Surviving Antarctica Read online

  The table was a great idea, a cool invention. It was just that the toy companies were stupid losers who didn’t know a great game when its bright lights flashed in their fat faces.

  At first the Compu-gametable had promised success. In those early days, Billy and his parents had vacationed in the largest indoor mall in the world and had once ridden in a white limo that was so long it had trouble turning corners. But those early days were over, and now Billy was hungry almost all the time.

  Billy pushed a button and the table lit up with reds, blues, and purples. “What game do you want to play?” the table asked him.

  I don’t want to play any game, Billy thought. I want to have lunch. I want to go to high school and college. Since he had lost his Toss and his father hadn’t been able to sell his invention, Billy couldn’t hope for further schooling.

  Billy punched the button for Navigant. The fake starry background and bright purple compass appeared on the screen. It had been one of his favorite games since he was a child. Players traveled across the globe, navigating by the location of the sun and stars, and using simulated compasses and a gauge capable of reading longitude and latitude. He had played the game so much that he no longer needed to consult the instruments.

  A news bulletin flashed across the top of the screen: “Trying to top her popular Alamo Historical Survivor, the Secretary of Entertainment has announced a new Historical Survivor series. This one will involve fourteen-year-old kids. The MVP—the contestant voted Most Valuable Player—will get one hundred thousand dollars. All contestants …”

  One hundred thousand dollars?

  Billy’s mom and dad appeared at the door. Billy noticed first that his mom didn’t have a grocery bag in her arms, then that his dad still looked discouraged. “Hey,” Billy said. The map of the world lit up next to the purple compass. Idly, Billy’s finger traced a path south.

  It was Grace Untoka’s turn to be “it.” She counted to one hundred in the central plaza of Pueblo Village, looked around for her cousin, and almost bumped into a family of tourists. The family all had cameras dangling from their necks. The daughter wore a flowered shirt that matched her beret. “My parents want a photo of a Hopi. Can we snap your picture?”

  “I’m an Iñupiat Eskimo, not a Hopi.”

  The girl smirked.

  Grace didn’t say anything. Hopis and Iñupiat Eskimos both had straight black hair. But the Hopis’ skin was reddish while the Eskimos’ was yellowish, and Grace’s cheeks were full, not hollow like the Hopi kids’.

  “You sure look like a Hopi.”

  Grace turned her back on the tourists. As she listened to the girl march away, she tried to calm her anger. Of course the girl mistook Grace for a Hopi. Grace was standing in the plaza of a pueblo in the middle of an Indian reservation in Arizona. Some days even Grace thought that she was a Hopi. But her grandfather had always reminded her, “You are an Iñupiat Eskimo with a proud six-thousand-year history.”

  “Grace, I don’t want to play hide-and-seek anymore.” Her cousin Aleqa crept out from her hiding place. “Look what I found.”

  Grace stared at the animal Aleqa held in her outstretched hand. Grace had raised baby kangaroo rats before. “It’s got a broken leg,” she said, noticing the naked bone.

  “Eskimo, Eskimo, Eskimo …” Tommy Screechowl, one of her many tormentors, was shouting at her from behind an adobe building.

  “Take it to my clinic,” Grace whispered to Aleqa, “and I’ll meet you there in just a minute.” She was sure that if presented with a choice, Tommy would chase her, not her smaller cousin.

  “Okay.” Aleqa started down the path to the discarded refrigerator carton that housed Grace’s clinic. Right now her patients were a blind dog and a bald goat.

  “You can’t catch me!” Grace called to Tommy.

  His footsteps pounded the trail behind her.

  Grace ducked into her family’s shack and almost knocked her mother down.

  “Whoa! What’s wrong?” Grace’s mother put a pile of T-shirts and one old pair of sealskin socks on the table. “Those boys were after you again.” She shook her head.

