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Chapter One. Migration

The heat was unbearable, the kind that made me feel as if ants were crawling all over me. All I wanted was the fan. You know, the fan. That marvel of engineering. Based on the glorious principles of electromagnetic induction, it transforms raw electrical energy into a sweet, blessed motion: a chorus of cool air. Every time I thought of it, I’d find myself reciting its inner workings. A desperate attempt to cling to the knowledge we were rapidly losing.

So much of it had already been lost. All that rote learning, those textbooks filled with jargon like “high-performance caches” and “instruction set branch prediction.” Beautiful words, meaningless now. Just echoes of a forgotten language. And don’t even get me started on the things I’d learned as a kid. They just slipped away.

But the fan … could it even work?

Hell no. We’d lost generators, one by one. And the chances of fixing them? Slim to none. Power was a precious commodity now, rationed out with a miser’s hand. “Just endure,” I muttered to myself. “Just a little longer.”

Wen, my son, lay beside me, restless. Neither of us could sleep. “Dad,” he whispered, “are there really things called air conditioners? Can electricity use that … that Kano cycle thing … to make it cool?” Kids were the worst in this heat. He was wriggling around like a trapped snake.

“It’s the Carnot cycle, son,” I said. “And it doesn’t ‘make’ coolness—coolness isn’t something you create. It’s the absence of heat. Heat is real. Tangible. When heat is removed, we feel coolness … well, coolness is just a feeling.”

He turned around on the bed, silent. Just like me at his age, the little twerp hated memorising this archaic knowledge. But what choice did he have? If we let it all slip away, we’d be truly lost. The computer was down, the warehouse was overflowing with tomes, but what good were they if no one could decipher the glyphs within?

“Wen,” I said, “you need to learn this. Understand it, if you can.”

“Why?” he mumbled.

“Because this knowledge, my son, is the blood and sweat of countless generations of scholars. It’s the very foundation upon which our civilisation was built.” He shook his head, picking at his fingers. Damn it. “Think of it like a sandcastle,” I tried again. “You spend hours crafting a masterpiece, don’t you want to protect it from the tide? This knowledge, this is the legacy of our ancestors.”

He blinked, a flicker of comprehension in his eyes. “Carnot cycle … the absence of heat.” He didn’t really get it. It had taken me years to grasp the nuances of that ancient law. Trying to explain it to him was like trying to teach a sparrow to fly in a hurricane. But what else could I do? A young mind could only absorb so much.

It was still too damn hot to sleep. I lay there, drenched in sweat, tossing and turning, my mind racing. We were trapped in this infernal cycle: heat and insomnia. Even when sleep finally claimed me, it offered little respite.

And then, I was awake again. The pre-dawn light was a cruel mockery. This was no longer just discomfort. This was a crisis. I needed my rest!

“Wen,” I rasped, “get the fan going.”

He sprang into action, a coiled spring released. A marvel of engineering, the spring, storing and releasing energy with effortless grace. The very heart of the fan. Wen activated the switch. The sacred machine whirred to life. Cool air … no, not cool. Heat is banished. Thanks to Faraday, to Biot-Savart, to the glorious age of industry! We were alive again, bathed in the mechanical breeze. The fan … it was my lifeline, more precious than my parents.

I scrambled to my feet, snatching the nearest speaker. “Everyone, find a fan! Five to a unit. This is an emergency!”

The camp, once a sea of slumbering forms, erupted in a chorus of whirring blades. Tower fans, clip fans, even tiny head fans, all sprang to life. The air thrummed with the sweet song of technology, a lullaby far more comforting than any mother’s croon. Machines, electricity, industry … these were the miracles that made us human. Without them, we were no better than birds, who flap their wings to cool down in the heat.

A few others joined us on our bed, seeking refuge in the shared breeze. The air grew thick, but the fan was a beacon of salvation. Its cool caress washed over me, and finally, I succumbed to sleep.

When I awoke, the sun was already high. At least we had survived the night.

Another day dawned.

I left Wen to his mom. He needed to learn engineering, just as I had. Specialisation was key, but knowledge was a communal burden. We carried too little, discarded too much on each migration. We’d tried to preserve the libraries, but it was a futile effort. Those damn insects would devour anything, even in the biting cold.

With my little burden discarded, I headed towards the generator. A wide, shimmering blue panel there—a solar collector—drank in the lifeblood of the sun, converting its radiance into usable energy. The old texts spoke of a time when power flowed from the earth itself, from coal and petrol. But the equatorial ring offered no such bounty, only flora and fauna.

Beneath the panel, a tangle of wires pulsed with life. The last storm had struck a fatal blow, the rain a cruel enemy to delicate circuitry. I had traced the damaged pathways, mending the broken connections with metal. Life thus returned to the machine. It would feed the fans, and for restoring this vital pulse, I had become something akin to a leader.

Electricity did more than just cool us. It illuminated our camp. It sparked our fires, banishing the tedious ritual of friction, the hours spent rubbing dry sticks, a precious commodity to begin with, until my hands were raw and blistered. Without it, we would be savages clinging to the fragile flame.

“Generator’s online!” I boomed, my voice amplified by the speaker.

Cheers erupted from the camp. Midday would be a crucible, but as long as the power held, we would endure. Electricity was our lifeline. With it, our machines still functioned. On a good day, we could even fire up a lathe and craft tools from hardened metal.

“What’s on the menu today?”

“Fish, bird eggs, fruit, mutton.”

Mutton, eh? Not bad. Those dim-witted beasts would follow their leader off a cliff. Made our migrations a breeze, I’ll give them that. The other livestock had been culled long ago. I remember seeing cows, back in the day. Released into the wild, they say. Feral beasts, running free. It grated on me, seeing them. Damn cattle. Once ours. Humans, with our technology, should have dominion over all. Was it the loss of property that rankled, the loss of that dominance? Or was it simply the memory of the taste? I hadn’t tasted beef in ages, not since I was a child. The memory still lingered—the rich, sweet fat of a well-marbled cut, the dizzying aroma of tamed meat. But wild beef? Tough as old boots.

Forget it. Food was food. The thought of that juicy steak … I could almost taste it. Shasha had thrown together a stew. It looked hearty enough.

Food was plentiful. We carried seeds and livestock on our migrations, cultivating pockets of abundance wherever we went. Trees sprouted with unnatural speed, bearing fruit like crazy. Fish were easy prey, a simple matter of dipping a net into the water. We had plenty to eat, that wasn’t the problem. It was the lack of spice.

Tart, pungent, juicy, tough, nourishing. The stew filled my belly.

Maybe we should try growing some spices? We could consult the botanist. Might not work, might not even be worth the effort, but it was worth a shot. Food and sleep were the essentials now.

After the meal, it was back to the grind: memorisation, practice, the endless cycle of survival. I looked up at the sky, and was greeted with a swirling mass of feathered bodies. Birds, all heading west. The old texts spoke of migratory and sedentary species, but those distinctions were blurred now. We were all migrators, birds or humans.

It was time to move again. The Ice Barrier crept closer from the east, while the Scorchlands devoured the land to the west. The plants and animals knew, they always knew. They were more attuned to the rhythms of the dying world than we were. Even beneath the ice, life stirred, waiting for the warmth to awaken it.

