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Region: Northern Utopia

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The Federal Republic of The Enclave congressional armed forces

The Island on the horizon

It was safe to say that Dr. Tyson Everett was not a fan of the cold. Looking out his porthole revealed that snow was now falling from the heavens, accumulating on the lip of his window, and falling harmlessly into the dark ocean below.

It was safe to say he really hated the cold right now. Pulling his blanket tighter, he took to re-reading the files on his table for what felt like the 100th time that evening, at least, the parts that weren’t blacked out by ink, that is.

By Congress, how he wished the State Department had at least put him on a ship with decent heating. But no, they had decided to ship him out on the oh so lovely ECN Unyielding. A quaint little corvette half a century out of date, only saved from being scuttled by its long service history during the pacification campaigns. The Unyielding had been his home for the past week and a half while en-route to some new island the Enclave had sunk its teeth into at the edge of the world.

He was still surprised that the claiming of this island had barely shown up in state media broadcast. Usually, the State Department would flaunt newly acquired territory to the citizens of the Enclave in hopes of attracting new settlers to the area, so you could imagine his surprise when it was only mentioned in passing by the media.

But that was neither here nor there. What did matter was the cold that seemed to bypass the ancient bulkhead of his cabin, and leech the heat directly from his bones. He had known it would be cold this far south at this time of year, but he had no idea it would be this cold. He had grown up accustomed to the scorching heat of the wasteland, not the unyielding cold of the poles.

He still didn’t really know why he was en-route to this island anyways. The files he’d been reading had been near useless in their current state, only giving him the faintest idea on what he was getting himself into.

So far, all he knew was that they found something. Something they had not been expecting, or even looking for. They had found ruins. Of what? Of who? He had no idea. From what he could gleam from the report, they had uncovered these ruins during some sort of large scale construction effort currently underway on the island. Apparently, the State Department had found the ruins more interesting than whatever they had previously been working on, and focused their efforts on studying them instead of bulldozing over them and continuing construction, hence why he was currently on a ship freezing his butt off in the middle of the ocean.

At least he wasn’t the only one suffering from the cold. From the limited interactions he had with the crew of the Unyielding, he had learned that dozens of other scientists and scholars had also been brought on to help study and catalog these ruins. He had yet to meet any of these people, as he had barely left his cabin. He just couldn’t brave the cold as some of the others had, and as such, remained in his cabin in the hopes of retaining body heat.

He was able to take solace in the fact that in just a few days time, they’d arrive at their destination and disembark this lemon of a ship, and shack up in the newly built base camp that was rumored to have a great central heating unit.

By Congress he could just imagine the luxurious heat that awaited him in his new posting. Tossing the files onto the nearby table and flicking off his overhead light, he curled up on his uncomfortably cold cot, and dozed off to the thought of a nice warm bed.

Oh Congress, he couldn’t wait to get to this island.

To be continued...

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