AC Blog

Why were you late to school?

Well, my granpa was bringing me in the school today and he couldn’t make it.

Why couldn’t he make it?

Well, he got bit by a tiger.

I see. You know where this tiger came from?

A zoo?

So you’re saying a tiger escaped from the zoo, bit your granpa, and that’s why you didn’t get to school on time.

Yeah, pretty much.

And what happened after he bit your granpa?

After?

Did the tiger eat him?

No.

Why not?

Well, he was not hungry?

Then why’d he bite your granpa in the first place?

Um, he was maybe frightened?

Could be. So a tiger escape from the zoo, came on your granpa, got scared, and bit him. And then what happened?

Well, my granpa ran inside, and the lion ran away.

Thought you said it was a tiger.

I mean the tiger ran away. The lion wasn’t there.

Where was the lion?

Well he was in the zoo.

And what’d the lion do when he found out the tiger was missing?

Well the lion, he went looking for the tiger.

Did he find the tiger?

He found the tiger and then they went back.

He found the tiger and what’d they do?

They went back to the zoo.

So how’s your granpa. He gonna be alright?

Yeah, he’s ok.

So he healed up quick after getting bit by that tiger.

Yeah, he did, but.

But what?

Well, he. He didn’t get bit real hard.

So he just got a little bit bit.

Yeah, he was only bit a little.

If he was only bit a little, why couldn’t he get you to school on time?

Um, I don’t know.

That’s what I thought.

Christmas Eve, jury duty in Santa Monica. Long lunch break at MacDonald’s.

Eating lunch—bag lady watching. Hope she doesn’t come over. She does. I decide to leave half my fries, half my shake. She stands and watches. I get ready to leave, gesture to the leftovers. “Go ahead,” I say, feeling marginally magnanimous.

Her face wrinkles into a toothless grimace, a sudden burst of anguish flooding her wrinkled face, obliterating her stoicism.

“It’s…” she begins, chewing the words from the back of her mouth. “…so…damn…” A fleeting gleam flickers in her wandering eye, and she looks directly at me for the first time, her face twisted, pleading, shouting silently in the clenched spaces between her words, bitten off. “…frustrating!” She bites off the word, with a quaver not pathetic at all, but furious.

Walking back to the courthouse among the Christmas shoppers. A phalanx of special-duty motorcycle police protects us from predators near the crowded mall. She said it like I needed to hear it, like it was her gift back to me, concise, but not quite as perfunctory as mine to her.

I don’t know if you can hear this, but we’re transmitting on our last battery. We have no more power for our transmitter or for any of our equipment. The entire station has been buried in what we fear may be four or five hundred feet of snow and ice. Only a small portion of the station is still intact, and our collective body heat is all that keeps us from freezing. The face of the glacier began crumbling two days ago and we started collecting our supplies to attempt an escape before large portions of ice fell near the camp. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time, and we believe the section called Maria’s Node is the one that broke off yesterday and collapsed alongside the camp, with a great deal of additional snow and ice. Judging from the signals we were able to receive before the generators quit, we feel there are now probably several hundred feet of glacial rubble above us. Please give our families our best and if it’s possible to send a rescue party, that would be great. Of course we realize the chances of that are not very good. And even if you sent a rescue party it would take a very long time to dig down to us. And we have no spare oxygen in this part of the camp. So, from all of us here at the research station, it’s been great, and have a nice day. Signing off: Team One.

[Note: This is a stand-alone fragment from another story, “The Beginning,” first published in the Brain Frieze collection.]