“Pack up! We’re moving!” The voice of the climate advisor boomed from the speaker. I scrambled to my feet, urging the others into action. The generator was loaded onto the cart. Men shouldered the burden of knowledge, books and tools strapped to their backs. Older children carried fans and other vital gadgets. Women herded the sheep, their little ones clinging to their hands. No one relished these migrations. Heat was bearable, but the cold … the cold could steal your life in an instant.

As we travelled, the same anxieties echoed through the caravan: “Did we forget something?” “I think we lost a sheep.” “We’ll manage.”

And so, we left things behind: tools, technologies, knowledge. A lifetime of migration. We hated it, but it was all we knew.

Chapter Two. The Legend of the Sedentaries

They called it Earth, a sphere orbiting a fiery sun, the only star in our solar system. But the planet was a capricious beast, its magnetic embrace faltering, unleashing a chaotic dance of climates. We lived in the Equator, a fragile ribbon of warmth snaking across its girth, a sanctuary against the encroaching ice.

It was a mandatory lesson for all children, a knowledge etched into our memories. But why? To migrate, one needed only instinct, the primal urge to flee the cold and heat. But if we relied solely on that, the names of Magellan, Copernicus, and Columbus would vanish from our minds, relics of a lost civilisation, like the artifacts we discarded on our endless journeys.

At least we knew where Earth was, where the sun was, and where we were in relation to both. If only we had fuel. Imagine it: a truck carrying us to a safer haven. But did fuel even exist? A viscous black fluid, capable of unleashing incredible power into a car, a machine more potent than twenty men. I’d never seen it, not in my lifetime. Yet, it had to be real, judging by the abandoned cars scattered about. They didn’t make these just for show, did they? Fuel could have been our salvation, a shield against the cold, and an end to this endless pilgrimage. Coal had promised the same, but the equatorial ring was barren, its veins of mineral wealth long exhausted.

I pulled the cart, the weight of three solar generators straining against my muscles. My arms screamed, my legs trembled. It was a familiar symphony of pain. Years of such labour had forged me, my skin a toughened hide, my veins like gnarled tree roots beneath it, intertwined with the bulging muscles I’d built through endless toil and all that food I ate.

Bam—

My left arm screamed in protest as it was twisted at an unnatural angle, wrenching the rope from my grasp. The cart tipped over, the generators tumbling to the ground. One landed with a sickening thud, its blue panel shattered. The other was a mangled mess. Only one remained intact, but whether it still functioned was anyone’s guess.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see it!” Mingcheng exclaimed. The young man was still learning the ropes.

Damn it, I’d warned him to watch his steps. I followed his gaze to the culprit: a gnarled tree root, a grotesque fist thrusting through the asphalt. It had crippled our generators. How could this happen? The concrete had been breached by growing plant underneath. I stared at the gaping wound in the road. Well, this was the enemy. Nature, relentless and indifferent, was slowly reclaiming its domain, one shattered human construction at a time.

Rage swelled within me, but the words died in my throat. My chest tightened, my breath catching. Those generators … they were precious, the fruits of countless hours of labour! How would we replace them? I slumped beside the wreckage, tears stinging my eyes. It felt worse than losing family.

After a while, I remembered the third generator. Hope flickered within me. Could it be? I fumbled in my pocket, pulling out a screwdriver and multimeter. I probed the machine, my heart pounding with each passing second. Then, the meter sprang to life. It still worked! With trembling hands, I wiped the dust from its surface and carefully returned it to the cart.

“I’m sorry, I … ” Mingcheng stammered.

All eyes were on us.

My hand lashed out, a stinging blow across his cheek. He crumpled to the ground, his eyes welling up. I knew he felt wronged, but there was no other way. He’d broken our generators, and this was a lenient punishment. I was in charge. I had to maintain order.

“Get up,” I barked, my voice hard.

He rose shakily, his face offered up like a sacrifice. Another blow, and he collapsed again. His cheek burned; my hand stung. The old texts were right: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Five times in all, until his face was totally red and swollen. The swelling would last for weeks, but no wounds. Wounds were a liability. The punishment was enough. We had to move on.

The generators lay shattered, but we didn’t abandon them. We strapped them back onto the cart, a flicker of hope clinging to the wreckage. If we couldn’t repair them, they’d be left behind on the next migration. Our packs grew lighter with each journey, our memories fading faster. Mingcheng pushed the cart, tears tracing paths through the dust. He’d learned his lesson, I knew. From now on, his eyes would scan the ground with the vigilance of a scavenger. Tonight, I’d find some herbs to soothe his bruised cheek. He was a good kid, smart and strong. Maybe he could take over one day. I was still going strong, but it wasn’t too early to think about the future.

As night fell, I hunted for food. Bird eggs, a rabbit, a fox snared in a trap forged on our rusty lathe. The traps were losing their edge, corroded by the elements. According to the tattered maps, a small settlement lay ahead. Perhaps there we could find a replacement for our broken tools.

After eating, I spat into my palms, then crushed some herbs and applied them to Mingcheng’s cheek. He’d been holding back his tears, but now they spilled over, a torrent of grief. He buried his face in his knees, trembling. I knew what that was for. It wasn’t the sting of my hand. He understood, as we all did, the gravity of the loss. A wave of despair washed over me, a hundred times more potent than his. But I couldn’t afford to show weakness. I was the leader.

“Don’t worry,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “We might find another generator ahead.”

He looked up, then buried his face back in his knees, his voice choked with despair. “We’re going to die.”

“No, we won’t. There’s always food. Fruit, game … we’ll survive.”

“We’re becoming animals,” he muttered. “Is it my fault? Because I broke the generators, we’re going to become animals?” he added. “All of humanity is going to become animals.”

“No, we’re not the only ones left,” I reassured him. “There are plenty of other groups like us out there … ”

It was true. Isolated pockets of warmth were clinging to the equator like bubbles in a vast, icy ocean; while the cold, relentless Ice Barrier pressed in from all sides. We were Migrators, chasing after these ephemeral bubbles, always on the move, always searching. It had been years since we’d encountered another group of men. Even if two bubbles collided, they would soon drift apart.

“I wish we could stay,” Mingcheng muttered, pinching his legs. “I wish this endless movement would end.”

“Survival takes precedence,” I said.

“You said … you said there were people living in the Ice Barrier.”

I swallowed hard. I had. The ancient texts, the faded blueprints of mines, coal plants, oil refineries … those structures were built to endure. Technology, in its heyday, had been a formidable force. Electricity provided not only warmth, but food. I’d always clung to the belief that there were others out there; they were survivors tougher than the hardiest lichen, clinging to life in the teeth of the Ice Barrier. In my mind, their cities were powered by the roar of industrial giants, their lives shielded by a wall of steel and ore. Those machine titans stood firm and tall, defying the relentless march of the seasons for the survivors, whose courage and ingenuity became their only weapons.

They were the ultimate Sedentaries of this frozen world, Sedentaries that never left their homes. But were they real? Were there people living in the Ice Barrier?

Doubt gnawed at me. Without guidance, venturing into the Barrier would be suicide.

Chapter Three. Treasures

No one wanted this life.

We were losing our grip on civilisation, turning into scavengers like any other beast. Even young Mingcheng understood it. If we could just settle down, like in the old books—forge steel, refine fuel, use technology to fight the cold … if the Sedentaries would take us in … we’d put down roots, never have to wander again. I’d kiss the greasy steel, sleep beside the roaring furnaces, feel the pulse of creation. In the heart of industry, I’d be human again. Out here, we were just another species.

But there were three major hurdles:

Were the Sedentaries even real? How do we breach the Ice Barrier? We despised migrating, but we needed a reason to leave.

