I’m sure that if we ran the numbers, researchers, especially doctoral and postdoctoral students, dream of causing harm way more than normal. My thoughts return to Octavio’s dewlap, that pink ring of skin on the brink of bursting, poking out of the neck of his parka. I’d like to catch that skin in the zipper of his jacket, see it bleed; listen to him choke and cough, the printer spitting out spreadsheets in the background. It’s an old printer, the kind that makes a lot of noise. I’d like to feel the firmness of his trachea beneath the tips of my thumbs as I apply pressure.
No one stays particularly sane or levelheaded in the Antarctic winter, especially at the stations in the interior of the continent, which are the most rudimentary. It’s fine, it’s not like before, when we had four actual seasons and scientists were completely incommunicado for half the year. Now winter is only two months long and the telephones and satellite internet work most of the time. It’s eight weeks when you can’t get in or out and you have to share a narrow metal dome with a member of your research team. Look, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. At night you sleep on a hard cot in a windowless little room where you wake up suffocating and sweating, even though outside the penguins are freezing their asses off. It’s really incredible how much heat a human body emits. Just imagine Octavio, who weighs well over two-hundred pounds: that dude is a fat furnace. Meals, day after day, consist of military style rations heated up in the microwave; just try telling me that wouldn’t drive anyone crazy. It’s the same whether it’s meat and potatoes or ravioli in tomato sauce, everything tastes like MSG. The coffee from the machine could dissolve your shoes if you’re not careful. I’m telling you, if I get intestinal cancer in a few years, I’m going to sue the Chilean government.
Collect penguin shit. That’s what our research consisted of. Four years in a doctoral program to spend the summers crawling around a rocky beach in the company of a pretentious fatso with a pelican neck. Strangely, this still seems like a more attractive option to me than teaching. I have friends who work at the university and you should see them, they’re dead inside. College kids suck your energy, they’re vampires. I’m just not built for it.
The last census of Chinstrap penguins was done in 1960, more than eighty-five years ago. Can you believe that? Before we started, we already knew that the population had declined by 75 percent. All the data pointed to it. Greenpeace had dozens of volunteers counting drone images. A bunch of basement dwellers, obviously, but their hearts are in the right place. It’s not like you have to be a psychic: the temperature has risen almost two full degrees since the famous Caracas Agreement and, at this rate, in five years there won’t be any snow left on the continent. This study is financed by the European Union and will last for six months. I don’t actually know how they come up with the money, what with the shitshow that’s going on in their own countries. If you think about it, it’s a miracle the project is still up and running because they’ve been making systematic budget cuts for decades. They could have done it a hundred years ago, and a whole lot better, but that just goes to show you how very little those assholes care about biodiversity. If I’m being honest, there really isn’t much to do anymore. It’s obvious why they’re dying: there’s almost no krill left, and that’s what they eat. And there’s more and more plastic in their stool.
But the worst part about living in an Antarctic refuge is the bathroom. Tiny. And the door opens in. Can you explain to me what the architecture students were thinking when they designed it? It’s impossible to get out of that miniscule room without your clothes touching the toilet bowl. The flusher doesn’t have enough water pressure and all too often I’ve come face-to-face with surprises left by that weirdo Octavio. I’m telling you, that man ought to eat more fiber and get a little exercise. There’s no sewage system here; everything that comes out of your body goes directly into the ocean, which is just really shitty, literally. Last year, an Argentine team found that Weddell seals were developing a resistance to antibiotics. But what really annoys me is the toilet paper. Protocol stipulates that it be thrown in the trash can and then transferred to sealed garbage bags that we’ll take back to O’Higgins. Knowing this, because of course he knows it, that sociopath Octavio doesn’t even bother to fold it. He just tosses it and some of it lands face up. You can see everything. A little modesty, please. Sometimes he doesn’t even put a bag in the trash can. It’s fine if my job is to collect shit, but there’s no reason I should have to see his.
