Outpost

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The Barents Sea is so cold that if it were still for a day, if it were no longer churned by Arctic winds and ocean currents, it would freeze solid. You could walk across it. Shine a searchlight downward and illuminate the ice-locked dreamscape of the ocean floor. Ridges and canyons, silted wrecks, eyeless organisms that live and die in perpetual darkness.

The Con Amalgam refinery Kasker Rampart is anchored a kilometre from the clustered islands of Franz Josef Land. A skeleton crew of fifteen haunt corridors and accommodation blocks that used to be home to a thousand men. Each day they perform desultory system checks then get stoned, watch TV, or stare out of a porthole at the bleak sun. They retreat into memory, navigate a landscape of nostalgia and loss, kill time until the day Con Amalgam reboot the platform and set the seabed pipeline pumping again.

Jane woke, stretched, and decided to kill herself. If she hadn’t found a reason to live by the end of the day she would jump from the rig. It felt good to have a plan.

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