Oh, and there was a hidden fourth hurdle: would the industry people welcome us? What did we have to offer in exchange? Why should they open their doors to us?

Until we cleared these obstacles, migration was inevitable.

Clearing them? That was a dream for another lifetime.

The migration trudged on. Calculations had shown that in two days, the magnetic field would settle, and the new tropical zone would solidify. No matter how vast it turned out to be, no matter what scraps of technology remained, we’d have to be ready to move again. If we were lucky, maybe we could wrangle some animals into working for us. Or better yet, more bikes. Those mechanical wonders didn’t need juice. I could tinker with bikes; most of us could. They’d be useless on this broken-down terrain, but on those old asphalt ribbons, they could haul a ton of gear. We could even bring those books.

The Ice Barrier ahead had been shrinking, the ice clinging to the ruins melting fast, turning into a ghostly mist. And behind us, far back in the line, folks could see the ice creeping forward, a silent hunter. Those hyper-plants had done their job, scattering their seeds to greener pastures. Soon, they’d become brittle husks, their lifeblood frozen solid. Good thing we weren’t plants. We had legs. We could walk.

Forward. Always forward. Survival was the only game in town.

Mingcheng was still glued to my heels, finally getting the hang of navigating this mess. The remaining generator, thankfully, hadn’t thrown another fit. By the seventh day, the swelling on his face had subsided, and the magnetic field seemed to be settling down. Two more days, and the tropical zone would lock in. The transition between the Ice Barrier and the tropical zone was probably a few hundred meters, maybe a kilometre at most. Was this crazy climate shift really caused by the magnetic field? That was what the textbooks said, but I’d seen some theories linking it to solar flares. Not my problem anymore. Once the tropical zone was stable, we needed to fan out. Figure out what resources were available, what could be salvaged. Food wouldn’t be an issue; the animals were always a step ahead of us, and those plants were exploding with growth in this newfound stability.

I picked out a small squad, all young men. I wanted to take Wen, but he was too young for this kind of recon. Mingcheng was coming, though. I wanted him to learn, to see how things were done. The rest were all tough cookies.

The good news? A towering building loomed on the horizon.

A concrete behemoth, a ghost of the past, a stark reminder of what we’d lost.

The frost around the building had thawed, leaving a puddle of muddy water. If we gave it a thorough once-over, we could probably make it our base. But there were risks. The building was ancient, older than any of us, and we had no idea if it would still stand. Still, we had to search it. The inside was pitch black, and who knew what kind of junk would be scattered across the floor—broken glass, twisted metal? We needed light. We had these flashlights, but not the kind that used tiny disposable batteries. We’d jury-rigged them with the chemical batteries from the electric bikes, using a makeshift transformer. Those batteries were finally good for something, but once they died, we were out of luck.

I shouldered the battery pack—heavy, but I could manage. The wires snaked around my waist, and I flashed the light ahead. Mingcheng and the others followed close behind, gathering anything that looked useful. In the gloom, we could make out old posters plastered on the walls. This place had been a shopping mall, it seemed. The plastic from those posters could be used for waterproofing. I had them strip it all off, every last bit. Further in, we found clothes hangers, some plastic, some metal. Perfect for making fish traps. As for their original purpose—well, in this heat, nobody wore anything, except in the most private of places. We were all running around in the buff most of the time. There wasn’t much else worth salvaging. Made sense, really. When the climate first started going haywire, people had grabbed what they could and ran.

We’d circled the building, and it was time to call it quits. We’d come up empty-handed—no batteries, no power, not even a calculator from the old mall. I stomped my foot in frustration, splashing through a puddle of icy water. Not long ago, that water had been frozen solid, hanging like daggers from the ceiling.

But that wasn’t the only sound. 

The ground beneath my feet rumbled. Then, a sharp, brittle CRACK!—the sound of concrete and metal giving way. “Get out of here!” I yelled. The concrete giants, weakened by the constant freeze-thaw cycles, were crumbling like stale crackers.

But it was too late. The floor beneath me buckled. Crap. What was down there? I wondered as I tumbled. I was going to die, crushed by the weight of the ice spikes below that had yet to melt. I thrashed around, desperate for something to grab onto, but there was nothing. I was a ragdoll, plummeting into the abyss.

BAM! My back slammed into something soft. The pain was excruciating, but I managed to sit up. My bones felt like they were about to snap. But … I could sit up. My legs worked … I could stand. Yeah, it hurt like a son of a gun, but I was alive. My limbs were intact. No broken bones.

Thank God. I was still breathing. What the hell was down here?

“Hey, give me that flashlight!” I yelled.

“You okay?” It was Mingcheng.

“No broken bones.” Our voices echoed through the cavernous space.

“Think I can drop down without getting squashed?”

“Easy does it, it’s all soft stuff.”

I fumbled around in the darkness. It was a sea of cardboard boxes, all filled with something soft and fluffy. I ripped open one and peeled back the plastic. Thick, heavy winter coats. This place had been a warehouse. Here we were, practically on the equator, surrounded by enough gear to survive a polar expedition. I guess that was how the world used to work—the poor countries did all the light manufacturing work. I dug through a few more boxes. Thick hats, goggles, even those heavy-duty boots.

“Anything good down there? Find a generator yet?”

“Just coats,” I muttered. “Keep looking, maybe there’s a backup somewhere.”

But as soon as the words left my mouth, something clicked.

Coats. All these coats. And boots.

I tore open another box and held the packaging up to the light. On the packaging was a man, bundled up like a mummy, head to toe. He was clutching an ice axe in one hand and a rope in the other. And in the top right corner, there was a mountain.

This wasn’t just winter gear, this was serious mountaineering stuff. I flipped open a coat and felt something hard embedded in the lining. What the hell was that? Some kind of electronic?

“Coats? Sounds useless. It’s hotter than hell out here,” Mingcheng grumbled.

“Maybe not,” I muttered.

Mingcheng caught it. He had ears like a hawk. He crouched down, his voice low, “Can … can we go find the Sedentaries? The ones who … live in the factories?”

Mingcheng’s eyes widened in the darkness, like a cat’s. The others perked up too. We were all sick and tired of this nomadic existence. The knowledge we’d memorised, the electricity, the energy, the steel we’d yearned for—a flicker of hope ignited in each of us. We were all terrified of the Ice Barrier, but almost everyone believed in the Sedentaries. It was an ancient legend, passed down through generations.

Some even older tales claimed we were Sedentaries originally. That we’d once lived in those factories. An old leader had started the rumour, but no one remembered who. Without industry, people wouldn’t last long. A simple illness could wipe you out. If someone could live to be a hundred, maybe they could piece together the truth. But by our generation, our memories of the past were hazy. I didn’t even know how we’d ended up in this blasted tropical zone.

I said nothing. I’d already considered the possibilities. To escape life as Migrators, to embrace industrial civilisation again, we needed at least three things. These clothes might be the first piece of that puzzle. But I shouldn’t get my hopes up. My life would probably be spent wandering, like a migratory bird. The dream of human civilisation, of our glorious past, was probably just that—a dream.

My spirits plummeted.

“I’ll keep looking,” I said. I swept the flashlight beam around the basement, searching for anything useful. And then I saw it. At a corner of the warehouse. And I knew that I was looking at the greatest treasure we’d ever found.

When I saw that counter, my heart leaped into my throat. It was electronics. A mountain of electronics, perfectly preserved.

