Lopsided Tenancy

“No, Maura—do not rescue the weather mast before you rescue your own ass.”

18:53:11 UTC — Emergency radio, Channel 4; recovered from buffer

IVO SARAN: The mast is lying sideways. Its red beacon points into the snow like it has resigned from meteorology.

MAURA HALDANE: It is transmitting intermittently.

IVO: So is my left boot. We are not making it senior staff.

PAVEL NOVÁK: [galley relay] Both of you, inside. I refuse to list either of you as frozen ingredients.

HYEJIN PARK: [radio click] Core Annex exterior door has iced shut. The samples are sealed. I can manage.

MAURA: Hyejin, wait. Do not cross the yard alone.

HYEJIN: I wasn’t asking permission.

[Carrier hiss. A pressure alarm trips, stops, then begins again.]

14 September — Records clerk restoration comment

Every terminal registered a different chronology after the whiteout. I restored the data and left the fragments in machine order, not human order. Do not reorder them on sentiment alone; these people supplied plenty of material without my help. This sequence is lopsided because that is how it returned. — E. Soto, Morrow Station Records

18:58:41 UTC — Texts recovered from Haldane handset

MAURA: Lock the met office, Ivo. Inner door too.

IVO: You are outdoors holding a wrench.

MAURA: I have roof access. Different category.

IVO: “Different category” is how you become a citation in someone’s incident report.

MAURA: My job is generator bus. Yours is weather.

IVO: Our job is everyone getting indoors.

MAURA: Hyejin is with the cores.

IVO: Not for long.

18:55:06 UTC — Unsent email, Park draft

To: Maura Haldane; Ivo Saran Subject: Administrative question, allegedly

I moved the sealed envelope from the station safe into my inner pocket. Your signatures sit beside mine, along with two pages of thresholds, routes, revisions, and blanks we did not fill in.

We call it the three-person agreement because any other name would sound reckless. Maura says it protects the project. Ivo says it protects us. I have no field category for the difference.

I memorised every evacuation route. I still do not know whether a protocol can keep three people from damaging one another.

If this whiteout ends and I put the envelope back unopened, I will still know it is there. If it does not, Pavel will find it and make a joke that survives all of us.

This is not a research note. Or perhaps I am the bad instrument.

Draft not sent.

PAVEL NOVÁK — Margin annotation entered 19:08 UTC

Park was not stranded. Her radio had snow in the microphone, and she enjoys sounding one door away from tragedy. Haldane was under the mast line. Saran was in meteorology. All three were approximately three bad choices from dry socks.

Yes, I saw the envelope. No, I opened nothing. I am a cook and radio operator, not a raccoon with clearance.

Morrow Station has no spare adults. Do not use an emergency to make decisions for another person. Also, “The Killing Moon” was playing in the galley until the outage. Extremely inappropriate, excellent song.

18:56:19 UTC — Emergency radio, source device unknown

MAURA: Ivo, when I say go, take Hyejin through inner corridor. Do not wait for me.

HYEJIN: No.

MAURA: This is safety protocol.

HYEJIN: Then redesign it.

IVO: My professional forecast is that I decline beautifully.

PAVEL: [intercom] The snow gives no medals for stubbornness.

MAURA: I will follow after.

IVO: You say that when you mean to protect us from an answer.

[Seven seconds damaged audio.]

HYEJIN: Maura?

19:00:00 UTC — Morrow Station system notice

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE.

INTERNAL RECORDING CONTINUES.

Attached file captured during failure: THREE_PERSON_AGREEMENT.enc

ACCESS: SEALED.

“—It is not a romance contract,” Maura said. “It is a disaster-prevention document with feelings in the margins.”

06 September — Kitchenette ceiling mic; transcript reconstructed

[The kettle clicks off. A spoon knocks the rim of a mug. Wind rasps at the vent grille.]

PAVEL: Disaster prevention is my favourite genre.

MAURA: Pavel, you were asked to witness wording, not editorialise.

PAVEL: I am witnessing aggressively.

HYEJIN: Could we remove “feelings in the margins”?

IVO: Counterproposal: put it in bold.

MAURA: Actual clause. Any of us may pause, revise, or decline. At any time. No penalty, no interrogation, no sulking disguised as research.

