Bruce set forth on his cold journey into uninhabited land, the landscape before him bereft. The dark ambience invited one destination: the prospect of Langstrom in chambers amongst the frost, an icy dungeon of what the man had become.
Bruce felt as though he almost heard whispers and murmurs in the dull wind, but it couldn't be. He was solitary, land given over to a state characterized by an absence of human impact, unable to offer anything of a civilizing influence.
He cradled himself from the cold as he walked up a snow-covered mountain, frost gathering on his face where the hood of his jacket didn't cover. It would be difficult to go back downward without climbing gear. He'd left the GPS with Liselotte, but was sure, from his memory of the map, the mountain was Áhkká, a massif of a dozen peaks and glaciers, next to Akkajaure.
Over the course of the upward trek, he encountered items of clothing - first gloves, then vests, tops, bottoms, and footwear. Bruce had not yet sighted Kirk, as Liselotte and the staff at Tarfala had, so he couldn't know if any of the clothes belonged to Kirk.
Bruce came across a small, narrow grotto on the side of one of the cliffs of the mountain. It offered shelter a short distance into the rock, no deeper than the width of its opening. He stood at the mouth, as the frosty mist migrated across the surface surrounding him, illuminated only by a torch. He heard an ululating, droning sound, though couldn't discern if it was the wind.
Was this a cell of Langstrom's own making, befitting a self-imposed exile? Could Kirk have drawn Bruce into a trap, whereby Bruce invited his own torture?
Bruce knew his trail stopped here. If he didn't find Kirk - dead, alive, or a nexus between - his personal search would end, at the ends of the earth.
Bruce entered the breach, and shone his torch, which caught on a naked body. Kirk had a pulse, but Bruce considered his physical state to be the last gasps before death.
Had Kirk tried to enter a state of torpor, which bats entered daily, whereby animals lower their body temperature and metabolism? If so, why? Bats and other animals hibernated because food became scarce in winter, or if able, migrated somewhere where food would be less scarce. Why would Kirk, if thinking himself to be a bat, migrate somewhere like the Arctic, a year-round winter?
Was it intended not as hibernation, but Kirk's attempt to harness the perpetual night of the Arctic latitudes? Was this Kirk's solution to not face the back-and-forth of day and night: by day, thinking himself human, and a nocturnal bat in darkness?
At this moment, Bruce didn't feel relieved about Kirk's whereabouts. He felt a stasis, an emotional torpor, as the mist passed over the ruins of what used to be the esteemed chiropterologist. As with the barren Arctic, there was little life left in who Kirk Langstrom had been. Bruce couldn't picture Kirk holding out much longer. Scar tissue covered the poor man's skin at various points over his body, where he'd tried one experiment or another, some still bloodied.
Bruce held Kirk's body in his arms, hypothermic. Kirk had seemed to have parted with his clothes in an attempt at paradoxical undressing - the cause of death of many people dying of hypothermia.
It was over. The long embarrassment of the end of this man's life and career had ended. Francine would be without a husband, the children a father.
Life was not prone to fitting finishes; taking when it felt like, whether opportune or abrupt. Nature didn't discriminate. When it took a life, it wasn't based on malice.
Bruce had held out hope the man's presence in Lapland was noble, to seed a preservation effort for the order of mammals he'd devoted his life to. He'd never find out.
Kirk had sealed his own fate. Bruce wondered what this meant for himself, though accepted where fate had brought him, and Dr. Kirk Langstrom, to this beautiful part of the world.
Kirk couldn't be a bat, whatever his mind told him. Until his death, he would instead be a symbol of the juggernaut of a bulldozing threat: man.
Bruce would rest. Should he have pursued Kirk - a colleague and acquaintance-friend - to the ends of the Earth? What good had he done?
Whatever the answer, the conclusion was irrefutable: he had to honor what was sustainable for his psyche and physicality. What was the use of being at the peak of his powers, if only for a brief time, placing such pressures upon himself? How could he forestall burnout if he didn't notice it creep up behind him? Otherwise, like Kirk Langstrom, he would be denying what he was. Kirk had deluded himself into believing he was a bat, denying he was a man.
Bruce suffered the same delusion. Was this how Kirk's plight had gotten under his skin, occupying his focus? Kirk's path mirrored his own - a man who thought he was a bat. What was the difference between them? Was there any? Kirk had applied science more was all, wasn't it?
Until Bruce accepted his humanity, and its limits, his fate was to follow in Kirk's fatal footsteps. How could logic suppose another answer? Whatever Bruce masqueraded as, and whomever accepted his persona, it was all a creation of his mind. He was human, a mere mortal man, with all the conceits, inherent flaws, and physical and mental vulnerabilities. Any persona was an edifice, a fiction of the mind. Wasn't evidence of this before him? Kirk Langstrom, trying to hibernate, had succumbed to the paradoxical undressing of hypothermia. The elements, and Kirk's involuntary metabolic processes, didn't care what fiction or delusion he'd told himself. This was the belief experienced in the final stages by those dying of hypothermia: undressing will warm them.
The paradox was the only species capable of creating fiction was man, thinking himself a bat. No other species could fool another of its kind, let alone have the sentience to fool oneself of its own capabilities.
Bruce knew he had to accept and respect his limits. He couldn't think one fiction he'd created reigned supreme. What vanity to assume one could cheat and get the better of one's mind. To shush and ignore the emotions coursing through it, thinking oneself better than it. Assuming as much didn't take heroism or courage. The proof of detriment was before him. Willpower couldn't cheat biology. This could only cause pain and pose a risk to oneself. No one was superhuman, whatever fiction they told themselves.