Chapter Four. The Only Chance

Knowing that a bunch of winter coats were just sitting in a warehouse, everyone got excited. The old legends started doing the rounds again.

“Some people live in the Ice Barrier. They hide behind thick metal walls, feasting on chemically engineered food that tastes like heaven.”

“That’s right. They never forgot the old ways. The steam from their factories could blot out the sun.”

“They burn rocks to power their furnaces, melt more metal, and use it to carve out more living space.”

“They can flip a switch and have light whenever they want.”

“People live to be eighty there.”

But the wildest tale of all was this:

“We came from the factory zones,” someone claimed. “My grandfather, he told me his grandfather told him.”

I ripped open the back of one of the coats and pulled out the hard lump. It was a small box. At first, I thought it was some kind of battery, but it was pure chemistry. No electricity needed. You just pressed the button on the sleeve, and it would heat up. Turn it off, and the heat would stop. I timed it—two whole days of continuous warmth. I pried it open and found a tiny, intricate mechanism. Press the button, and it separated two chemicals. Press it again, and they reacted, generating heat. Mind-blowing. A testament to the ingenuity of our ancestors. Imagine these things rolling off assembly lines, millions of them a day. And here we were, struggling to make a single one. Every time I dismantled one of these marvels, my respect for the old ways grew. We needed technology to survive, to live a decent life.

“Let’s drop the talk about the factories in the Ice Barrier,” I said. “We don’t know where they are. And venturing into the unknown is a suicide mission.”

As much as I craved those legendary factories, as much as the thought of them made my heart ache with longing, I had to be realistic. These people were counting on me. Their lives were in my hands. I couldn’t jeopardise them for my own pipe dream. It was simply unacceptable.

Everyone fell silent. They understood. Their dreams of a better life were fading fast. As for the treasures we’d unearthed in the warehouse—those electronics—we were still tinkering with them. One thing was certain: they were all dead. Could we power them with the electric bike batteries? Maybe. But we’d have to be careful. Overcharge them, and we’d fry the whole lot.

The Ice Barrier had ground our lives to a halt, and we were back to our ancient way of existence. Fishing, hunting, herding—that was our life now. At night, the heat would spike, and we’d have to turn on the fans for a short while. There were no rivers here, so we collected melted ice for water. After a while, even the water would be tepid. This heat was slowly killing us—literally. On the seventh day here, someone had died. Our calendar keeper said he was a ripe old fifty-three. They said he had red spots all over him when he passed. Would I make it to fifty-three? I’d have to be incredibly lucky. If I took another fall like last time, that would be the end of me.

I knew people lived to be eighty. It was true. I read it in a book—a sociology textbook, back in the day. Now it was just a relic of the past. Germany, China, France, Russia, Japan—those were the big players back then. Their average lifespan was over eighty. Average! Not the maximum. That meant that, even with all the babies who didn’t make it, everyone lived to be eighty-something. Unbelievable. That meant a whole lot of people probably lived to be ninety. Ninety! Could you even imagine?

I was still tinkering with these electronics. There had to be some juice left in these batteries. They were big enough to power a small device. I was trying to narrow the gap between the hot and neutral wires on the transformer. That would change the resistance ratio. Do a little math … and bingo! The radio’s light just flickered to life. I was pretty proud of myself. I’d always been the smartest guy around, but even so, it had taken me half my life to understand electricity. It looked like Wen hadn’t inherited my knack for this stuff. Who else could do this? I didn’t know. When I am gone, would anyone even remember how to adjust a transformer, or how to safely deliver different voltages to different devices?

I couldn’t dwell on it now.

The radio was crackling to life. It was working.

“Any luck?” Shasha asked. Dinnertime again. She was a strong, beautiful woman, my wife. I loved her more than anything.

“Maybe. But I can’t risk leaving. If there’s a spark, I need to kill the power instantly, or the transformer will fry.”

“I’ll bring you something to eat.”

She came over and gently turned my head away from the workbench. Patiently, she fed me, bite by bite. I chewed slowly, trying not to break my concentration. Electricity was a fickle beast, demanding undivided attention. Just as I aligned the electrodes, the machine let out a high-pitched whine, followed by something truly astonishing.

“Stéphane, Stéphane, il y a un problème avec le circuit d’alimentation du carburant. Tu dois aller voir ça.” (Stéphane, Stéphane, ther’s a problem with the car’s fuel line. You need to check it out.)

“Reçu. J’arrive tout de suite. Zut alors, je viens de le vérifier!” (Roger that. I’ll be right there. Damn it, I just checked it.)

Shasha and I froze, our eyes wide. That was … a human voice. Speaking another language.

“Depuis combien de temps travailles-tu aujourd’hui?” (How long have you been working today?)

“Quatorze heures. Il me reste deux heures.” (Fourteen hours. Two more hours to go.)

The voices continued, a conversation unfolding before us. I couldn’t understand a word, but it was clear—this wasn’t a recording. This was happening live. We were listening to someone else.

“They … they’re talking,” Shasha’s hand paused over the food.

“Yeah, they are. In real-time. They’re miles away, and we can hear them.”

“Is it because of electromagnetic waves?”

“Yep. That’s how it works. Electromagnetic waves, they can travel for miles.” We still remembered the basics from the old textbooks. I couldn’t recite Maxwell’s equations anymore, but I knew this stuff could travel through space.

“Who is it? Is it another group of Migrators?”

The voices from the radio kept coming, a constant hum in the background.

Then it hit me.

“Write it down! Quick!” I yelled.

“Temps, puis, res, il, me, au, tu.”

I scribbled the syllables as fast as I could. They were talking fast, and I was writing even faster. Great, maybe our old textbooks had something on this language. Maybe we could figure out what they were saying. Even if we couldn’t, my heart was pounding. This wasn’t just any group of Migrators. It was too much. The tropical zone was tiny. Migrators wouldn’t waste precious power on frivolous things like communication. It didn’t make sense. It had to be them … the legendary Sedentaries, the ones who lived in the Ice Barrier. Only the folks there could be burning through power like that. And considering how strong the signal was, and how electromagnetic waves weaken over distance, they must be pretty close!

My hand flew across the pages, filling the notebook. Paper was a precious commodity, something we could no longer churn out. But this was what it was for. Soon, everyone crowded around, a hushed murmur turning into absolute silence as they listened intently to the radio. The transmission droned on for an hour and a half. My hand cramped up, but I kept scribbling. Finally, the radio sputtered and died.

We all stared at each other, the implications dawning on us.

“The legends were true!” someone shouted.

“They’re in there! In the Ice Barrier!”

Some people fell to their knees, tears streaming down their faces. Just a month ago, we were Migrators, forever on the run. And now, hope had rained down on us in a torrent, washing away our despair.

I was just as excited as they were. We’d been trapped in this desolate existence for so long. But I had to maintain order. I had to be the voice of reason. I stood up, my voice firm. “Alright, everyone, back to work! We have a lot to do.”

We needed to keep a lid on things. Excitement was dangerous. We needed reason, logic, to guide us. Reason was everything. We weren’t leaving until we were absolutely certain, but this was an opportunity we couldn’t afford to miss. We couldn’t afford to leave those mountaineering coats behind. If we did, we’d be sealing our fate as Migrators forever. Especially if the signal source was close. The next tropical zone was farther, and we would lose the chance to cross with ice with the gears we found.

