Dance or Die: a Fanfiction

Chapter 1 - Svalbard

January 13, 2003, already deep into the winter season on Svalbard, an archipelago of islands north of the Scandinavian peninsula, was the day a 21-year-old half Swedish, half-American man was left in charge of a rogue scientist's radio hut. The place was small, covered with satellite dishes and antennae on the outside and full of shortwave and AM/FM equipment that was almost always running on the inside. One would expect it to be cold in there, and it was, at least in one room of the hut, which was why the scientist was out getting more wood from town for the small wood fire that was set in a corner of one of the two rooms. The radio room was relatively warm, due to the running electronics. An unnaturally heavy snow whirled outside, the wind beating the sturdy shack and howling ominously. The young man wasn't sure why he chose to work with this other scientist, other than to hopefully study some more about radios, and was skeptic if he was really an educated person.

Mr. Kragness never really explains things and just leaves without warning on occasion, maybe he's insane, the young man thought. Kragness was eccentric and kept talking about how he hopes to reach "unearthly realms" with a random sequence in morse code that he repeated every day at exactly noon. Maybe he was psychotic, but for some reason, the half-Swede stuck around the man. The lure of knowledge to be a radio programmer was too great for him to resist.

He took a glance at the battery-powered analog clock on the wall, the time reading 6:52 pm. Realizing he hadn't eaten anything but a granola bar and an apple since lunch, he went over to the box where the food is usually kept. Opening the box, he saw his silver lunch tin had a yellow post-it note with a few scribble-like words written on it.

The note was in Norwegian, but he understood what it said since the language of his home and the neighboring country are very similar.

"Mount

I think today's the day! On 8 January 2003, I received on my shortwave radio a 20-second long transmission of static that was not of my own work. I then heard one second of a foreign language. It may be contact from space! This could be real!

Kragness"

He let a half-amused laugh out. The old man had possibly gotten an earthly satellite by accident if he had heard words in the transmission. He set the note on top of the wire-cluttered desk nearby, picked up his tin, and sat back down to eat. A particularly hard blast of wind shook the tiny hut, startling Mount. He shrugged it off, sat down, and opened up the tin.

Just as he reached for food, a thunderous clap and a vibrating, calamitous thud of a large object knocked him sprawling from his seat, the tin and its contents sent flying into the wall of the hut. A few wires and cords, a headset, and already-broken-off radio knobs fell to the floor behind him. Momentarily shell-shocked by the catastrophe, he lay prostrate for a minute to gain his senses. Upon standing, he quickly grabbed his coat and forced his arms into it, zippered it up, shoved on his boots, put a warm hat atop his head and headed out into the harsh weather.

At the front door, out in the shifting snows and halfway whiteout conditions, he saw nothing that told of what caused the crash. A low hiss emitted from 100 meters, he supposed, from behind the hut. Trekking through the bad winter proved difficult, as he began to sweat just walking through the gradually thickening snow layer. It wasn't until he was at his estimate of 10 or so meters when he saw an unrecognizable craft sitting in a particularly deep draft of snow some distance away. The hiss had stopped and he looked around for any sign of life. After standing in a spot for around a minute, he became rather cold. He wondered whether Kragness had returned to the hut or not, he doubted so because of the horrible conditions. As he turned around to go back, the hiss yet again reached his ears. Wild with curiosity, he whipped his head around to watch, brushing a swathe of his blond hair off of his face.