Wisedocks

Sorry For The Absence

About a month ago I decided to get out of the house one night. I ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings, where I like to sit at the bar and just play on my phone on occasion while enjoying a cold beer. But, this particular night took a strange turn. About two beers in this lady sat next to me at the bar. I was a bit annoyed at first as there was plenty of open seats, she didn't need to sit so close. She struck up a conversation fairly quickly and turned out to be very interesting. I avoid eye contact fairly aggressively but once I fully looked up, she had the most beautiful pink eyes! Fully losing my train of thought, I just stopped and studied her for a second.

I've never met an albino person before, so I was probably looking too hard, before realizing I was probably being rude. This lady had my full attention now. I couldn't place where her accent was from; a mix between Aussie and French, if I had to guess.

I noticed something odd; each time her fingers brushed her glass, the condensation turned to frost for a second, then melted back. I told myself it was the AC.

I was almost mesmerized as I properly introduced myself; she said her name was Biala(Not sure on the spelling). She had long, slightly curly hair that draped down to the seat of the barstool, fully covering the back of the seat. The glaring overhead LED lights made the peach fuzz on her face stand out. If I had to guess, she was around my age, maybe mid 40's tops. 

I couldn't resist, I had to ask, "How old are you?"

She glanced down with a smile, "Take a wild guess." 

But, I knew better, "I don't think so, I'm not trying to get slapped!"

She finally relented, "I just turned 60 this year."

My mouth dropped, "No way! That's crazy."

I coaxed her into talking about herself, she was fascinating. She never explained why Arkansas of all places, but said she was here to pick something up before heading back to the Antarctica, where she works at a research facility. After exclaiming how much I would love to go there, she offered to take me.

"I will only be there for a week this time, would you like to go? I routinely take body guards." she said.

"I'm no body guard. And, why would you need one in Antarctica for?" I quipped back laughing.

"Not for protection from people. For guidance. The ice likes to take the distracted." she sounded reassuring.

She said the pay sucks at only 1500/week USD but the experience is worth it. I didn't even give it that much thought to be honest, "I'm in! When do we leave?"

This is how I was roped in, by morbid curiosity. We boarded a flight in Bentonville, AR to Atlanta. Then we flew all of the way to Santiago, Chile then to Punta Arenas, Chile and finally to Union Glacier in Antarctica. The last leg down to the glacier was in a tiny plane and it was soo cold!

As we arrived at the camp, I was expecting some large modular buildings on stilts like I had seen online, but there was only two long tubular buildings and a ton of arctic tents. This is when I started to have second thoughts.

Biala and myself shared a tent, they were actually really nice on the inside. They had wood floors and it was actually hot in there compared to outside. We dropped our stuff off and headed towards one of the tubular buildings. If was really nice too! There was a full kitchen and lots of people there. I have no idea what I ate, but it was really good and the people were so nice.

Biala was quiet around the others. I could sense that she was accustomed to people avoiding her because she was different. People would only seem to talk to me. It was a bit weird.

After mingling with the other visitors for a few hours we headed back to our tent for the "night," it stayed light all of the time when were there. I was dead tired still from nearly 30 hours on airplanes. It was my first time ever flying, so I think after this; I'm good for a while.

Things Got Weird

Biala woke me up after a few hours and was chipper as could be, "Rise and shine sleepy head, we've a long day ahead."

She had me pack nearly everything I brought with me it seemed like, into a backpack. Then we hopped on some bicycles and started riding. We rode for about an hour to the foot of a mountain. I think it was a mountain, It was a huge rock face with snow on top and sides but the face was nearly vertical and oddly flat. It seemed out of place. We were about 20 feet from the rock face before I noticed a tunnel almost sunken at the base with no snow around it. There was a heat coming from it.

We stopped a few feet from where the snow stops and she attached headlights to our bikes. As we came off of the snow onto rock she hunkered down and said, "Follow behind me," as we descended down the tunnel. There were no curves of any kind and the tunnel had a smooth floor; this wasn't natural. This part was actually a blast as we sped down the ramp very quickly, going so fast I found myself wanting to use the brakes to slow down, but she was not slowing down at all. 

