A Friend In Need

I didn't remember much about returning to Nicki's apartment. We were all pretty drunk when we left the Mecca. When we got back it was cold inside. Nicki's heater had somehow switched off so we sat on her floor with our parkas on until we stopped seeing our breath and then she and I cuddled under the blankets to keep each other warm.

In the morning we were so comfortable that we didn't move. In fact it wasn't morning at all, but well after noon. Nicki's apartment was kind of a timeless zone anyway. The drone of the heater fan made it easy to fall in and out of sleep and I could sense that she was enjoying the intimacy.

Fairbanks was an old mining town that had a strange mix of ultra-modern technology from the presence of several military outposts and yet it retained its red-neck personality that was crude at best, sexist at its worst. I could understand its appeal to Nicki. She was part tomboy and redneck herself, but her small frame made her vulnerable and she projected a harsh persona to guard against being hurt. I could tell that she enjoyed being held, almost as much as I enjoyed holding her. But I also knew that there were unspoken limits that I would not attempt to cross.

Jonas knocked at the door and let himself in. He told us that Dave was making arrangements for tomorrow, my last day in Fairbanks, and that he was going to spend time with me, explaining what was so "important and terrible."

Nicki made some strong coffee. It was warm inside now and we were all sitting comfortably on the floor. Jonas fumbled through a cardboard box full of papers and maps.

"Dave and I both had to take an oath that we would never talk about any of this. I don't know how far they would go if they knew we were telling you this stuff. But they are serious people. Even telling you this stuff places you in danger, but you didn't take the oath so I don't know how bad it would be for you."

"Yes. I can appreciate that," I told him, "All I can do is promise you that I will never let them know who you are or where I got the information. If there is something that could make them suspect you... well, just tell me and I will not report that part."

"Okay, man." Jonas's mood changed from serious to more relaxed. He gave me the high-five and then pulled some papers from the box.

"Dave was in the 'com'- the command center of the heater. He worked with the primary transmitter or generator. I mainly worked on the feeder lines on the farm... the antenna farm. We were both there when they bumped the power up to the max and let it blow. I mean, we went from thousands of watts to like billions! And that's when the shit hit the fan."

Jonas unfolded some graph paper with a blue trace line on it. There were several sharp peaks over the timeline and then a spike with a long plateau that was obviously off the chart. I didn't know what I was looking at but Jonas tried to make it simple.

"Look. Here is where they are heating the ionosphere - and here too. Now you can see that it is absorbing more power each time. And then here is when they switched it to max. And somewhere up here, off the paper, is when it happened. The whole ionosphere got blown out into space and made one big fucking hole."

Nicki piped in, "Those monsters! They fucked it up to play with their toy and made a hole in the sky!"

I was puzzled. "I don't get it. What are you saying here?"

"They never used that much power before so they just did it to see what would happen. Do you follow me? And when they did it kind of multiplied the power and then a huge chunk of Earth's atmosphere blew away, out into space. Gone. Poof. History." Jonas pulled another graph from the box. "Here. Look at the ultraviolet and radiation the came through right after they did it. They blew away the shield and all the radiation just came right down and zapped Earth. And look. It lasted for a long time!"

"Twice! Tell him about the other one." Nicki was getting excited. She kept peaking through the eye hole of her apartment door, then returning.

"Yeah. Like after that happened they did it again. A few months later they did it again - can you believe that? And this time they used even more power and destroyed even more of the atmosphere. We're talking about huge chunks, like thousands of miles wide!"

"Well, did anyone die or get hurt from this?" I was already trying to distance myself from the emotions I felt and began slipping into my journalistic way of thinking.

"Shit, yes. Here in Alaska there were Eskimos that were all fried and like whole herds of antelopes. But the holes also moved West and did their real harm in Siberia. But it isn't just the people it killed. It made these people and animals sick from the radiation that came from the Sun - the stuff that's usually blocked by the atmosphere - and so there have been still births and cancers and mutations. They are trying to keep it all real hushed. It's insane. And the worst part is that they are going to test it again!"

Jonas showed me the papers he collected. We spent the whole day discussing the situation. By early evening I was exhausted. Being in Nicki's windowless apartment was also disorienting.

"Oh my God, I have to get to work." Nicki suggested that we all go to the Mecca and meet Dave, who had been planning something big for the next day. When Nicki opened her apartment door it was dark outside. It was always dark in Fairbanks. Dark and cold.