There’s an important thing to consider about penguin guano. Pay attention. About thirty years ago, a team from the University of Osaka carried out a series of calculations based on the rectal pressure of birds. That’s what you’d call some serious shooting. It came out in the journal Nature, back when it was still a respectable publication and not a rag beholden to its sponsors. I stopped reading it years ago; now all the articles are selling you some shit or greenwashing something, but I bet if you search on the internet you could still find the study. You’ll probably have to pay for it. Such bullshit, you always have to pay. But I digress. The point is that the Japanese spent an entire year measuring the trajectory and speed of penguin poop. Mind-blowing. Did you know that it has a maximum range of almost four and a half feet? If you think about it, that’s really far to shoot crap.
*
Day #35
Climate change stresses me out. I think we’re all going to die. EVERYONE. Every species. It’s been more than proven that the increase in temperature affects the reproductive success of all individuals and also wreaks havoc on the availability and distribution of food. People think that two degrees on the thermometer is nothing, but they have no clue. We’ve been in a megadrought for sixty-five years. Animals and people are dying of thirst. Chile, California, the Australian coast, southern Europe. It’s the same everywhere. If the temperature continues to rise at this pace, we’ll go extinct in less than two hundred years, or at least that’s what the mathematical models I saw at the university say.
On the Antarctic continent it’s even worse. At the last official measurement, the surface temperature of the Earth’s crust had risen 2.1 degrees Celsius, but here it’s almost double that. I knew this before I came here, my boss had warned me over the phone. I have to confess that I couldn’t really picture it. It’s impossible to grasp; you only understand when you get here. It doesn’t look anything like the images you have in your head. I felt like crying when we landed. This place is just a bog. There’s almost no white left.
*
“You’re disgusting.”
“What’s your problem?”
“You shouldn’t smoke here, Octavio.”
“No one asked you.”
“If I find a cigarette butt in my samples, I’ll kick your ass. Do you hear me? Stop smiling like an idiot.”
Unlike that fat fuck, I never laugh while taking samples. I have other afflictions: headaches, nausea, vertigo. You see, penguin poop emits nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. You probably already know that. It’s not a lot, but you notice it after a few hours. It poisons you from the inside out. Octavio, for example, starts running his mouth, and he starts talking shit and trying to be hurtful. It’s not his fault really, he isn’t a bad person. I’ve had worse coworkers, people who were actually violent and disturbed. Octavio’s just a spoiled brat. Academia honestly brings out the worst in people. Octavio’s problem is that he draws too much attention to himself; there’s never any silence around him. And silence is fucking important for working. He’s so massive that his body can’t help but make noises, even when he thinks he’s being quiet. Seriously, I don’t know how he does it. You can hear him breathing, it’s like he has an amplifier inside him. The nitrous oxide, you feel it in your muscles. Can you feel it right now? You probably don’t realize it. It’s a little bit like the anesthesia that dentists use when they’re going to extract a molar. No, not the topical kind. The real stuff.
“Did it hurt when they cut your penis off?”
“No one cut my penis off, you moron. The operation is called a vaginoplasty and this is the last time we’re ever going to talk about it.”
“So you still have a penis?”
“What the fuck do you care?”
“Well, it makes sense. You’re super hairy. I would never think that you’re a regular chick.”
“How would you know? You’re practically an incel.”
“Calm down. It was just a joke.”
“You’re an idiot, Octavio. Are your parents siblings, by any chance?”
“Hey, leave my folks out of this.”
“You think you’re so good-looking, or what? With that gut of yours I don’t think even the manatees would do you the favor, even though the Swedes are injecting them with hormones so they’ll start breeding again.”
“People like you, the only thing you’re good for is working by the side of the road.”
“Right. That’s why we’re coworkers.”
Octavio took a final drag and crushed the cigarette under the sole of his shoe. He took a few steps, sinking into the wet sand. The backpack he wore was strangling his shoulders; it looked tiny next to his chubby arms.
“I’ll bet you’re still a virgin, Octavio. Yes or no?”
“Zip it.”
“You can tell from way off. When I look at you I dry up inside.”
“Shut up.”
