Most of the continents of the Earth are known by most people for lots of different things: the continent's climate, the animals that inhabit it, the plants that grow there, the peoples who inhabit it, its current events, its ancient history, and many other descriptors. But there is one continent, the Earth's southernmost from the viewpoint of many, that is known primarily for one thing by the people of the Earth: its covering of ice.
For the last 18 million years or so, the once-tropical continent of Antarctica has been covered by enormous sheets of ice, some more than a mile thick. It is also the coldest continent on the Earth, having recorded the coldest temperature yet recorded anywhere on the Earth in 1983.
Despite this fact, Antarctica is actually considered a desert since it receives less than 200 millimeters of rainfall each year, and a desert is defined by the amount of precipitation that it receives on average per year, rather than its temperature or landscape. Unfortunately, some people assume that a desert has to be hot and sandy. Thus began Hugo Torres' campaign to make Antarctica hot.
Born in a small town in the desert (the hot, sandy kind), Hugo had always yearned to do something adventurous, like his great grandfather who had borrowed horses from the town fair to journey on his own to the ocean and back while seeing as many animals as he could on his three-year journey. He had been the first person from his town to leave it since it had been settled. Hugo wanted to do something just as epic.
So at the age of 25, when he heard that Antarctica, the coldest continent on Earth, was in fact a desert, he immediately thought "Antarctica's not a real desert. It's not hot or sandy; it's cold and icy. But I guess that there's nothing that I could ever do about that."
But the thought stuck with him for weeks. Whenever Hugo had nothing else on his mind, and especially in his dreams or while he was showering, the thought would pop up from the background, like that one friend that everybody has who randomly pops up from nowhere to talk to you as soon as you're not talking to anybody else.
Finally he relented. One night while he was asleep, he dreamed he was standing in a sandy, hot desert. The sun beat down on the back of his neck, giving a warm, home-like feeling. He looked around and saw, to his surprise, a small group of penguins and seals sunning themselves on a large rock.
As happens often in dreams, things appeared impossibly where they had not been moments before. Hugo found himself standing among a large group of people. They were tourists, he thought, judging by their attire along with the cameras that they carried like idols and the bags they shouldered at odd angles and the piles of maps sticking out of their pockets. He could not make out exactly what they said, but he caught murmured bits and pieces here and there.
"...looks just like the desert...look at the penguins...can't believe it...so hot...worth the money...never thought it was possible...want pizza...so different than it was...amazing...the seals...should buy stocks...take a picture...Hugo Torres."
As he heard his name he glanced at one of the maps that a tourist was carrying. It had a large circle-like shape drawn on it, with a large protrusion from one side and a bright red dot at the center of the shape that said "YOU ARE HERE" in big, black capital letters.
As soon as he saw the tourist's map something clicked inside his sleeping mind and he awoke with a jolt. He walked over to his bookshelf, took out his atlas, and flipped all the way to page 108. It was a fold-out page that showed the Earth from the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere, the western hemisphere, and the eastern hemisphere. He looked at the diagram labeled "Southern Hemisphere" and his suspicions were confirmed.
He was looking at the outline of Antarctica, a large, circle-like shape, with a large protrusion from one side. This was what he had seen in his dream. This is what he had been thinking about for three weeks. He walked over to his desk, picked up a red felt-tipped pen, and drew a large red dot right in the center of the map. He knew what he was going to do. He was going to do the impossible. He was going to make Antarctica hot.
