cyra could see the southern skies light up with the aurora australis.  Soon it stretched from horizon to horizon as greens, reds, purples, blues and teals tumbled over one another, vying for which could be the most spectacular.  Scrambling to her feet, Cyra threaded her way amongst the animals so that she could go find Dozier.  Ah, there he was, framed in the yurt’s doorway, a broad smile on his face.

“So you finally know?” he asked.  The metallic whir was gone from his voice. 

Cyra nodded imperceptibly.  “I think so,” her voice was clear and unwavering.  “You have a lot to tell me, though, don’t you?”

“We have all the time in the world for that, Cyra.”  Warmth gleamed from Dozier’s eyes.  “All the time in the world.”  As he strode forward the animals surrounded him, each wanting to be closest.  Turning, he held out his hand to Cyra drawing her into their midst. 

“These are my friends.”  Dozier swept his arms wide to encompass their furred and feathered companions.  “Besides introducing you to them, there’s something else I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.”  Drawing Cyra close, he pressed his mouth to hers, metallic skin surprisingly warm against her tender lips.

Cyra drew back.  “But you’re a machine,” she gasped.

“Did I feel like one?”  Dozier asked reasonably, still holding her snugly within the protective circle of his arms.

Caught off guard, Cyra thought about his question.  Shyly, she reached up with one gloved hand and stroked Dozier’s cheek.  “Not exactly,” she stammered.  And then the years of loneliness took over, speaking with a mind of their own, and she whispered fiercely.  “I don’t care what you are.  The only thing that truly matters is that you care about me.”  Standing on tiptoe, with the colors of the aurora australis streaming over them, Cyra kissed him back.  

Ann Gimpel is a clinical psychologist with a Jungian bent.  She runs a
mental health program in a small, frontier community high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  When she’s not at her desk, she spends as much time as
possible in the mountains backpacking, skiing and just hanging out.  Ann started writing when she was a little girl; but the stories and poetry from her youth gave way to dry, dusty grant proposals that have kept quite a few public mental health programs running.  She started writing speculative fiction seriously about two years ago.