“You know what they say about fat guys and estrogen, right? I bet yours is teeny tiny.”
He tucked the cigarette butt into the empty pack, crushed it in his fist and put it in his backpack. His face was red with rage.
“People like you are an aberration.”
I smiled flirtatiously and blew him a kiss.
“We’re made for each other, sweetheart.”
He limped off. He’d been taking muscle relaxants for four days for his sciatica, but I knew that half the pills in the medicine kit were expired. The best thing would be for him to lose weight, and quickly. If he had a heart attack or something, I wouldn’t be able to move him. I fantasized about hiding his rations so he’d go hungry. That would do him some good. His problem was anxiety and that he was too fond of dessert. Sometimes I would hear him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, slurping down cans of condensed milk or syrupy peaches. I waited until he was far enough away and, when I was sure he couldn’t hear me, I started to cry.
*
Day #87
My boss’s exact words from O’Higgins were: I don’t believe in occupational stress. As if it were a matter of faith. I said: exposure to acts of psychological violence at work constitutes a health risk, especially when those acts are repetitive, and above all for those of us who work in isolated locations. It wasn’t spontaneous; I’d written this down in my notebook so I wouldn’t get flustered. Talking to that man wrecks my nerves. He said: Alexa, shut your trap, satellite calls are expensive and we don’t have the budget. Then he hung up.
Today I requested an appointment with a psychologist through my health provider, but there aren’t any time slots available with the doctors I have access to, the ones who work for the most basic plan, which doesn’t include dental or physical therapy or really any specialist at all. They’re just twenty-five-minute teleconsultations and half the time they don’t even happen because the signal is unstable and it cuts out. It still makes me angry that I have no way to pay for better healthcare.
I need to talk to someone, so I head out to the penguins. The thing is, I’m scared about the future and being able to say it out loud helps a lot. Sometimes I count them and that relaxes me. I never get to more than a hundred. I have the impression that they listen to me carefully or maybe they’re dazed by the heat wave and that’s why they don’t move. Normally, if you approach them they waddle away. Sometimes I think they already know that they’re disappearing, it’s like they have an intuition. They’ve begun to behave differently. These same penguins, for example, the Chinstraps, no longer want to migrate. Every year they travel shorter and shorter distances. And last year, we also discovered several cases of cannibalism in one of the colonies. They ate each other; that never used to happen. I can’t sleep at night anymore. The heat scares me too.
*
I’ll admit I was in a foul mood this morning. My head hurt, just behind the eyes, and I’d found plastics in the last two samples of the morning. Okay, nothing out of the ordinary, the dang birds go bonkers over the bright colors and can’t help but eat them. But both a Sprite and a Pepsi cap in a single one-and-a-half-ounce stool seemed excessive to me. The caps were intact except for some slight fading of the logos due to the stomach acid. Could they have impacted rectal pressure at the time of expulsion? Poor animal. Just imagine. The Japanese should have considered this variable in their studies on fecal trajectory, but when they did their research, the conditions were so different. The only people who came here were scientists. If you ask me, we’ve got to restrict tourist access to this shit.
I sat down on a rock to heat my two-thousand-calorie ration beneath my armpit. Ravioli was on the menu that day. It was sunny, an Antarctic spring sun, in HD. Even with dark sunglasses you had to squint. Octavio was behind me, slurping tea like a centrifuge and gobbling the contents of the aluminum foil packets like there was no tomorrow.
“Dude, I can hear you from all the way over here. Were you raised in a barn?”
It was a dark shadow on the ice. A gray spot that blended with the dirty snow and the rocks at the end of the beach. I didn’t pay much attention. It was so far away that it could have been another Chinstrap penguin.
