The island’s Envirodome display hadn’t changed in days. At least, the same things kept popping up all over the massive, spherical screen: old cooking videos featuring 250 dollars worth of ingredients, panoramas of overcrowded islands, and meditation videos Naya had cycled through dozens of times as she tried to get to sleep. Time could be anything it wanted to be on the islands of the Himalayan archipelago; the artificial sun on the inside of Naya’s Envirodome rose and fell with her, not the other way around.
Naya marked the days by a weekly delivery, in which her week’s rations arrived. Today was no different; stepping out of her bedroom and into the morning sun, she pondered what she could make with this week’s crops: curry, probably, or stir-fry. Instead, she found her delivery port empty. The ferry was late. Again.
She walked to a keyboard in the middle of the island–after picturing herself hunched over a tiny desk with cramped fingers, she had elected to make the keyboard super-sized–and hopped from key to key. “Why is my…” she typed, as autocomplete responded “…delivery late?” She strolled over to the cursor and clicked, satisfied to see she wasn’t alone in her inquiry. Immediately, she found results–new ones, from the last twelve hours. Her eyes darted from headline to headline: “Hell Has Frozen Over,” “Unexpected Flash-Freeze,” “Chaos in the Central-Asiatic Ocean,” “LOOK OUTSIDE.”
Naya’s eyes froze on the last headline. Eyes locked on the panicked words on her screen, she stepped back to a control panel in a corner and turned off the polarizing filter on the Envirodome. The backdrop to the LEDs faded to transparency, and the diodes blinked out.
There was no sun in the inky black sky, and no moon, either. Naya could see, distantly, the next island in the archipelago and could hear the hoarse croaks of a flock of misplaced birds, taking off as the dome they were perched on turned glassy beneath them. As she pressed her hand against the bubble surrounding her, it burned—not unbearably hot, as the dome often was, but a painful, blistering cold. Frost crept up the glass from the base of the dome, where the sand of the island met its bank.
And there, in the distance, stood the dull silhouette of her food-delivery ferry, an ill-defined black against the midnight blue of the sky. Even through many yards of open air and a two-inch-thick piece of glass, Naya could faintly hear the painful shriek of metal scraping against…ice? Yes, through the dome’s barrier, she could see subtle starlight shining off some still, solid substance armoring the usually turbulent ocean. It was entirely unlike the clear blocks she sometimes had delivered to put in her water; it was pale and silvery and jagged. “This is what happens when water freezes,” the textbooks had told her, but she had glossed over the words so far-removed from her reality. She opened the door to her delivery port and stepped tentatively onto the frozen surface of the sea, making sure to seal the door tightly behind her.
Naya’s lungs felt alive. The thin air burned her airways, from where her lips drew it in big gulps to the miniscule capillaries lining her lungs. Arms outstretched, she looked towards the pins of light in the sky, pixels no longer. And suddenly, she felt compelled to run. Shards of ice crunched beneath her feet as she danced for the still, silent world, and it watched in waiting.
As she neared the halted ferry, Naya saw lights flickering onboard, warm and orange—fire. A rough voice called to her in some foreign tongue, something flat, dull, and blocky. She called back in her native Nepali, “I am Naya,” then tried again in English.
“Where do you come from?” came the response in halting English with a thick, unplaceable accent.
“My family has always lived here.” Naya pointed to the island behind her.
She had gotten close enough to the ship to hear some quiet discussion from on deck, before another response was given: “This food is ours. We are taking it back to our people. You may take what you need, though.”
“Thank you,” she said as a crate of food tumbled from the boat. “What happened to the ship’s captain?”
“Gone,” some man responded, stepping into the light to catch her eye. “Took a month’s worth of rations and left. He must be somewhere on the ice.”
“How will more distant islands get food?” Naya asked, brow furrowed.
“We don’t know. We serve only our island cohort. Where’s the rest of yours?”
“Oh,” she paused. “I live alone. My parents are dead.”
“Sounds nice,” the man replied. “No need to share food or space.”
“Sounds lonely,” added another person aboard the ship.
“It’s both, I suppose,” Naya responded. “I…can I ask a favor?”
“Yes,” a third replied, stepping up to the rail of the ferry, only a couple feet from Naya.
“Can I—” Naya reached her hand up. “Hold your hand?” Her own quivered, both from excitement and cold.
The other person pressed their palm to hers, icy and calloused. As Naya closed her eyes, her father’s weathered hand appeared in place of the stranger’s. “Never look behind you while you’re running a race,” he would have said. “Sentiment only leaves you dragging behind the pack.” Still, Naya and the man lingered this way until the boat suddenly shook. Naya’s eyes widened in alarm. “The ice is thinning. I have to go.”
After grasping the crate of food, she took off, ice shifting unsteadily under her feet as she arrived back at her island’s port. Glancing over her shoulder, she thought she saw a hand waving at her from the ferry’s small silhouette before she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The glass turned opaque again and the lights turned back on, and suddenly it was noontime, the sun right above her.
And the world kept spinning. The waves lapped quietly at the dome’s glass once more and Naya opened her crate of food, with one hand still tingling from the thrill of human touch. A package of cumin powder tumbled from the top of the box as she wrenched open the lid. As the feeling in her hand faded, she supposed she would be making curry after all—the same as usual.
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