Dear Nikolai,
I hope this communication finds you well and your work still treats you finely after all this time comrade. It was a long trip to APERIS aboard the Xhue Long — but I can tell you we made it in good health and are on site now … ‎

To journey and discover the world. Beautiful.

… recently, one of our team members spotted their compass malfunctioning … It suggests a strong magnetic interference of some kind. It may appear a minor lead, but it may be fruitful …

If only we knew – what we needed to give up for curiosity.

There is one more report - that being of one of our personnel here - Andrei. I suspect he may have already bombarded you with critiques about me. Know that me and him share a difficult history, yet both myself and Director Liu Lan share concerns about him. He is brash, impulsive and hot-headed … We are supposed to be professionals here at the 871 …

Anything to relive the past one more time – anything for him.

We went in ourselves after the UAV went unresponsive … We located the downed drone, glass shattered. The readings on its onboard clock did not match ours, it read six days ahead compared to our local time … Must have been an technical malfunction of some kind …

To wrestle with the void.

A nothingness, sleek and inky black, taking an appearance of a long shadow inside the ice. I do not know if it is local metaphoric rock formations distorting the magnetic field, or underground erosion that causes this phenomenon … For now, our team named this effect 'The Absence' …

Were we supposed to understand this? Do it like a picture puzzle? Put it all together? Solve the world?

You may notice with this one it discusses things even stranger than my last report … I feel like many aboard the station are starting to feel the effects of exposed isolation and being away from home for so long … they babble about even stranger things …

What are we doing here – a Sisyphean task.

I am tired Nikolai my friend, I don't know what to make of this … I asked them about this, putting doubt on this crazy theory, then they went off on me, babbling about some great monster underneath the ice, the one that killed the last team, and may kill us any second now …

Toiling in the dark – for a dawn that cannot be witnessed.

While I was away, Andrei has been surprisingly pulling his weight, and he made an important breakthrough … This “Absence” we have been studying can be explained with science, and my son has figured out how …

I suppose that is the final humiliation of it – cold and heavy – like truth.

I cannot believe I am saying this but … I've forgotten all of this Nikolai, but as I came back to APERIS on my flight, it all … just flooded back to me. That we are not the first, Unit 871 and Unit 13 are simply inheritors of what came before … Of all the failed missions to the Antarctic — of all the casualties. Are we just cannon fodder?

Lying down in the snow and ice – lifeless – a final rest.

I am just worried, there is so much more to this than I thought … Evidently, me and Andrei need to succeed in our mission here. Otherwise who knows, we may just become numbers scrubbed from history and buried in the archives like the rest of the poor fools who came before us …

Andrei, my only son. There are many words you must have for me. Traitor. Coward. Failure. On all of this I agree. In my fall, I did not get back up for you. I thought that through service to the JCP, I can get back something of monumental value and importance to me which I once lost. This was you, yet I have failed. Your words to me weigh heavy on my heart, and perhaps you are right. Maybe I am a traitor, maybe I have betrayed my values and everything our mission stood for. However, with what little honour I have left, I am bound to tell you this. We have been left behind, I cannot let you perish here on this base for a bureaucrat of the Security Council watching us suffer from the comfort of Moscow. It is not the words you want to hear, but you know it is true. What I also know to be true is you are not doing this for the JCP, you are doing this for yourself. Because you have a strong and unbendable will, one that seeks absolute knowledge about this world. It makes me so proud of you. But perhaps we shouldn't reach absolute knowledge about the world. You saw how it pushes back. It is not a challenge, it is a warning. And I want you to heed it, I want you to live to see another day. So I will embark on this challenge to seek this understanding myself. I do not know what I will find there. Maybe I will come back to you having completed our mission. Yet if I do not come back, you need to understand what this means. We are already condemned by the JCP, whether we succeed here or not. There is no future for you there. Take the love you have found on this base and live life for yourself, not them. I know my words will not be enough, but maybe my last expedition for Unit 871 can show you the truth in this.

The plane has departed from Sky Blu now – those wishing to head for some kind of tomorrow. Not you. This is somewhere to be. Weave this into the story of you. Walk out of its ruins. Save those who can still be saved – this may be all you have left, but it’s still something. The sky, the world. You're still alive.

Written by Kamil M.

A pile of letters pushed through the mail slot of an empty house. From the look of them, one has been sent every month.

My dearest friend,

How are you?

I hope this letter finds you in good health, and your days have been happy—or at least not intolerable. I imagine you are still exactly as you always are: angry on behalf of your family, and troubled by the state of the world.

I feel a little embarrassed writing letters, but I cannot come to see you. On second thought, perhaps that makes it more romantic. Distance improves a great many things. I have been reading Zhuangzi lately, it says in the northern darkness there is a fish, and its name is Kun. The Kun is so vast that no one knows how many thousand li it measures. I do not know why, but I always think of it as a lonely fish, which is not, strictly speaking, the point of the passage, but there we are.

I will write again next month. Until then, take good care of yourself.

My dearest friend,

How are you?

I know you have a habit of pushing yourself too hard—of putting others before yourself in all things, and of taking too seriously the things that may do you harm. It worries me a little. I hope you don't forget to eat and drink. I will not try to stop you from overworking. I know perfectly well that if I told you not to, you would simply do it more stubbornly. But do at least take care of your health. That much I insist on.

I will write again next month. Until then, take good care of yourself.

My dearest friend,

How are you?

I was thinking of our conversation on parallel universes. You seemed more persuaded by dialectical materialism that the world must inevitably move toward some particular destination. No matter how many times we speak of it, I will still say that I am a proud multiverse theorist, and I stand by my words. Though sometimes—and this is a different matter—I like to think that, across all these possibilities, we would still meet one another somehow, one way or another. Thus, do not be afraid of change. Everything leaves its mark upon the world, but some things do endure. Perhaps my longing for you is one of those things.

I will write again next month. Until then, take good care of yourself.

My dearest friend,

How are you?

I think we spoke last time about the question of what one would do if one had the chance to begin again. I remember you telling me that, though it was a difficult, lonely, and very long road, it was still the one you would choose. I admire you, I think, for such conviction. No matter how great the hardship, you will still pursue the future you believe in.

Lately, I have been thinking about free will. It may well be true that all our actions are predetermined by the laws of the universe (or something of the sort), but all of this has very little bearing on the way we actually live from day to day. Even if my fate were already written down in some book, I do not think I would wish to read it. Well, no, that is not entirely true. I would be curious. But I hope I would still choose not to.

I will write again next month. Until then, take good care of yourself.