The thing was coming closer. It was a human adult male, dressed in rags. He was missing an arm, the left one. At first I thought there had been an accident: one of those luxury yachts that brings in Asian millionaires, a small plane carrying scientists enslaved by competitive funding, an explosion, I don’t know. Later you realize that obviously you would have heard something: a crash, a detonation, but that doesn’t occur to you in the moment. The island’s volcanic caldera was nearby and, as far as I know, that volcano is still active. I set my kit on the ground and stood up. The guy was heading straight for Octavio. He was in shock, staggering like a drunk. The stuffing was coming out of his jacket. He reminded me of Shackleton’s men, you know who I mean, right? The enormous eyes, the sunken cheeks, the gray skin. What was the name of that Danish guy who crossed the pole?
At first I thought the guy was overly effusive. Poor soul. He lurched forward to embrace my repellant coworker, who was surely sweating beneath layers and layers of thermal clothing. That dude doesn’t use deodorant, I’m telling you. When I go into the bathroom after him, the place smells like Roquefort. I looked at the two of them in disgust. I took a few steps backwards. I intended to keep my distance.
Octavio started screaming. They began to struggle. What the fuck, I thought. I was still holding the spatula as I approached. I could see the grimace of fear on Octavio’s face, his dewlap swallowing up his chin, and his small pink tongue poking out of his open mouth like a parrot’s. All I could see of the other guy was his back. His jacket looked old, military-style, and gray feathers stuck out through a long rip in the fabric. For a guy with only one arm, he was having remarkably little trouble overpowering Octavio, who continued to scream wildly. He was crying. Saying to help him for God’s sake, asking what was I doing just standing there? Finally I started running and, with all my strength, shoved the newcomer to the ground. Now I could see him up close. His yellow, bloodshot eyes, his skin like recycled paper, clinging to his cheeks. There was no fat on his face, not a single ounce. The hood of his jacket fell back; he had almost no hair. His skull bulged out on one side. That really scared me.
“He bit me, Alex. The motherfucker bit me!” my coworker shrieked, showing me his bloody hand, the glove ripped in half.
The last joint of his index finger was missing. He thrust the wound so close to my face that he got blood on my cheek. Disgusting. I could even see the little white tip of the bone in the center. The poor fatso went cross-eyed looking at it. I thought he was going to faint.
“That fucker ate my finger, Alex.”
The guy started to get up. He didn’t say anything. He worked his jaw a few times; Octavio’s bright blood streamed down his face. Inside his mouth, I saw the little knob of meat turn to mush. I heard his teeth crunch the bone in a few quick chomps.
I was about to tell Octavio to calm down, but the other guy pounced on me. I looked up in time to block him with my arms. It was like trying to stop a train. That scrawny man had uncanny strength. He was out of his mind.
“Octavio, help me!”
I put a foot on his chest and pushed for all I was worth. I barely managed to move him. The guy opened his mouth and the stench of rotten fish enveloped me. Luckily, he seemed to have already swallowed the finger. I could see the purplish roof of his mouth above my face. It looked like one of those Chinese dogs, a Shar Pei. I was horrified to see he had no epiglottis.
“Help me, damn it! Octavio!”
That fat fucker just cried, holding his bloody finger with his other hand, numb to my suffering and everything else.
“Move!” I shouted. “Or I’m going to let him eat your face. For fuck’s sake, Octavio, do I have to do everything myself?”
I managed to get loose and I grabbed a large rock and smashed him in the head, right next to his left ear. He staggered, fell to the ground. What the hell is wrong with this guy? It’s a good thing I’ve got a strong arm, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling this story. I was sure he wouldn’t be able to get back up again anytime soon. When he started to stand up for the second time like it was nothing, I grabbed Octavio by his jacket so hard that I lifted him off the ground.
“Stop crying, you idiot. He’s coming back.”
We ran a little distance across the rocks to get away from him. Octavio was panting, his neck was covered in red splotches and he was limping, holding one hand to his back. Those fucking muscle relaxants. The other guy was coming up behind us with his arms outstretched.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Octavio?”
We advanced about fifty meters, managing to put a little distance between us and the skeletal guy, who seemed disoriented, walking slowly over the rocks with his arms held out in front of him, as if to keep his balance. Could he be on drugs? I had the impression that he couldn’t see; he turned his head from side to side, as if looking for us. At one point he stopped and turned forty-five degrees. I felt relieved, thinking he’d given up, until I noticed that he was smiling. He headed straight for a penguin.
