The Earth Is (Not) a Cold Dead Place

Chapter 1

The sun's rays penetrated the train's thick windows, touching the right side of John's face. They reflected off the metallic chain he wore around his neck, creating a moving pattern of light on the dull walls of the carriage. He could just about feel the distant star's heat, warming his cheeks ever so slightly. Even though it burned with the radiance of a thousand atomic bombs, once its light reached this particular spot its effects were laughable compared to the power of modern-day air-conditioned public transport. The effect, however small, made the cheap seat considerably more comfortable.

A bit too comfortable maybe. It was all too easy for John to doze off until he reached his stop. The days were already long enough this far up north—in the literal sense—but it sure didn't help that even way past what anybody could call dinnertime, John was still forcing himself to get just one more thing done today. It was mostly out of necessity, bureaucratic nonsense keeping him from his actual work—his research. The unfortunate truth being that the latter cannot be performed without a good chunk of money, which required the former. On the flimsy table in front of him, his laptop was impatiently waiting for his input.

Like John himself, the poor thing had seen better days. The amount of dust and junk between the keys was easily spotted with the naked eye and added a crunchy sound to their use. The screen was filled with dozens of tiny cracks and scratches, for the most part not impacting its readability in any significant way. A few dead pixels here and there, but nothing too distracting—or maybe John had just gotten used to it. The biggest nuisance was the amount of heat and sheer noise the machine produced, even in standby. After all this time, he had not been able to filter those sounds out. They were a reminder of his history with this little box of electronics though, so replacing it was definitely not an option either.

The cursor blinked at him while his own eyelids kept falling down, which became more frequent and longer in duration with every passing second. A good chunk of words was already on the screen, but most of it was filler—placeholder lines describing the general ideas to be expressed, less serious and borderline cynical at times. John had written his fair share of proposals and at some point one has to find a way to keep things from getting too boring.

His group was running out of money—again—and the most recent chunk, like most so far, had been spent with little to no results worth mentioning. Scraping together as much as they could, they'd been able to produce some publications, but anybody familiar enough with John's field could tell that it wasn't worth reading more than the abstract. Of course, not everybody had this insight.

Over the years, John had gotten acquainted with the kind of expressions that excite the money-people. Throw enough technical terms in the right order together with some almost-concrete goals and don't ask for too much, and you might get lucky. Having a bit of a reputation helps as well, but after not getting quite the spectacular results that landed you the job in the first place, the effect slowly wears off. If you're really lucky the board changes frequently enough such that most of them are unaware of your more recent output.

The plan was to finish this proposal before John got home, but he'd accepted the fact that it was just not meant to be. By now his vision was fading in and out so frequently that his sense of time was completely gone. He tried to fight it for a bit by focusing on the steadily flickering cursor in front of him. His efforts only led to a synchronization between the virtual and his own very real blinking. Occasionally, John was jerked back awake by an uncontrolled jolt of his head, resulting in a dull tap as his spectacles met the glass.

After struggling for a while, he realized how futile the effort was. He fell into the dark, utterly surrendering to it.

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