Time was slipping away. Should we go? Should I lead them out of this wasteland? Should we … should we cling to what was left of humanity, or succumb to the beast within?

This was our only hope.

They all looked to me and trusted me. The buck stopped with me. As I wrestled with the decision, Mingcheng burst in, a thick book held aloft.

“We found it! We didn’t leave it behind!”

I examined the book; the pages were brittle with age. We’d abandoned so much, but not these books. These were knowledge, the last embers of our civilisation.

“What is it?”

“It’s a dictionary! I found a dictionary! Look, look!” Mingcheng flipped to a page. “‘Temps’ means time … ”

“How do you know it’s this language?”

Mingcheng sprinted back and returned with a faded poster. It was a world map, salvaged from the warehouse.

“We’re here. The book says people here speak Spanish. Further north, they speak French.”

I swallowed hard. The legend was true. A flicker of hope ignited within me.

“Mingcheng, what do you think? Should we go?”

“I’ll follow your lead!” he declared.

I stared at him, the weight of their survival crushing down on me. I had to decide.

Chapter Five. Into the Ice

Two days of monitoring the radio confirmed it wasn’t just a loop; the transmissions were live. With Mingcheng’s help, we cracked the code on their language. Words like “work”, “car”, “fuel”, “repair”—terms utterly foreign to us Migrators—began to emerge.

“The signal weakens with distance, and the environment itself affects how it travels.” We crunched the numbers on scraps of paper, relying heavily on our math expert. He was the last of us who could juggle those mind-bending exponents. We measured signal strength at the eastern, western, northern, and southern edges of our tropical zone. After countless calculations, he confirmed the source was shockingly close—within walking distance, if you could believe it. And those thermal coats of ours had built-in heaters.

“What if I’m wrong?” the math expert said, his voice tight.

A chilling silence descended. The stakes were clear: a wrong answer meant certain death. But only if we dared to venture into the ice.

“Let’s run the numbers again,” I said.

“Yeah, just to be sure,” he muttered, returning to his calculations. Our supply of paper was dwindling fast. We’d found a calculator once, but it had been lost during a frantic escape. Now, it was back to the mental grindstone.

“What if they don’t take us in?” Mingcheng asked.

I had no answer. As resourceful as I was, I couldn’t conjure a radio that could send and receive messages. Transmission and reception were two entirely different ball games. To transmit, you had to hit the right frequency and then … well, it involved a whole lot of complicated math. You had to manipulate the signal, twisting and turning it to make it carry information. It was like trying to weave a message into a stream of invisible ripples. And each step of that process required specialised hardware, tiny circuits that were invisible to the naked eye. Circuits that were the crowning achievement of human ingenuity. Circuits I couldn’t replicate.

If they rejected us, we were dead in the water.

Even if we risked the Ice Barrier and sought refuge with the Sedentaries, the odds were stacked against us. We worshipped technology, we revered the wonders of civilisation, but the prospect of death loomed large.

We’d conducted some tests, sending volunteers into the Ice Barrier, roped and suited up, to see how far they could push themselves without food or water. We needed to know the limits of the women, children, and elderly. The results were encouraging. The heating elements in the coats didn’t need to run constantly. Three hours of heat would sustain us for half a day, and four hours during sleep would be sufficient. There were enough coats, and I’d figured out how to swap out the heating packs. We could cannibalise all of them to lighten the load.

And we could leverage the environment. Animal furs would provide insulation. And electricity? Easy. Run a current through a resistor, and it generates heat. Simpler than running a fan.

We were ready. Every contingency planned for.

But should we go?

The question hung heavy in the air—what if they rejected us? There was no answer. We, battered by nature, were worshippers of technology. But to them, we were … what were we?

Everyone was itching to go, their spirits high. But I couldn’t pull the trigger. The fear was paralysing—the image of us all frozen solid on the ice, a chilling reminder of our vulnerability. Time was slipping away. Soon, the tropical zone would shift, and this window of opportunity would slam shut forever.

In the end, it wasn’t my decision to make. Nature provided the answer. The son of the man who’d died at 53, a vibrant young man, succumbed to the same rash as his father. It spread like wildfire to his wife and child, fever and itching their inevitable companions.

A plague.

We quarantined them, as the old texts instructed. No, quarantine was a civilised term. We abandoned them, sentenced them to death. It was brutal, necessary. The survival of the many demanded the sacrifice of the few. A harsh truth, but one etched into the annals of history. If we hadn’t, we would have all perished. Civilised people had the means to fight back—antibiotics, miracle cures. They could survive. But we? We were savages in their eyes, judged by how we treated our own. The sick vanished, disappearing into the distance. Even if they somehow survived the disease, they wouldn’t survive the next migration. Death was their inevitable fate.

But that still wasn’t enough. Six days after we’d … well, after what we’d done, I found a rabbit. It was covered in the same horrifying rash.

Alright, it was time to go. We could quarantine people, but we couldn’t quarantine rabbits. Those little buggers burrowed underground and migrated just like us. This plague had spread throughout the region. With our limited tech, we were staring down the barrel of two options: die here or gamble on survival. Maybe some of us would make it. The Black Death only killed a third of the European population, right? But that was a gamble I wasn’t willing to take. A one-in-three chance of losing someone I loved? Unacceptable. And the Ice Barrier? That was a different kind of death altogether. We could die like animals, at the mercy of the elements, or die fighting, like the humans in the old stories.

No one asked if they’d take us in. The three conditions I laid out were now met. We were ready to go.

The men loaded up with every scrap of warmth they could find. The women shouldered the burden of children and the meagre livestock. The sheep would freeze, but their flesh would sustain us. As for books, we only took the dictionary. We took turns mimicking the sounds from the radio, trying to piece together their language. Were we getting it right? It didn’t matter. We were making a sound. Finding our way wouldn’t be difficult. The signal, fading and strengthening, would be our guide. We left everything else behind, except the generator.

We weren’t migratory birds anymore. We weren’t migrating anymore. Fate would decide: death or survival.

Before we left, I stood on a crumbling stump and declared our purpose. “What makes us human? We are the tool-wielding apes, masters of our own destiny. We are not mere animals, not insects, not creatures of the wild. We are human. Our spirit, our ingenuity, surpasses all others. Look at these ruins, these remnants of our past. They are a testament to our greatness.”

I’d read those words somewhere. They seemed to strike a chord.

“Only birds and elephants migrate. Humans stay,” I declared. “The Eskimos thrive in the harshest of climates. We will too. We will reclaim our lost civilisation. We will find our people, rebuild, and conquer this frozen wasteland!”

The crowd erupted in a roar. Fear was replaced by a fierce resolve. We were tired of running, of clinging to the remnants of a forgotten past. From that moment on, we weren’t Migrators anymore.

Chapter Six. Gods of the Frost

The cold … it gnawed at you.

It was a different kind of suffering than the heat. In the heat, you longed for the icy embrace of a glacier, anything to escape the suffocating humidity. Now, deep within the Ice Barrier, the cold was a living thing. It bit through my clothes, seeping into my very bones. And I found myself strangely nostalgic for the heat—the relentless sun, the sweat stinging my eyes, the sheer physical agony of it all.

I guess it was a universal truth. We always crave what we don’t have.