You’re familiar with the IUCN Red List. The Chinstrap penguin is on that list. Critically endangered. Critically. One more step, and all we’ll have left are zoo specimens. I hate zoos. I was not going to allow that asshole to eat one of my research subjects. There are fewer than six hundred individuals left in the wild and I need this project to make a living. I know it’s a cliché, I’m even embarrassed to say it, but it all happened so fast. I don’t even know where I got that other rock. One, two, three, four times. My hands didn’t even shake. I didn’t hold back. It’s gross to tell it like this, so casually. Maybe I’m also in shock. I should go to therapy, but how would I pay for it? And anyway, there are never any appointments available. Sometimes, when I close my eyes before falling asleep, I see him. The guy didn’t even bleed. A gray paste oozed from his ears, like flan. He was still smiling after the first two blows, the bastard. With the third, something inside his head came loose. I think I broke his cheekbone; an eyeball fell inward into his skull and I didn’t see it again. His nose and mouth were a dark mass. I knocked out all of his teeth. I felt them break off through the rock. It’s a very strange sensation. I landed the final blow with my eyes closed. Have you ever split a watermelon in half with a single thwack?
*
Day #123
The study’s over in three weeks. They just informed us, the budget’s dried up. Those EU assholes. By the beginning of September we have to pack up our samples and return to O’Higgins. Octavio and I had hoped to have more time to study the impact of climate change on penguin colonies. September is hatching season and we thought we might see new instances of cannibalism. It’s the ideal time to make other observations aside from shit.
I have a theory that this season there will be more chicks, though I’m sure the majority of them will die before their first year. From hunger or else eaten by the adults. The penguins know it; I can see it in their lidless eyes. Less krill and more plastic. A deadly combination.
Once this study is over I’ll be without a project and a paycheck. Ten years of research in biodynamics and climatology and nothing to show for it. My prospects are dim, I have to accept that. Not long ago, I saw on social media that a colleague with a postdoctoral degree is a barista at Starbucks and another decided to go into online poker. There’s a position open with the Chilean Antarctic Institute that I’ll apply for, but Octavio is the son of an academic and I’m sure they’ll give it to him. I don’t even feel like going through the application process anymore. What’s the point? They’ll ask for a pile of notarized documents. This country runs on personal connections; that’s why I hate it.
*
Octavio and I went back to the refuge. I used an extra layer I had in my backpack, of merino wool, to wrap up his finger. The fat fuck cried the entire way back, so loud I couldn’t think. I wasn’t sure if I should grab the satellite phone or wait until my head cleared. I’d beaten a guy to death with a rock, like a savage, and that’s not easy for anyone to explain. I thought, while I scrubbed my hands nearly raw with soap, about what the hell I was going to tell my boss since he doesn’t believe in workplace stress. I had the brown paste that came out of the guy’s head under my fingernails. I couldn’t get the fishy smell off my body. I dried my face and went to check on Octavio. He had sat down on the floor just as he was, still wearing his parka and muddy boots. I felt like hitting him with the broom just to get a reaction out of him. His lips were moving without saying anything, his eyes brimmed with tears. Why do I have to do everything myself? I cleaned his wound with saline solution, disinfected it with iodine and bandaged it with sterile gauze. All the medical supplies were expired but I didn’t tell him. What would be the point? In addition to being fat, the guy’s a hypochondriac. A mechanical activity always helps to put one’s thoughts in order, don’t you find?
“Alex?”
“What?”
“My finger’s turning black.”
“So quickly?”
I went over to him. It hadn’t been more than three minutes. Beneath the bandage, his skin was black to the knuckles.
“I don’t understand.”
“I think I have a fever.”
I unzipped his jacket and looked for a thermometer. The digital one was out of batteries but luckily there was an old one, the kind with mercury. I forced down my squeamishness and shoved it into his sweaty armpit. How disgusting it was to touch the guy’s armpit hair. I timed it on my watch and when I took the thermometer out it read 105.8 degrees. Now I was really getting scared. The guy must have infected him, Komodo dragon style. The human mouth is a truly filthy place.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Octavio. How about a shower?”