  It was a statement, not a question, and Grace didn’t have to answer. Years ago Grace’s family had been subsistence hunters in Alaska, roaming an area that was among the least populated on earth. Because there were so few people there, Congress had voted to turn her tribe’s land into a nuclear waste dump, and the government had offered the tribe a deal. It would pay to move them to a Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona. They would be given a few acres of land and a tractor.

  Grace had been born on the reservation. All she knew about the ways of the Iñupiat were what her grandfather, her parents, and the elders of the tribe had told her. But every day she was tormented and bullied by the Hopis for being an Eskimo and mistaken by the tourists for a Hopi. It didn’t seem fair.

  Her mother hugged her. “I’m sorry. They’re just ignorant kids.”

  A rock sailed through their one small open window and clattered onto her grandfather’s table. His tools and skinning knife crashed onto the floor.

  Her mother screamed.

  Grace knelt by the scattered objects. She missed her grandfather so much. He had died only a few weeks ago. Tommy Screechowl was lucky that her grandfather’s knife wasn’t broken.

  Grace ran out the front door to look for Tommy.

  Tommy smiled at her from behind the neighbor’s beat-up truck. When he was sure that Grace had seen him, he disappeared.

  Grace returned to her mother, who was holding the rock.

  “Those boys are getting worse and worse,” her mother complained.

  Grace leaned over her mother’s shoulder. Her mother unrolled the piece of paper that had been wrapped around the rock.

  “Historical Survivor. Set in Antarctica. For the first time, taking applications from kids,” Grace read slowly. She looked into her mother’s broad face. “I guess Tommy wants me to move to Antarctica.”

  “That’s silly. There’ve never been any people in Antarctica.” Her mother turned away to finish the laundry.

  Grace slipped the flier into her pocket. Antarctica. Even the name sounded white and clean.

  2

  “YOU LUCKY, LUCKY kids.” The Secretary of Entertainment was beaming at Andrew, Polly, Robert, Billy, and Grace. “You have been chosen from a pool of 4,825 applicants.”

  Polly sat with the other winning contestants around a long table at the Department of Entertainment in Washington, D.C. The walls of the room were lined with photos from Civil War Historical Survivor, Bubonic Plague Historical Survivor, Titanic Historical Survivor, and Egyptian Pyramid Historical Survivor, to name a few. Staring at the old-timey rifles, crushed and missing limbs, and pocked and bloated faces, Polly didn’t feel lucky at all.

  Billy wondered what lies the other kids had told to be chosen. It was true that he was almost an Eagle Scout, but he wasn’t the snow-and-ice expert that he had pretended to be on his application. He had gone skiing only twice.

  Andrew had a stomachache.

  Robert had a million questions to ask the Secretary.

  Grace wondered if snow still tasted good, as it had when her grandfather lived in the Arctic. Her parents had moved to the reservation just before Grace was born. Her father had died shortly after her birth, and her mother couldn’t remember what snow tasted like.

  “You all know one another, don’t you?” the Secretary said.

  Robert nodded. If you called shaking hands and saying “hi” knowing one another, he thought.

  “And you’ve all seen our popular Historical Survivor series?” the Secretary asked.

  Polly nodded. She hated the shows.

  What a stupid question, Billy thought. Since the public schools had closed, every kid fourteen and under who wasn’t enrolled in private school was required by law to watch teleschool.

  “Then you know that Historical Survivor can be dangerous,” the Secretary said.

  Andrew thought of the
Texans lying in bloody heaps all around the Alamo. But those were adults, not kids. Surely for kids the show would be different.

  Robert guessed that of the five, he was the only one who understood danger.

  Grace willed the idea of danger to become a snowball, and she tossed it away.

  “But since you’ve chosen to apply, you must all be fearless.” The Secretary smiled. One of the Secretary’s many aides handed her a slip of paper. “Excuse me,” she said to the kids. She began speaking to the aide.

  Billy strained to listen. He overheard the words “special meeting” before her voice dropped to a whisper.

  The Secretary had called Polly fearless. Actually, she was terrified. Polly and Mama had never dreamed she would be selected for the contest. When she was chosen, they both had wanted her to back out, but the recruiter who had phoned with the news had said, “It’s illegal to withdraw from a government-sponsored contest.”

