The North Pole Algorithms

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Santa Claus was an alien.

Santa’s sled was a flying saucer.

What an incredible story! Visions of sugar-plum fame danced in her head. Already inwardly negotiating with a network for the top spot in her own weekly news magazine, Virginia tucked her head into the fur-lined hood of her parka and dashed from the back of the huge compound she’d infiltrated to join the ranks of similarly hooded elves carrying boxes up the ramp into the glowing, reverberating disk perched atop endless miles of frigid glacier.

She had to get inside for just a moment, to get the pictures and the facts she needed, otherwise no one would believe her. Just for the briefest of moments. In. Click. Click. Out.

A canned version of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” crooned behind her. The smell of Sam Klaus’s meerschaum pipe, evergreen, and Mrs. Klaus’s mincemeat pies somehow permeated the entire compound of KLAUS NORTHERN OIL, one of the many divisions of the mega-corporation of KLAUS INDUSTRIES. She hated to betray them, they had been so nice. A story on Christmas in the Arctic Circle? Why, of course. You can come and be our guest, as long as you realize that there are—well, classified experimental activities which we cannot show you. Oh—those people with long ears, dressed in red, with bells on their toes? Just Eskimos with true Christmas spirit.

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