Big Dead Place. Nicholas Johnson
only source of light is the glow from the screen on the cash register and the periodic flame of a cigarette lighter. The NSF Rep came to Southern and stood peering in through the doorway, remaining there longer than the standard time required for entry or exit. The glare from outside pained the Daybar golems, who let out a clamor to shut the goddamn door for chrissake.
She was not subject to the etiquette of a caveful of slouching grumps—she worked for NSF. She became furious and stormed into the bar, demanding the lights on. The next day the National Science Foundation sent an email to staff insisting that the bars must at all times have adequate lighting. Due to “safety concerns.”
These weird little eruptions occur more frequently in the summer, when more big fish are around. Big fish in Antarctica are little fish in Denver and Washington, trying to impress by bringing big pond ways to the tiny backwater pool. So shower curtains are impounded, and sitting in darkness becomes dangerous overnight. But the workers know that they can redecorate and click off the lights the minute the bureaucrat creeps onto her plane. Despite the administrative sophistication that impounding a shower curtain reveals, the lesser inhabitants of the murky puddle resist the bureaucrat’s refinement, not so much from a firmness of character as from a lack of interest in the bureaucrat’s goals, like that of reptiles ignoring gameshow incentives that urge them to reach for the bigger prize.
One night in early November, the summer season in full swing, AGO Jordan gave a lecture called The Reality of Dreams. The lecture packed the Coffeehouse. The rumor of his rendezvous with aliens had brought the curious out of their rooms on a school night. Jordan was tall and had bright eyes, with dainty gestures and a perfectly groomed goatee. He wore a smart scarf around his neck.
The lecture was a fascinating mishmash of Southern Californian nonsense. After he reminded us that we live in a physical reality, he said that humans could transmit radio waves that are imperceptible to the human ear, because we have made transmitters and receivers, but that we have entered a digital age where data are reduced to ones and zeros. He said that dreams are just as real as our measurable external world and that humans transmit and receive streams of digital data via our minds and that these data streams are not measurable with current scientific apparatus, and that we do so at all times over great distances.
This explained that Jordan was not giving women creepy stares; he was actually transmitting messages to them via digital data streams. I wondered if his digital message was creepy too, or if it was more romantic. I wondered if he could hack into people’s brains and look through their eyes or make them eat corn chips when they weren’t hungry.
After his lecture he invited questions. Some people asked questions so they could argue a point here, a point there, get involved, and join in the freedom of intellectual debate with a horny mystic. I had seen this kind of excitement-murdering filibuster before at a lecture by four people with Romulan haircuts and infomercial sweaters who claimed that the human race was an experiment by a race of extra-dimensional Scientists who had given us life but urged us to recognize our true nature and join them on “the next level” where we would drive bio-organic space-time vehicles and live in harmony with our masters. Their cult drove around to colleges in a van trying to recruit people to join their “Astronaut Training Program” which involved computer programming and fasting. Even at that exciting lecture, the niggling pedants squawked about points of logic, drowning out the few in the crowd who tried to find out what the Scientists’ space-time vehicles looked like.
Finally, someone delicately asked Jordan about the aliens:
“Many of us came here to verify something we’ve heard: Did you come here to meet someone? What do you expect to see out on the plateau? Why did you come here?”
Jordan replied: “I’m here to do maintenance on data collection devices for the AGO sites.”
As was polite and proper, no further questions about aliens were asked, and people began to leave.
The new town psychologist was facilitating several community support groups, including a Women’s Group, a Men’s Group, and a Diversity Issues Group6. The psychologist had put flyers around town that read, “Need a place to talk? Support Groups starting soon…” The flyer was a soothing green with puffy bright yellow lettering. In its center smiled a beady-eyed clown made of primary-colored plastic. Its face, hands, and feet were agreeably rounded and smooth, as if to be safely gnawed by toddlers. When the support groups drew low turnout, she sent out an all-station email assuring employees that the group discussions, though sponsored by the company, were confidential.
The psychologist worked for Nicoletti-Flater Associates, a company hired to administer psychological screening for wintering Antarctic personnel. Winter-overs’ employment packets included a handout, “Bypass the Winter Blues” by company co-founder John Nicoletti. The article outlined tips for minimizing “depression, irritability, apathy” and other psychological problems brought on by the disruption of the “body’s circadian rhythms” by prolonged darkness, extreme cold weather, and “trying to co-exist with a small group of people.”
Besides his stated expertise in cold weather psychology, John Nicoletti had been a police psychologist in Denver for over 25 years, and was an expert in crowd control. At a conference on campus riots held at the University of Northern Colorado, Nicoletti told a group of law enforcement and university workers, “The earlier you intervene, the higher the probability you can prevent a riot,” suggesting that a riot is what happens without professional intervention. Nicoletti said, “When you decide to assault, assault with enough intensity that they know you’re serious. You’ve got to look mean and quick and foreboding. This is not a touchy-feely time. You’ve got to come in as one big scary thing.” He also suggested that water cannons are very effective but look bad on videotape. “We have to assume that rioting will occur,” he said, “—that’s where we have to come from, so then we’re prepared.”
The McMurdo psychologist came up to the Waste Barn one day to speak with the Waste Department about Stress Management. It was the end of a long week with heavy trash flow from Pole. We sat in the breakshack in our dirty Carhartts that had been ripped on metal from climbing in the CD flatracks, our gloves smelling of Food Waste, our sleeves sticky with beer from sorting Glass.
She described to us tunnel vision—when most of the world turns black and closes in on you—and told us that stress alone can give a person tunnel vision, and it can happen in an instant.
An instant? I fretted. I suddenly remembered all the clanking and crashing and rattling that I had grown accustomed to. I thought of how the details of each day are obscured by familiar patterns. I worried that all of life’s sleepwalking moments would one day simultaneously demand accounting. The psychologist was an expert. I began to pay close attention. I did not want to suddenly get tunnel vision.
The psychologist was upbeat. Ready to make a million friends. She told us that we could talk to her in her office in the library anytime, and that she was hired to help the community and thus would have nothing to do with employees’ winter psychological evaluations. She had powers of confidentiality. She told us that things were not easy here in this environment. But there are things you could do to recognize and relieve stress.
I was gripped as if by a thriller. The psychologist appeared to recognize how weird were all the little moments, even when just trying to relax. For example, each day before work I would drag myself out of bed in time for a cup of coffee and a cigarette in the 155 smoking lounge beside the barbershop. The stale chamber was outfitted only with couches, ashtrays, and a television. Few talked in the smoking lounge, because when we heard people talking they sounded stupid, saying things to each other like they were talking only to each other, even though the rest of us could hear them too. So we smoked and watched television, usually in silence. One day in particular I remember about a dozen of us, all haggard men in torn and filthy polar clothing, solemnly chain-smoking in the dark until the start of our shifts, silently watching a gardening show. It was not that anyone wanted to watch the gardening show, but that’s what was on. The channel had most likely been selected an hour before by an early riser. Those who filed