  “I didn’t know,” her mother had pleaded.

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The man hung up.

  The Secretary turned her attention back to the kids. “Of course, in the original Survivor shows the television host traveled with the contestants. But in Historical Survivor you travel alone.” She smiled again. “In fact, except for the camera crew, throughout your adventure you will be completely alone.”

  The Secretary acts as if she’s describing a beach vacation, Polly thought.

  Several men and women in white coats entered the room and stood against the wall.

  Why are those people staring at me? Andrew wondered.

  “You’ll spend a few days here in D.C.,” the Secretary continued. “The doctors need to perform some harmless tests to make sure you’re fit to go. Then the Terra Nova, your compucraft—which has the same name but otherwise is completely unlike the leaky whaling ship that Scott used—will sail, with all five of you on it, for Antarctica.”

  Robert held up his hand.

  The five doctors stepped toward the kids.

  “We’ll have plenty of time for questions later. But first I need you to go with these nice physicians to start your tests. They won’t hurt you.” The Secretary smiled. “I promise.”

  Stephen Michael, the newest member of the day shift, sat in the auditorium with the other employees. He still couldn’t get over his good fortune. He was working on television production at the Department of Entertainment, or DOE, learning a lot and receiving a good salary.

  Of course, the job had some drawbacks, and one of them was the Department head.

  Dolly Jabasco, or Hot Sauce (his coworkers’ nickname for the redheaded Secretary of Entertainment), had called a special meeting of the day shift. In her excitement she was practically hopping up and down on the stage.

  “As I was saying …” Hot Sauce giggled. “It’s so thrilling that I’m having trouble talking.” She took a deep breath. “Our new series will feature kids.”

  Kids! How terrible, Steve thought. But Chad Atkins, his dad’s friend, who had gotten him this job, had warned him not to let his thoughts appear on the screen of his face. He worked to keep his expression even.

  Besides, Steve comforted himself, this series had to be different from the D-Day Historical Survivor that Steve had been forced to watch for teleschool. Two men had died in that simulation. In the Alamo Historical Survivor series that Steve had just finished editing, a whole slew of men had been killed. Men desperate for money and opportunity might be allowed to make dangerous choices, but the Secretary would have to protect kids.

  “Some of you have heard about the original expedition to the South Pole led by Captain Robert F. Scott.” Hot Sauce scanned the audience as she spoke.

  Steve hadn’t, and because the Secretary was the only college graduate in the room, he doubted whether anybody else had, either. After Steve had lost his chance for an education three years ago, he had pressed his dad’s old photographic equipment into service, moved to D.C., and scraped by as a freelance photographer. A few months ago, while photographing a wedding, he had run into Chad Atkins, his father’s boyhood friend, who had offered to get him a job at the DOE. His chance meeting with Chad was the only lucky break that he had gotten in a long time.

  “So no one in this whole auditorium has heard of this famous explorer?” the Secretary asked.

  Steve hated the way Hot Sauce lorded her education over them.

  “Well,” the Secretary began, “in 1912, the Robert F. Scott expedition attempted to be the first to reach the South Pole. But they were beaten by a Norwegian, and the five men all died.” She paused to let this fact sink in. “Now we are going to have five kids reenact Scott’s expedition on Antarctic Historical Survivor!”

  Mechanically, Steve clapped along with the rest of the crowd. As he looked around at the eager faces of his coworkers, he noticed that some of them were cheering. A few truly seemed to love the Historical Survivor series. He had overheard them talking about watching it on their off-hours. Steve had lived without friends or family for a long time, but on his weekends he still had better things to do than watch people suffer on television.

  “The kids will have much of the same food and equipment that Scott had. But since they’re kids, the Department is going to give them a number of breaks.”

  Steve breathed a sigh of relief. Without a doubt, the Secretary would make sure that the kids had a hair-raising adventure, but as he had suspected, it sounded as if Antarctic Historical Survivor would be a safer, kinder Survivor series. A “good” Survivor series. A Survivor for kids.

