Amirhan, Part 11 - Trapped

"Amirhan desert mission, day 331

"We decided to take the morning to go take some new quick measurements at the Floating Rocks, to see if there was a change there in the last few days. Instead of getting to the Floating Rocks, The ground disappeared from under us about half way there, so now we are in a maybe seven meter deep and ten meter wide hole in the sand in the middle of the desert. We have been down here for hours, and it will soon begin to get dark, which means it will be getting even colder. We only had a little food with us, since we weren't planning on spending the entire day --"

"Which is why you should help me figure out how to get out of here instead of recording an audio log."

 

"I need to do something else for a change. My mind is all jammed with trying to figure out how to get out with no apparent or even less apparent way to get out. So can I please do a log?"

"You're concentrating on work, always. Maybe it would help to get your mind off of that too."

"What else is there to think about except how to get out, and the cold and the hunger, and work? And of those the cold and the hunger aren't exactly nice things to think about."

"You ever seen snow before? Aren't you from somewhere in the north? You don't exactly get snow there, do you?"

"... No, we never got snow where I'm from. I'm from a small town near Mahandris, it never snows that north."

"We've been working together for three years now, not to mention being out here for almost a year of that three years, with only the four of us. You'd think something like that would have come up. So how come I didn't know this about you?"

"Because it's not important. Where I'm from does not make any difference to our work."

"Really? You don't think knowing each other a little better would make us a better functioning team, which would mean more efficient and motivated and thus less sloppy science?"

"Feeling like a group won't change the measurements or the facts."

"You're sure? Even assuming that's normally true, in a place like this things like bonding just might make a difference. Even though it doesn't seem to make much sense, nothing else makes much sense here either."

"Hmph. I just wish the snow melted away. There is enough weirdness here without it making all the regular weird a whole different kind of weird. There doesn't seem to be any logic to anything anymore, not even the things that didn't have much logic in the first place."

"You know, I actually had a dream last night the snow never came. I still came back early from the Parallel Streams because my liquid chromatogram... ..."

"What?" 

"It wasn't a dream. I think it wasn't a dream. I actually remember the chromatogram breaking. And I remember travelling back to the hub, and there wasn't any snow so it was a lot faster. And Ndali and Enembe were back at the hub, and... and you weren't."

"When was that? When you returned?"

"Yesterday. Like I really did. But it was all different. I... And I don't remember what happened after I got back. It was the evening, and I could smell them cooking, and... It's a blurr. It feels exactly like trying to remember a dream, you know how it feels like, when it's right on the tip of your tongue, your mind can almost grasp what it is you forgot about a dream, but not quite?"

"Mm-hmm..."

"But the rest. I can remember it so vividly, like the way you usually remember real life, like normal remembering."

"Maybe the thing I explained to you yesterday, about remembering two versions of what had happened to the solar panels, what happened after we came back from the badger nest with Ndali, maybe that's what is happening to you too. I know the feeling. It's confusing. They both feel so real."

"They do. And I do remember that Ndali and Enembe really had been to Ashakati. I... think they had come back the previous night, like you said they should have.I think they said something about having had different memories with Khorixas, and that the snow had suddenly disappeared. I didn't know what snow they were talking about, obviously, because there hadn't been any snow."

"We need to get out of here. We need to figure out what's going on, and we can't do that trapped down here."

"... What's that?"

"What?"

"That, right there. I think we can use it to get out. ... Is that still recording? You'll need both hands."

 

"Oh. Yeah. I'll put it awa--"

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Your topic for tomorrow is Owl.

~matu