After a few minutes of this I literally seen the light at the end of the tunnel. It had a yellowish hue. The tunnel opened into a dome. Hot air hit my face as if we had just entered an oven. She put her hand back to let me know to start slowing down.

As soon as we came to a stop, two things were apparent, it's hot here, and this coat needs to come off and this was the loudest quiet I have ever heard. There was a very low almost inaudible hum, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. The large dome room had a ceiling that I would guesstimate to be about 40 feet high in the center and the room was about the same forty feet across as well. There was a single light above a metal door to the left, the rock reflected that one light so beautifully that you could see every nook and cranny.

Aside from us, the room was completely empty. We parked our bikes a few feet from the door and began shedding outer layers. She told me to leave my coat, overalls and boots with the bike and to put on my tennis shoes. She did the same except she took a small black velvet bag out of her backpack as well.

"What is that?" I asked.

"This is why we have came. Are you ready?" She was a bit dismissive as if telling me to drop it.

"Just tell me what to do." the curiosity was killing, I wanted to see behind this door.

"Just stay close behind me and make sure nothing gets close to me." she said seriously.

"OHKAY?" I said with a bit of fright. What would get close to her?

She lifted a metal latch and slowly opened the door.

The Metal Door

The door swung open with a deep, heavy sigh like something had been holding its breath on the other side. Warm air rushed past us like the two chambers were adjusting pressure, the hum grew so intense that I could feel it in my chest. Ahead of us was another long sloped hallway with smooth sides. There were no lights here but the walls emitted a faint ambient glow from a far off light.

After walking for about a minute we made a sharp right and all of a sudden the hallway opened up into this huge open area. It was lit up like daylight, but I couldn't see the sky, just a haze. There were large structures everywhere, I don't think they were buildings as they looked too symmetrical to be natural but too organic to be engineered.

The room was soo large it ended in a haze, I couldn't see the other side. Biala opened the velvet bag and pulled out the largest diamond I've ever seen. Nearly the size of a golf ball and uncut. It had to have been polished though as you could see through it. She held the diamond up in the air and it was as if the atmosphere was alive and responded with a ripple of wind as a shockwave shot through the haze. I could feel the hum in my jaws at this point.

Biala turned to me and smiled, "He likes you..."

Before I could mutter, "Who," I fainted. I awoke disoriented and alone. The last time I remembered looking at my watch was in the first dome. I remember it being 3:05p.m. CST as I never bothered to change my watch from Arkansas time. It was now 3:10p.m., but that couldn't be right because that's about how long it took to get to the large dome. Then I realized that my watch had stopped working, so I have no idea how long I was out. Should have taken my phone; no service but I could've taken pictures.

I yelled out for Biala, which was strange because my voice didn't travel, I might as well have screamed into a pillow. That scared me more than being alone.

Terrified, I made my way back to the heavy metal door and on the other side, Biala's bike and all of her things were gone! Did she leave me here?

My fright or flight instincts were kicking in hard; my brain was telling me to run like hell, but what if she was still there by chance? I decided to make my way back to the surface to check if there were a third set of tire tracks to see if she did leave. My body was drained though and I didn't have the strength to pedal up that incline so I walked the bike as fast as I could. I was starting to get claustrophobic.

Once back on the surface, my heart sank, there were no tire tracks at all. The wind had blown the snow around and covered up any signs that we were even there.

Why would her stuff be gone but not mine? She had to have left and went back to camp. So I headed back myself.

Back At Camp

When I got back to our tent, I was horrified to see that all of Biala's things were gong. She had our returning plane tickets with her! I rushed into the long tubular building where the mess hall was and asked one of the servers that I had spoken to the day before, if she had seen Biala come back in today.

She turned to the guy next to her in confusion and said, "You were here by yourself, yesterday."

TLDR; Stuck in Antarctica, send money!

Edit, 11:42 PM CST: I made it back; thanks, mom! Also, I got an email from an unmarked domain; just a single attachment named "remember.jpg." It was blank. WTF!