“Are you going to take my clothes off?”
“Don’t get any ideas, you idiot.”
“My arm hurts, Alex.”
I helped him get undressed, right there on the floor. He was hyperventilating. His naked body smelled like cheese and rotten lemons. He had almost no hair on his chest and the nipples on his conical little teats looked to opposite sides of the room. The crucial thing was to keep the wound dry. I put one of my sample bags over the bandages and wrapped electrical tape around his wrist to seal it, before helping him to stand up. The contact with his sweaty, pungent body hair made me gag. As we went through the door, I got crushed against the doorframe. The two of us barely fit inside the narrow bathroom. I turned on the shower, starting out with warm water and then gradually turning it colder and colder. Octavio swayed, his teeth chattered. I asked if he was dizzy; I was afraid he would fall. Lean against the wall, I ordered. The water running off his pasty body soaked my boots. I couldn’t stop looking at it; it was the brownish color of diluted grease. All I wanted was to leave him alone, run far, far away, but I didn’t dare. Deep down I’m a good person. I even went so far as to put a hand on his freckled back to let him know everything would be all right.
“Oh, thank you, Alex. Really, thank you.”
“When we’re done here, we’ll call O’Higgins.”
“Don’t tell them anything. I’m feeling better now.”
“You look like shit.”
“I’m sure I’ll be much better in the morning.”
“Right. And what do we do with the guy?”
“Let the elephant seals eat him. We can drag him to the rookery first thing tomorrow morning. Before the sun comes up.”
“Are you being serious, Octavio?”
“If we say anything, the study’s fucked. We have three weeks left.”
“I killed him.”
“They’re not renewing our funding for next year, Alex. You know this. We have to publish our paper.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“I smashed his face to a pulp with a rock.”
“No one will know. If we don’t publish, we’re fucked. You and me both. We won’t get hired anywhere. Anyway, you saw what he was like. It wasn’t our fault.”
“Even if we publish the paper, Octavio. Even if they publish it in the National Academy of Sciences. What does it matter? There’s only one open position and you and I both know you’ll get it.”
“That’s not true.”
“Look at me. Do you really think they’d give that job to someone like me?”
I turned off the water and wrapped him in the towel. My towel, which was the only one close to hand because that idiot always just tossed his any old place. He turned toward me, bent his head until it almost touched my forehead and started to sob.
“Relax. Everything will be all right.”
“Forgive me for asking, Alex, but will you hug me?”
“Okay, but dry off first.”
“Don’t leave me alone, please.”
He wrapped his thick, wet arms around my back. So disgusting. I stood still, stoic. What else could I do? I’m still a good person. I could feel his belly pushing into my torso, that was the worst part. It rose and fell gently with his breathing, just like the walruses on the beach. We stood there in a kind of false silence, because there’s always some kind of noise if you’re close to that man. His chest was obstructed and he sounded like the Large Hadron Collider. I’m sure the inhalers in the medicine kit were also expired.
“Look, Octavio, why don’t you put on some pajamas and go to bed? We’ve had a hell of a day.”
He was pale as I led him to his room. Green. I took some pajama bottoms out of a drawer and helped him put them on, trying to look the other way. My only comment is that it’s true what they say about estrogen, but that’s all I’m going to say. I’m not a gossip. He lay down on the bed with his pants pulled halfway up. He was breathing through his mouth and panting. I removed the plastic bag covering his bandages. Now it wasn’t just the skin on his finger that was black, but also his hand, all the way up to his forearm.
“Don’t leave me, Alex.”
“Relax. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Lie down here with me. Just for a bit.”
“Ok, but don’t hug me anymore.”
“I’m sorry. That shit I said to you the other day…”
“Everyone says it. I’m used to it.”
“But that doesn’t make it okay.”
“Obviously.”
“I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“Most people are idiots and inconsiderate.”
