Numerous problems plague the world today: war, racism, hunger, and people inflicting every sort of humiliation upon one another for no reason. So I was lucky to be isolated in the Arctic — so isolated that I felt closer to the moon than to any other human being on the planet. Whenever I saw her in the sky, I paid her my compliments.

 

"Good evening, little round piece of fine cheese. You look incredible today. As always."

 

"Good morning, sweet little grey rock floating in the sky. You know how I feel when you come around, right? You are always welcome here."

 

"Good evening, shiny moon! If it weren't so cold, I'd invite you in."

 

I had simple duties: monitoring temperature, soil, and wind; repairing the antennas; and, most critically, surviving the cold that shivers the soul.

 

The military paid two locals to make occasional deliveries of supplies, equipment, and food. I used to eat hot soup outside with them when they arrived. They laughed at my weird jokes.

 

"It's so cold here that if the wolves howl, they get sore throats." They loved that one.

 

Once, they told me they couldn't understand where I got my charisma. "Is it from social media? There must be a secret tunnel beneath your camp that leads to a comedy bar in Alaska." They were funny, too.

 

"No. I only like kind and smart people around me. That's why they sent you two," I replied, trying to prove their point.

 

There came a time when I couldn't remember how many days had passed since I last saw a wolf. The last one stared at me as if my presence hadn't made much sense to him for a very long time. "Maybe I have to walk farther to escape from these monsters," that wolf probably thought.

 

"Don't worry, buddy. I'm escaping from them, too," I would have said to him if I'd had the chance.

 

It is incessantly quiet here, but there is a short list of high-stress scenarios for which I must be prepared. In any big city in the world, there is certainly a longer list. The most severe item on my list involves geopolitics: an atomic bomb apocalypse. Should it occur, my duty is to initiate the "Deep Dive" procedure. It was designed to test a soldier's ability to swim long distances in frigid water with minimal equipment, without surfacing for over twenty-four hours. They called it the "Deep Dive" because the practice forced the soldier to delve deeply into their own solitude.

 

Every two years, I ran the drill. I activated a small robot to heat my special suit  which was designed to barely protect me from hypothermia, but not from insanity,  and transport me 1,500 kilometers underwater thru the Arctic sea to another military base, a journey undertaken with basically no additional protection. I failed the drill for 6 years. My supervisors didn't care. They couldn't find anyone to replace me anyway, and I was the only one with experience in failing that drill.

 

But then it happened. The sky couldn't lie to me. Many bombs were fired. The alarm sounded, freezing me more than the cold ever could. “Why would anyone fire atom bombs anywhere near the Arctic? Not even the most distant cold deserts deserve peace in this world?”

 

I couldn't stop lying to myself, saying "I'm ready," but I'm a terrible liar.

 

I put on the suit anyway and activated the swimming bot, just as I had been trained to do.

 

The fear. My conscious breathing. The cold. The time. My heartbeats. The fear again. The abyss of deep, black, cold water. The strange fish sounds all around me. The sound of ice cracking above me was sometimes tranquil, sometimes invasive, like someone breathing near your ear. My annoying thoughts about my isolation. My thoughts about what I didn't like about my mom. What I did like about my mom. What I wished my father had been. What I thought I should have done in too many circumstances. The exhaustion after 17 hours of helping my swimming bot nonstop.

 

Then I fell asleep and dreamed of a door in a glacial wall I couldn't reach. When I woke, I was desperate. I needed help to calm down, but had to do it myself. If I surfaced, I would risk being burned by radioactive wind. I remember asking myself, "Who am I lying to? This is miserable." I tried to focus on my good memories of the Arctic. Looking at the immense horizon and feeling at the center of the Earth. How primordial it felt when I cried out to it. How my isolated thoughts were proof that I'm the observer, not the observed.

 

After a while, I wondered, "Are my legs still working? Am I still using them to swim with this bot, or did I lose them to the cold?" The harshness of the dive was proving me wrong. I wasn't ready for this. But then I thought: imagine if I succeed. Imagine getting out of this cold, cold world. Will I become insufferably arrogant? Hopefully, I won't create a second personality when I get out of this.

 

I fell asleep again. No dreams. Calm. Then I checked the GPS when I woke up. I had passed the spot by a couple of miles. I surfaced from the dark, shadowy waters. The sky was orange-red, but I couldn't tell if it was a side effect of the bombs or just a warm afternoon I hadn't seen for quite some time.

 

I got up. Took the meds for hypothermia. Ate some food and fired a signal for the military. On my way back I could see the moon among the atomic smoke trails in the sky. “Dear moon, this dress doesn’t suit you.” Then sarcasm hit hard: “I can't wait to see what humanity has saved for us.”