  “Our job is to convince everyone in America to watch our shows. We have carefully screened each contestant. To increase viewer interest, each of the five kids will have a special gift. You can bet the audience will be guessing.

  “Of course, our series will include lessons and exams about the Scott expedition.” Hot Sauce stared at the audience. “Any questions?”

  The woman in front of Steve raised her hand. “Will the camera crew travel to location, or will we use the corneal implants?”

  “We will rely completely on corneal implants,” the Secretary said confidently.

  On Steve’s first day of work, Blair Provenzano, the day-shift manager, had solemnly explained the classified science of corneal implants. Because members of the camera crew had gotten shot (in Civil War and D-Day Survivor), had been gored (in Hemingway Bull Run Historical Survivor), and had died of hypothermia (in Donner Party Historical Survivor), government scientists had figured out a way to implant tiny digital camcorders in the corneas of the contestants. As long as a contestant had his eyes open, the camcorder recorded and transmitted to headquarters a movie, complete with sound, of the contestant’s experiences. The digicameras had been used on the just-completed Alamo Historical Survivor without the audience catching on. The penalty for disclosing the Department’s biggest secret was having to go on Court TV. Of course, Steve would keep the corneal implants secret. No one in America wanted to go on Court TV.

  Hot Sauce smirked. Steve could tell that she was getting ready to tell one of her little jokes.

  “We don’t want to kill any more of you,” she said, laughing.

  A man in the audience raised his hand. “But since there’s only ice and snow in Antarctica, won’t the kids wonder where the camera crew is?”

  What? Steve was shocked. Blair Provenzano had explained that the Secretary had plans to reveal the secret of the corneal implants in a dramatic way in a future game. For now, Hot Sauce preferred the viewers to believe that live cameramen faced some of the same risks as the contestants. That the Secretary was notoriously secretive was well known. But Steve had assumed that the Secretary had informed the contestants about the implants. That seemed only right and fair.

  “That’s one reason that we decided to use kids,” the Secretary said. “The kids believed me when I told them that a hidden camera crew would be there. Adults might get suspicious.”

  “Kids aren’t stupid,” Steve muttered. Then he quickly l
ooked at Toby Kyle, who was sitting next to him, to see if Toby had noticed his outburst. Toby was chewing gum and staring at the Secretary as if she were the most interesting person alive. But Steve chided himself anyway. He had to be very, very careful to keep his temper under control. Everything he said was recorded. He didn’t want to lose the best job he’d ever had or get his father’s friend into any trouble.

  “Ever since the government got into the entertainment biz …” Hot Sauce said.

  Here comes the speech, Steve thought. In the three months that he had worked for the Department, he had already heard it many times.

  “… we’ve cut the crime, murder, and assault rates and eliminated war. We’ve saved our taxpayers billions of dollars by getting rid of the public schools. We teach history through Survivor, English through Tele-Novelas, and math through Dialing for Dollars.

  “Together we have built the finest edu-entertainment program in the world. And now, with our kid contestants, we are going to make edu-entertainment history.”

  Listening to the Secretary conclude her speech, Steve had a horrifying thought. If the Secretary—a prominent member of the government—was so low that she lied to the contestants, could she be trusted to keep the kids safe?

  The sad thing was that no one would care. These contestants were probably street kids who lived in one of those tent cities that seemed to be springing up everywhere these days. They were kids who didn’t have much to lose. They were kids whom hardly anybody cared about.

  Without the ability to make his own living with his dad’s photographic equipment, Steve would have been one of those kids.

  He quickly changed the channel of his mind so that he wouldn’t have to consider the life of poverty he had narrowly escaped. He had almost been forced to play a real-life Survivor—a game with no rules, no fans, no prize money, and worst of all, no hope.

  I have a job. A hut in Shanty Town. One hundred and fifty dollars in the bank, he reassured himself. Everything will be fine.