The first day of travel went according to plan. We reached our target and set up camp in a cave. Things were even better than expected. The generator kept us warm, but we found a windfall inside the cave. A pile of dry twigs and a heap of bones, likely from a bear. Poor creature hadn’t made it through the winter. Starved, desperate, it had scavenged for kindling before succumbing to the cold. Bears using wood? Who would have thought? But it was a stroke of luck. We used the bones to anchor our windbreak and burned the twigs to conserve our precious heat packs. It felt … familiar. Like we were born for this, like we were meant to survive in this frozen wasteland.

Was the legend true? That we were descended from ancient people who lived in this very ice? The truth had been lost to time, buried beneath generations of whispers. It didn’t matter now. The past was irrelevant. The future was what counted, and we’d made our choice.

My cousin, the daughter of my uncle’s brother, was the fifth to succumb. We had to isolate her. She was going to freeze to death out there, just like that bear. “I’m sorry,” I called to her from a distance. “It’s alright,” she whispered, her voice echoing through the cave. “Take care of my child. And my dad.”

The next morning, we set out, one fewer in our ranks. I thought of the hospitals and doctors described in the old texts. In the Age of Abundance, they could slice you open, repair the damage, and stitch you back together. You could live to be eighty years old. That was true dignity and civilisation. Abandoning our own? That was savagery. But survival was paramount. We had to embrace technology, the technology we had only dreamed of.

Wen was shivering uncontrollably in my arms. In the tropics, he’d been plagued by the heat, now it was the cold that kept him awake. “Why did we have to leave?” he asked. “To escape the plague,” I replied. “To survive like humans, not like animals.” He nodded, understanding dawning in his eyes. “When you face disaster, running away is never the answer,” I told him, recalling the legend of Yu the Great. Yu, the legendary engineer, had tamed the floods, turning chaos into fertile land. It was my favourite story, a testament to human ingenuity. I could never be Yu, but I always tried to live up to his example.

Wen drifted off to sleep in my arms. His body still trembled, but his breath had steadied. Soon, I succumbed to exhaustion myself. It was the fourth day since we’d left. Our bodies, accustomed to the relentless heat, were now battling the unforgiving cold. Many were already sick. With every breath, my chest would rattle like a loose engine. I suspected the frigid air had somehow damaged my lungs, but I could still breathe. By morning, three women and two men were too weak to even stand. We knew what that meant. We had to leave them behind.

A thought briefly crossed my mind: to use them as … as sustenance. The thought was chilling. No, no way. We were better than that. We were human. We wouldn’t stoop to cannibalism. Even without technology, the bedrock of our civilisation, we still clung to the belief that we were more than animals. We could have stayed, let nature thin our herd. Half of us would die, the other half would survive. But that wasn’t living. It was mere existence. Our journey wasn’t just about finding remnants of the past; it was about reclaiming our humanity, in life and in death.

On the nineteenth day, the radio signal grew stronger. It offered a beacon of hope, but hope alone wouldn’t keep us warm. Our heat packs were dwindling, and soon we would have to rely solely on the food in our stomachs. That night, Wen whimpered in his sleep: “Mama … Papa,” his voice growing fainter. Shasha and I held him close, trying to provide a semblance of warmth.

“Warm, so warm … ” he murmured.

My heart lurched. Was it our body heat that warmed him, or was it the body’s cruel lie, a final flicker of warmth before the inevitable embrace of the cold? I didn’t know. I held him tighter, but it was too late. His small body, once trembling with cold, now lay still in my arms. I pressed my ear to his chest. Nothing.

He was gone.

Shasha crumpled to the ground, her face blank, her hands trembling. I pulled her to her feet and gently placed Wen down. She understood. We had no choice but to move on. We had to leave our child behind, just as we had left the others. As we had decided, we would die with dignity. It wasn’t the math that was wrong, it was the overestimation of our own endurance.

“Goodbye, my son,” I whispered, remembering his tiny body squirming in my arms during the heat.

Should we have stayed?

A sob welled up in my throat, a primal urge to collapse and die. I wanted to beg forgiveness, to end this torment. My heart felt like it was shattering into a million pieces. But something held me back. A voice, deep within me, commanded me to be strong. I couldn’t break down. I couldn’t give up. Not when they needed me. I forced the tears back and straightened my back and turned to face Shasha and the others.

“Keep moving,” I roared. My voice echoed across the desolate landscape. “We’re almost there!”

No one answered. The hope that had once ignited our hearts was now dying in the biting wind. We had sought to transcend our primordial nature, to embrace technology and rise above it all. But nature, indifferent and vast, had other plans.

We stumbled on, time a meaningless concept. At least, we would die on our feet. I forced my legs to move. The others followed. There was no turning back.

Death was imminent, a cold breath on my neck.

My vision blurred, and a strange warmth washed over me. It was comforting, like being held in my mother’s arms. Then, a sound. A monstrous roar that shattered the silence. The ground trembled beneath our feet.

Through the swirling snow, a behemoth emerged, a titan that seemed to devour the sun. I stumbled closer.

It was a colossal gear, churning and grinding, reducing the mountain to dust. The rubble was swallowed by a gaping maw that belched forth an eerie red glow. It devoured the landscape, a relentless predator. With each rotation, a torrent of ice and snow cascaded down its metallic flanks. And us? We were mere insects clinging to a blade of grass.

So this was it, the mining machine from the books. It was far grander, far more terrifying than I could have imagined. A machine god. It was a testament to humanity’s past, a monument to our industrial might. Here, in the heart of this frozen wasteland, stood a miraculous creation of our former glory.

The legends were true. The Sedentaries existed. We were not doomed to perish in this frozen wasteland.

My knees buckled, and I collapsed.

My mission was complete. I had brought them here. The legends were true, every last one of them. We were not mere poor Migrators, fleeing from the cold.

Chapter Seven. Echoes of the Past

“Quarante-deux.” (Forty-two of them.)

“D’où viennent-ils?” (Where did they come from?)

“Je ne sais pas. D’autres abris?” (I don’t know. Other shelters?)

“Nous n’avons pas eu de nouvelles d’autres abris depuis des années.” (We haven’t heard from any other shelters in years.)

“Les tempêtes magnétiques ont dû brouiller les signaux.” (The magnetic storms must have scrambled the signals.)

“Alors comment nous ont-ils trouvés?: (Then how did they find us?)

“Je ne sais pas. Ils ne parlent pas notre langue.” (I don’t know. They don’t speak our language.)

“Bon sang, la situation est déjà tendue comme un fil de fer. Le Surintendant devra les accueillir.” (Damn it, things are tense enough as it is. The Overseer will have to take them in.)

I was weak, my head pounding, but a strange warmth enveloped me. I reached out and touched the soft fabric covering me. I looked up …

Oh boy, the ceiling was metal. I was inside a place made of steel. I was alive. The room was a chaotic jumble of tools and machinery. The air was thick with the smell of oil and rust, but it was the smell of fresh oil, not the cloying scent of decay. This was it. This was where the Sedentaries lived. They had survived, using technology to conquer this frozen wasteland, just as we had hoped. I pushed myself to my feet and touched the cold steel wall. It was a tangible reminder of the past, a testament to human ingenuity. This was civilisation. This was what it meant to be human.

I was alone now. Tears welled up and I buried my face in my knees, letting them fall freely. Yes, they had taken us in, these beings from a more advanced civilisation. Their morality was undoubtedly superior to our own. After all we’d been through, we were finally here. But these tears weren’t of joy. My mind drifted back to Wen. My child, my child. If only he had held on a little longer, he would have been saved. He died at the dawn of a new era.

