Cold

Foreword
If this sounds incongruent or crazy, that's because it was mostly taken from a dream I just had. I woke up just after Sarah's (the name was made up later) awakening. So the ending wasn't provided to me by the muses. Dammed muses, leaving me with the hard part. I figure that if people can write about crazy opium hallucinations, there's nothing stopping me from plagiarizing my dreams.

Cold
Antarctica, since the beginning of time, was the only landmass not subject to petty nationalist claims from one government or another. Maybe the ancient Gods that fashioned Earth made the cold continent of Antarctica in such a manner that it was insulated from corrupting human presence. Or at least that's what the neopagans say nowadays. Antarctica, since the beginning of time, was the only continent with no country, no established laws, for many a land of freedom, a nigh-perfect land paradoxically kept that way by the very desolateness of its landmass.

A place of freedom for many, and most of all, of scientific freedom.

But no matter where one goes, one is never truly free. One is never truly free from prejudice, from oneself. One is never free from humanity. The Kirov Aromanov Antarctic research station is only one of the many in that continent, and not one of the largest ones, was previously owned by Russia until recently it was donated to the UN in 2010. Many believe that it was merely a political move to gather support for its claims in Chechenia, but the fact remains that five people will be sent there, and it is about those five people that this story will speak about.