* Author : Petra Kuppers

* Narrator : Marguerite Croft

* Host : Bogi Takács

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle 459: Ice Bar (Artemis Rising) is a PodCastle original.

Ice Bar

by Petra Kuppers

She emerged into the bright sunshine, some daynight after. She looked up to the sky, some daynight after. The sun looked different, somehow, not doubled, exactly, but there was a too-muchness in the air. And a new color to the shadows on the ground. The shadows were smaller, unfamiliar.

Alissa took off her jacket, her sweater, all the things she had grabbed fleeing. In bra and underwear, she stalked like a crane through the window opening, and into the Oslo street. The sun began to burn immediately. She felt the sizzle of her skin’s moisture, like a hot-plate drop of wax. Quickly, she ducked into the shadows on the other side of the street. Here, a hairdresser had abandoned their studio. The smashed windows were not boarded up again, and shards of glass lay mingled with strands of long straight black hair on the linoleum. Alissa saw the hair, stopped. She flashed back to Jin’s slender form, the willow waistline that had held her fascination for weeks before she approached her fellow student. Jin had smiled, giggled a bit, when Alissa had asked her for a drink, for a date. That had been seven months ago. Where would Jin be, now, a city away, a continent, across a fjord or in the heavens?

Alissa picked up her drooping shoulders, and willed her feet to move further back into the darkly shadowed hair studio. There was nothing fruitful in reminiscing about scents and sweet touches here, in the half-light of a new too-bright day. In recent daynight periods, she had found herself often staying too long, steps and gazes halted by small moments, tiny monuments to the life before. Stop moving and stare, a good way to get kicked in the butt by sunlight or radiation.

In the back of the studio, Alissa found another survivor. One woman in a sheepskin’s wrap had made a nest for herself beneath the skeletons of the retro hair-dryers, hulking shapes of pink and red plastic, upside-down bowls to encompass freshly washed and laid waves. It was hard to imagine the hair dryers in use, but they fit right in: flamingos staking out territory, hipster citations for new androgynies.

The woman uncurled a little bit when Alissa cleared her throat, said a dry, raspy hello.

“Hello. Please move along. There is nothing here. The water is shut off.”

“Okay. I am not here to hurt you, lady. And I have my own water. What do you plan to do here?”

“I am at home. I am fine. Please move along.”

One of the hopeless ones, it seems. Alissa had met them underground, little broken ones that did not wish to live past the apocalypse, who saw the demise of internet, telephony and petrol-driven life as a reason to hasten their own demise, too. A valid choice, of course. Alissa nodded, and started to move along.

“Oh, one thing. Did others come by?”

“Two, the day before. One, the day it happened. You are the first one since.”

“Thanks. Die well, lady.”

Alissa moved past the felt nest, and found the backdoor of the hair studio. She opened it, carefully, peered out. She had been alert to any news, but hadn’t heard about vigilantes, the much-talked about breakdown of human compassion and morals. Actually, people had been kinder to each other, recently, had shared water, even scraps of food. The tunnels had been terrible, but not because of the people.