I cried until I heard footsteps approaching. Someone was coming. It was Mingcheng, and with him was a short, stout man. In an industrial civilisation, people could afford to be … well, plump. The ability to store fat beneath your skin and in your organs—that was a luxury we could only dream of. He was wearing glasses—yes, glasses! A remarkable invention, with lenses that allowed humans to see beyond the limitations of their own eyes. Mingcheng walked ahead, clutching a new dictionary. Was he here to act as our interpreter? I wasn’t sure how well that would go, considering we’d only been studying their language for a few days.

The man came over, pulled up a chair beside my bed, and set the open dictionary on the bedside. Then, he began to speak, one word at a time.

“He says you’re the leader.”

I nodded.

“Where did you come from?” the man asked.

“The tropics,” I replied.

The man frowned. He flipped through the dictionary, this one a mirror version of ours, translating their language into ours. Finally, he found the word. “Tropics.” He pointed to a series of strange symbols.

I nodded again.

The man’s face contorted in confusion, his teeth clenched, and he drew in a ragged breath. “The tropics … exist,” he sputtered. I didn’t understand why he kept repeating that. Didn’t they know about the tropics? Hadn’t they chosen to survive in this frozen wasteland?

I was baffled.

Then another person entered, short and stout like the first, coughing incessantly. They launched into a rapid-fire exchange in a language that sounded like a torrent of water. I tugged at Mingcheng’s sleeve and whispered, “How long have I been out?”

“Two days,” he replied.

“What’s going on?”

“Things have been pretty tense since we got here … they seem to have no idea the tropics even exist.”

Mingcheng and I were completely out of the loop. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but the tension in the room was palpable. It was probably because of us—all those extra mouths to feed. Guilt was eating away at me. I couldn’t speak their language, so I’d just stumble through French phrases like “sorry” and “thank you”, basically guessing at the pronunciation. They’d usually just give me a weak, almost pitying smile in return. There wasn’t much we could do about it.

From then on, we just followed orders. I was no longer the leader, which was honestly a relief. They started teaching us their way of doing things, their language, and even kept an eye on our health. Everything was turning out just as good as I could have imagined. This industrial civilisation had a much higher moral code than ours. They didn’t just abandon people. Even though I still missed my son terribly, I knew I’d made the right call. We were no longer the Migrators, constantly on the run. We were part of the Sedentaries now, safe from becoming savages. All thanks to that massive machine outside and the wonders of heavy industry.

I was picking up French pretty quickly. Our language teacher, a big woman, always seemed to have this … expectant look in her eye when she looked at us. But there were other supervisors for the classes, so she always had to leave after her part. Finally, one day, the other supervisors were no-shows. After everyone else had cleared out, she pulled me aside and asked, “The tropics, they really exist, right?”

“Yeah,” I said in French. I’d learned enough of their language by then.

“There’s tons of animals and plants, fruit hanging from every tree, and fish you can just grab right out of the water.”

She was talking a mile a minute, so excited I could barely follow. I asked her to slow down and she obliged, enunciating each syllable carefully. I caught the gist of it, and she was right. In the tropics, everything was concentrated—plants, animals, the good stuff. The soil would be super fertile. But I could tell what she was really thinking. That place sounded way better to her. No way, I thought. That couldn’t be right. Dead wrong. But the answer was still “yes.” I couldn’t lie.

“Yes,” I replied in French.

Her eyes lit up. “There are clouds, mountains, water, rivers.”

“Yes,” I said again, quickly adding, “But it’s very, very hot. We, we have to … ” I couldn’t find the word, so I just mimed fanning myself.

“Hot, hot,” she said, her eyes wide with excitement. “Amazing. I thought I’d be stuck here forever. There are actually places with heat!”

I didn’t know how to explain. We had to keep moving, couldn’t carry much, and we lost all our technology. People died because of the lack of medicine. The constant moving was awful.

Panicked, I found the French word for “migrate” in the dictionary and added “constantly.” She nodded. “But the downside is, the tropics aren’t stable, so you have to keep moving.”

I understood and nodded.

“So what? Moving isn’t a big deal. We can’t take these huge machines anyway, and we don’t need them without the cold.”

I wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come. I’d used up all my mental energy just trying to understand her.

“No, no, no, it’s bad there, good here,” I blurted out in French.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” she smiled—that same weak, insincere smile everyone gave.

I was starting to worry. She wasn’t the only one thinking this way. I could hear others starting to talk about it.

Chapter Eight. A Natural Human

My job was sorting minerals by size. Fourteen hours a day, but honestly, it was awesome. Every morning after the shift, I’d get this incredible meal—hot, steaming, and delicious. All synthetic, made with electricity and some kind of crazy chemistry. Seriously impressive stuff. It was this gooey, flavourful paste, kind of salty. Back in the tropics, we never had anything like it. Spices were a luxury. But that wasn’t even the best part! They could make any flavour you wanted, just by tweaking the chemicals. No more hunting for food. It was incredible!

Every time I ate that stuff, I knew it was all worth it.

And the heat. The heat was amazing. The blast furnace belched out this iron-scented fog. It was the smell of industry, not that stifling, humid heat we were used to. Sweating like crazy while I worked was actually kind of exhilarating. It was like something out of a science fiction novel—us building these massive machines and then becoming part of them, using our brains and brawn to conquer nature. I felt like bursting into song, and I know I wasn’t the only one.

But the best part? The old people. Real old people, wrinkled and still working. They must have lived forever. We’d just leave the old folks behind. But here, in this amazing industrial society, they were valued. They worked just like everyone else.

I loved it here. Absolutely loved it. If only Wen could be here with me.

I still thought about my son and everyone else who’d died. I wished they could be here too. My language skills were improving by the day. I could even handle some of the more complex stuff now, and I could finally understand most of their chatter. I learned my teacher’s name—Simone. One day after work, she pulled me aside for a chat. Talking was part of the learning process, after all.

“You’re beautiful,” she said in French, “Your muscles are so toned. Everyone here is fat, fat from overworking.” But I didn’t get it. Wasn’t that a good thing? Books said storing fat was key. I wasn’t beautiful. We were all skinny and bony. They were the picture of health. Look at the rolls of fat under her chin, glowing like moonlight. I liked her, but I had a wife.

She touched my arm. I knew what she was getting at. “I’m sorry,” I said in French. “You’re beautiful too, Simone, but I’m married.” Her eyes widened. “Married?” she repeated. “Yes, I have a wife. My partner, she’s here. Tall and thin, with small eyes. You’ve met her, Shasha.”

Simone froze, her lip trembled, and then she burst into tears. I was confused. I’d just rejected her, that’s all. Had I hurt her feelings? Had I said something wrong? I apologised profusely, explaining again how attractive she was, but that I was already committed. But she just sobbed harder. Finally, she stopped, “There’s no such thing as a wife here.”

“Here, every healthy person has to mate, to have children. That’s the rule.” She covered her face. “I … I loved someone too. But I have to mate with others.”

She calmed down a bit. “Thank you for telling us about the tropics. Those who lied to us should pay!”

“We didn’t come to tell you. We came to escape disease, to stop running.”

“You have no idea what you’ve lost!” she screamed, running away. Heads turned.

I was baffled. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of mating with someone you didn’t love. Why was she crying over it? In my group, when your partner died, you found someone new. It was normal. And what had we lost? We had everything we wanted right here, right now. I didn’t feel like we were missing out. Since I’d arrived, I was constantly confused. The whole situation just didn’t make sense. And it all felt … wrong.