“Yeah, but you messed with me for being fat.”
“Well, you are really fat.”
“But it hurts my feelings.”
“What do you expect? Am I supposed to just keep my mouth shut and be happy when you say that people like me shouldn’t exist?”
“You’re fatphobic, Alex.”
“Could be. You’re a couple of things too.”
“Alex?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to die a virgin.”
“I told you not to try to hug me.”
“Sorry.”
I took his good hand. It was so sweaty that it left a damp splotch on the mattress.
“Alex, I know what you’re thinking but don’t call O’Higgins. We have to finish the sampling.”
“Relax. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Three weeks, we’re so close. Let’s take him to the rookery. We’re a good team.”
“No, we’re not, and you know it. Dude, I told you not to hug me.”
He pitched forward and vomited something orange and sticky, splattering my jacket. He turned slowly toward me, pale, the whites of his eyes gone yellow. He opened and shut his mouth, clacking his teeth, bringing his face close to mine.
“Octavio?”
He lunged at me. I managed to throw myself backwards, and fell to the floor.
“What the hell?”
He stretched out his hands and tried to grab me by the feet. I got up as fast as I could. He grabbed my pants but the fabric was so old that it tore and I managed to break free. I never thought I’d thank the Ministry for not giving us new uniforms that year. I went into the hallway and took down the fire extinguisher. The expiration date—three years past—was clearly visible, stamped in blue.
“Don’t come near me, I’m warning you.”
The cylinder was full, heavy. No one had used it before. Fucking Antarctica, the only continent on the planet without weapons. I’m telling you, in this line of work, you have to make do with what you’ve got. Maybe I could poison Octavio with a blast of chemical dust before bashing his head in. I can see him so clearly, walking through the door with his arms extended towards me. The skin on his face was a bluish-gray color, his pallid lips almost white. He smelled like fish. I flung my arms backward to gain momentum. The frontal bone is the hardest part of the skull.
*
Day #122
A penguin spoke to me today. It was extraordinary.
This is what happened. I was collecting a sample and I heard a voice saying to me: Your future is in your hands, Alex, take hold of it. At first I thought I was imagining things. I know my boss doesn’t believe in workplace stress but I’ve read that this can happen when one is under a lot of pressure. Octavio snores at night like a spaceship, it’s impossible to sleep. That and the heat. I feel like shoving the kitchen towel in his mouth so he’ll shut up.
The penguin was chubby and swayed a little as it walked across the rocks. I had a strong urge to hug him; maybe he was smaller than the others. He was lucky they hadn’t eaten him. Surely his rectal pressure is less and he can’t shoot four-and-a-half feet. I noticed him because his eyes were covered in a blue film. Can penguins have blue eyes? Penguins can also suffer from conjunctivitis and everything is very toxic here. I held still, squatting on my heels so he would come closer. His bottomless eyes were a mirror. His voice was smooth, like a radio host. Alex, the world belongs to the hungry and you are very, very hungry, he told me.
*
I dragged the bodies to the rookery at dawn: seven hundred meters. The bony guy didn’t weigh more than sixty pounds beneath his clothes; it was easy to cover the distance. His legs were so thin that they danced inside the ankles of his boots. Moving Octavio’s body, on the other hand, took me all morning. His skin had turned a grayish blue, like wax. He had a couple of gelatinous scabs on his chin. He smelled so bad that I used the laboratory clamps to shove a kitchen towel into his mouth. I was certain that the rotten fish stench was coming from his insides. I left them next to the elephant seals so they could do their thing and I sat down on a rock with my field ration: shredded beef with potatoes, eighteen-hundred calories. It tasted the same as the ravioli, like MSG. Close to six o’clock I went for a gas can and sprinkled what little was left of the two of them so I could set them on fire.
It’s a shame the Chinstrap penguins don’t talk to me every day. I bet the time would go a lot faster if they did. According to the most recent estimates, there are probably just over six-hundred individuals left in the wild. Of these, only 35 percent are females. 100 percent of the feces from both males and females contain plastics.
