Somewhere
in the White Void

By
Nathan Hopp

             Dressed head to toe in layers of a thermal
coat, I revved my snowmobile's engine. It purred to life. I shielded my vision from
the intense snowfall until it faded with the sunlight. Speeding out into the
cold, lifeless environment, I spotted the excavation site two kilometers
away in what used to be London, Great Britain.

            “Armstrong,"
my coworker, a cougar in ever sense of the word named Earhart, spoke. “I need
you to be careful, like always. Follow the beacon and report back."

            “Yessir,"
I nodded.

            My
fingers grasped the throttle again. I glanced in my rearview mirror to see the
outpost's hangar doors close themselves before disappearing into the winter fog.
Meanwhile, the howling winds barely allowed me to hear my commlink.

            However,
I remembered my orders: search Site #9 and report back with any items.

            A
sudden gust of nasty frost covered the visors on my arctic mask. Annoyed, I
wiped them and twisted the throttle, cautious of my speed. The frozen landscape
was untamed and unchecked for thousands of years, while the city underneath
existed even longer than the ice. The glaciers had slowed down in this region,
allowing for more expeditions than previously planned. I could imagine the buildings,
now carcasses of twisted steel and pillars, remain abandoned as skeletons below.
Now forgotten by their builder's descendants.

            Save
for a determined few. 'Project Atlantis', though not the most original of
names, revolved around mankind's surviving efforts to catalogue the Northern
Hemisphere's historical sites. If they still lasted through Mother Nature's
wrath.

            “Beacon within eight-hundred meters…"

            The diamond-like
ice under my snowmobile had to be over three times as thick, but a miracle
occurred several days prior. An unexplored glacial cave was discovered by an
explorer drone. Essentially, an air pocket as wide as several city blocks had formed
beneath us, while both satellites and historic records indicated three
locations of interests could still be intact for excavation. Luckily for me, our
only exploration drones needed repairs, and they needed a volunteer to traverse
the cavern on foot.

            After
some time, I finally arrived at the checkpoint.

            Parking
the vehicle, I stepped towards the tunnel freshly carved through the ice. My
grip on the zipline tightened while plunging into the glacier's depths. Part of
me feared a cave-in, but that wasn't from any human instincts I held. Several
minutes later however, and my journey downward finally slowed to a steady halt.

            The
sight alone took my breath away.

            Monoliths
of metal ascended like spires, some leaning or demolished from centuries of rust,
while bricks and chunks of the sidewalk brutally littered the icy floor. My
beam of light could barely touch the glacial ceiling above, yet sunshine barely
managed to glow through the glacier's crystalline shell. Exploring these lost
cities, it continued to amaze me how archaic, yet brilliant humanity's former
civilizations used to be.

            “Unbelievable…"
I murmured, slowly soaking everything in. I felt like an ant in a model city crushed
in half-frozen ruins. Carefully, my fingers adjusted the visor camera. “Are you
all seeing this, guys?"

            “Loud
and clear, Armstrong, though there's some interference. Proceed and return to
the Outpost within 15:00 hours."

            I
followed the map until finding Location-of-Interest #1, the front steps of a
library whose walls were battered down from hundreds of years of Mother
Nature's wrath. I stepped over decaying books embedded into the frozen ground,
the selves empty of man's attempts to preserve the past. Evidence of manmade
firepits in various parts of the building indicated nomads of the North might've
burned the books in order to survive.

            How disgraceful, I thought to myself. Couldn't they have not torched the bad
romance novels instead? It eventually came to finding four pristine textbooks
and a couple classical novels. Fine, onto
the next marker.

            Location-of-Interest
#2: a courthouse devoid of judges, lawyers, prosecutors and juries. I
discovered several large paintings lying on the cracked ground. Each showed a
man or woman of the past who no longer gave judgement within its halls.

            Reminds me of the Nairobi Courthouse, I
mused. Minus the trials involving
terrorism.

            Finding
Location-of-Interest #3 however, led to an ancient museum nestled against the
wall of the ice cave. After evidence piled up about the incoming new era, there
were efforts to preserve the history of past civilizations through the ration
wars and famines affecting the Equatorial Safe Zone. Not all artifacts
survived, sadly. My navigating the walls and exhibits only led to finding empty
picture frames and relics too damaged to be brought back to the Outpost, but one
item captured my attention.

            Under
a layer of solid snow stood a stuffed sabretooth tiger on a faux-boulder. The
other displays had either been ransacked years ago or molted from age, but this
one hadn't. I stepped closer to feel curiosity get the better of me, so I took
my mask off. Unlike this creature's teeth that curled over his chin, mine had
been trimmed for convenience. The air felt cool on my facial fur, and I could
smell the pure winter of age's past, but what separated me from the stuffed
exhibit feature was the winter gear I wore and my upright stature.

            “Hey
there, cousin," I joked to myself. “Didn't picture finding you here…"

            It
was difficult to believe how far their species had come. Whether it be enduring
the Saharan colonies or Pacific superstorms, the biomechanical bodies of an anthroid
survived the harshest conditions. However, my genetic design as Sabretooth
Class recently changed Northern Hemisphere exploration. I'd been made to combat
subzero temperatures when my gear failed.

            Now
here I was, staring at one of my ancestors like my human employers used to do.

            Before
driving back into the Outpost's hangar with the books in my backpack, I
squinted back outside to see the skyscrapers. More history was out there,
somewhere in the white void, and we were going to find them all. I just knew
it.