Simone wasn’t the only one; everyone here was whispering amongst themselves. I could make out what they were saying. They were dreaming of life in the tropics. It was insane, absolutely insane. It was like someone freezing to death suddenly putting on a coat and then getting too hot. Our dignity as humans came from industrial civilisation. Those massive machines, the ones we couldn’t bring with us, were the foundation of our very existence. Out there, we were becoming more like animals. How could anyone yearn for such a vulnerable way of life?

Something wasn’t right.

I chased after Simone. I had to explain this to her. I sprinted after her and soon caught up, arriving at her room. It was incredible—they had a safe, impregnable place to rest. They could sleep soundly without worrying about taking turns on guard duty. The temperature was perfect, not so hot that you couldn’t sleep. But Simone was still crying, tears streaming down her face. A movie was playing in her room, showing a woman in a black and white dress singing in a field.

When she saw me, she cried even harder. “You know,” she said, “this is my favourite scene. It’s from an old movie called The Sound of Music. Look at her, dancing and singing in the field. I want that. I want to stand in a forest, singing, seeing the blue sky and the clouds. Not here, mating like animals with whoever they assign to us, breeding according to their rules, working sixteen-hour days, with no rest in our old age. Our children will just repeat the same cycle.”

I started to get it. She actually thought their lives were animalistic and ours were truly human. I didn’t understand; this warped way of thinking made my palms sweat. But I had to try and understand. Maybe it was like the old saying about wanting what you don’t have. When I lived in the tropics, the heat was unbearable, and now, here in the Ice Barrier, I craved that heat. It was the same for them.

I poured out everything I knew, every French word I’d ever learned.

“No, Simone, not like that. Life back there very hard. We die young. Forty years old. Our food no taste. Spice plant no follow tropical zone. We eat just to survive. That’s all. The worst is migrate, always migrate! Old people and weak people were left behind. If that was paradise, why we come here? No dignity there. We were animals. Lose all technology!”

I rambled in French and made a mess of it, but I knew she understood.

She was silent for a moment, then made a decision.

“No, you’re wrong,” she said. “That’s what human life is all about.”

She paused. “Humans are part of nature. We belong under the sun and the sky. If nature wants us to migrate, then we should.” “Humans are animals,” she continued. “We should live in harmony with nature.”

“You’ll die! By forty!” My blood ran cold. She was crazy, completely off the rails.

“I’d rather be a deer, living forty years and leaping through the forest, than spend eighty years as a rat in this cage,” she said.

Simone wiped away her tears and her smile vanished.

Chapter Nine. Revolution

I couldn’t get through to Simone.

A month or so after we arrived, I heard Simone on the broadcast. That stubborn girl, just like us back then, was willing to risk everything for her crazy idea.

“We know the truth now,” she declared. “The legends are real. Luke’s climate models were right. There is a liveable tropical zone out there, always moving. All we have to do is follow it. Imagine it—blue skies, white clouds, squirrels leaping through the trees, fish in the water. Freedom, my people. But the Overseers lied to us. They trapped us here, controlling us with an iron fist, forcing us to mate with strangers, making us work ourselves to the bone. They said it was to survive the cold, but now we know—there are places where it’s never cold.”

The sound of metal crashing against the door echoed in the background. Then, a loud bang. Something had fallen. I wanted to scream at them, to tell them Simone was wrong, that our lives used to be so bad. But I looked around and saw the workers, their faces upturned, their tools forgotten. Their eyes held the same desperate hope as Simone’s.

I finally understood. They were living in luxury, and they still weren’t happy. A bunch of ungrateful fools!

The broadcast was quickly cut off. The Overseer, the same one who’d welcomed us, the intelligent and just leader, came on.

“Think carefully, everyone. If these Migrators were truly happy, why would they come here? You’ve heard them say they fled from disease. The tropics are probably riddled with them. We must continue our work until the magnetic field stabilises.”

The broadcast repeated.

“That old bastard lied to us!” someone yelled.

“I don’t believe a word he said!”

“I want to see the sky too!”

“Think about it,” someone said, pointing at me. “If things were really as good as they say, why are these people so lean?” A crowd quickly gathered around me.

“Please take your shirt off,” one of them demanded.

“Take off?”

“Yes, please take it off. Let us see your upper body. It doesn’t concern you. Just show us your shoulders and chest, and we’ll know the truth.”

“No, it’s not like that! Fat is a sign of good life. You’re the beautiful ones. I’m skinny. I have to … I have to hunt and chase to get food …  Ah!”

Before I could finish, they grabbed me and ripped my shirt open. My upper body was completely exposed. Their eyes, both male and female, scanned me, making me instinctively shield myself. I’d never been subjected to such scrutiny.

“See? He’s built like one of those athletic movie stars.”

“He’s strong.”

They had their answer; a twisted, incomplete truth. They lost interest in me. They grabbed whatever they could find—shovels, crowbars, anything they could use as a weapon—and started moving as a single unit. Not everyone went. A few lingered behind. But the majority surged towards the metal stairs, a tide of angry voices. Soon, the sounds of gunfire, metal clashing, and desperate screams echoed from the narrow corridor, growing louder and more intense.

I stood there, picking up my clothes, waiting to see how this would play out. They were completely off their rockers. The fight was over quickly. Blood streamed from the corridors. The shooting stopped, and the victors started whooping and hollering. I could tell, from the sound of it, who’d won. They’d actually done it. They hauled the Overseer out like a sack of potatoes. The old man, the one who’d taken us in, the one who’d helped us, the leader who represented everything good about our old world. Now, his limbs were dangling, like they’d come unstrung. His eyes kept blinking, blood pouring from the sockets. When they dragged him past me, I saw it—a huge chunk of his skull was missing, you could see his brains inside.

They had a new boss now.

Simone was riding high on their shoulders. There were streaks of blood on her face, but she was grinning from ear to ear. As they carried her past me, she winked. She was loving every minute of it. She jumped down and walked over: “You’re going to tell us where the tropical zone is, right?” she said, crossing her arms, her voice hard. In just an hour, the tables had turned.

“He’ll tell us,” a guy behind her growled, clutching a shovel.

I didn’t have a choice. I still cared about my old community. After seeing what they’d done to the Overseer, I knew better than to say anything against them. I went with them to a meeting room and laid out all the routes, explained how to track the shifting tropical zone. They were satisfied.

“So, you’re leaving?” I asked Simone, my voice a little shaky.

“Not leaving,” she corrected me. “We’re going to live with nature. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to work these machines before I go. These bulky, useless things … ” She actually called the very things that saved us from that blizzard, the pinnacles of human ingenuity, “bulky and useless.” “I know you guys want to stay here. But you’ll figure out what you really want eventually.”

They were never happy. Or was it just humans? Always wanting what they didn’t have—heat when they were cold, cold when they were hot?

I stood there, watching Simone turn her back and walk away, and something clicked. I finally got it. I think I know how we ended up in the tropics. I understood those old legends. Maybe we really did come from the Ice Barrier. Those missing pieces of the puzzle, combined with what was happening now, it all made sense.

I glanced back at the turning gears, the endless assembly lines, and a little seed of doubt started to grow: would our children look at working here the same way these people do, like it was some kind of loss to their humanity? What even was human dignity, anyway? Was it fighting nature with technology, or was it, like Simone said, living with nature?

Was I Simone? Was Simone me?

I was completely lost. And then I thought about that salty, delicious nutrient paste I had yesterday.