HYEJIN: Add no change to work assignments.

MAURA: Added.

IVO: Add that no one becomes a sacred object or an honorary third. Three adults, equal say.

PAVEL: Thank God. I was worried we had become literature.

04 September — Unsent email, Park draft

To: Maura Haldane; Ivo Saran Subject: The thing we are circling

I am writing instead of sleeping.

I want both of you.

The sentence looks reckless on a screen, but it feels precise. I do not mean a private joke that lasts until someone gets embarrassed. I mean dinners after late shifts. I mean holding hands if we all want that. I mean letting this be real in daylight, not something we pretend did not happen when the next equipment alarm starts shouting.

I am frightened it will damage our work. If I disagree with a traverse plan, I need it to be about the traverse plan. If Maura tells me I have logged something incorrectly, I need to hear the correction and not invent a second meaning. If Ivo makes me laugh during a briefing, I need to remain capable of briefing.

I do not want secrecy. I do not want one person selected while the other is absent. I do not want either of you to feel cornered by my feelings.

But I want you. Both of you.

If rules make that possible, perhaps rules are not the enemy.

Draft not sent.

04 September — Haldane mail draft

To: Hyejin Park; Ivo Saran Subject: Re: The thing we are circling

Park, I want this too.

Saran, stop pretending you have not already made a colour-coded chart.

My proposed checklist:

1. Every new step requires three clear yeses.

2. Any person may pause, revise, or decline without explaining further.

3. Nobody may use an emergency, injury, rescue, evacuation, bad night, or work crisis to force an answer.

4. We schedule check-ins after dates and after difficult shifts.

5. Work disagreements stay on work channels until everyone has slept.

6. If anyone says stop, we stop. We do not debate whether stopping is reasonable.

This is not less romantic because it is organised. It is the only kind I can trust.

My answer is yes to a first date. Yes to continuing the conversation. Yes to being careful with both of you.

Sent.

05 September — Voice memo, Saran; marked PRIVATE

[“Dancing On My Own” by Robyn plays softly from a phone speaker.]

IVO: Okay. Recording this because face-to-face I turn into a weather balloon and drift into the ceiling.

[pause]

I want a future with room for all three of us. Not a grand declaration carved into ice. Just room. A table where nobody gets left doing dishes because the other two became too wrapped up in being nervous. A future where Hyejin can talk about ice layers for twenty minutes and Maura can explain a broken relay with that terrifyingly happy look.

I want kisses, if we agree to them. I want dates. I want the right to say, “Not tonight,” and hear, “Of course.”

Tomorrow, either of you could decide this is not for you. I would be sad. I would still make the forecast. I would still want you safe.

No emergency gets to turn consent into a deadline.

My yes is yes to going slowly. My yes is yes to all three of us checking again.

[Intercom chime.]

PAVEL: Antarctica has no spare adults. Stop behaving like a committee and say yes only if you mean it. If you mean maybe, say maybe. That word was invented for a reason.

MAURA: I mean yes to a date.

HYEJIN: I mean yes to more conversation, and the right to change it.

IVO: I mean yes to both. And soup after.

PAVEL: There. Romance. Terrible for production, good for morale.

06 September — File properties

THREE_PERSON_AGREEMENT.enc STATUS: SEALED SIGNATURES: PARK / HALDANE / SARAN FIRST REVIEW: 13 September

PAVEL: Count.

18:56:27 UTC — Inner corridor camera; audio recovered

[The outer door slams. Wet boots scrape the rubber mat. A warning bell chatters, then stops.]

PAVEL: Hyejin?

HYEJIN: Here.

PAVEL: Ivo?

IVO: Here, unfortunately wearing half the weather on my trousers.

PAVEL: Maura?

MAURA: Here.

PAVEL: Excellent. Four adults indoors. I am cancelling the memorial potatoes.

HYEJIN: Maura, you said not to wait for you.

MAURA: I had the roof tether, the shorter route, and a mast cable about to cross the yard. I told Ivo to take you through the inner corridor because it was safer. I was not sending either of you away from me.

IVO: It sounded very much like the final scene of a bad film.

MAURA: I was freezing and carrying a wrench.

HYEJIN: You can be precise while carrying a wrench.