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　　They say human memories are unreliable. They say that, given enough time, even the most vivid of memories fade, events obscured, tinted, by fragments of the imagination. I don’t dispute it. It is what I’m taught. But when I woke up today, to the same dream of that distant memory, I do what I always do. I pull out my notebook, and jolt down as many details as I can. It just happened so that time and again, the same description is written page after page. Never once had there been a discrepancy. Not even after thirteen years.

　　I was four years old. I know this because I was still wearing the old anti-radiation jumpsuit.(They upgraded those things shortly after I turned five.) It was almost the end of winter. In the Tundra, this meant months of endless night and bitter cold was finally coming to an end. Over the winter, I had secretly learned how to deactivate the magnetic barrier that kept me safe inside the house. When my father left for work that day, I snuck out.

　　If human memories are as unreliable as they say they are, then I wonder why it is, that I can so vividly recall the tint of purple, sapphire and emerald that glowed dimly in the sky that day, or the way the snow crunched beneath my feet as I walked. It’s dark even in the morning, but there’s no difficulties seeing the constellations that illuminated the entire arctic sky.

　　Out in the field, I had caught a glimpse of, and chased an arctic fox to a lake not too far from home. The surface was frozen solid. In the absolute stillness of its glass surface was the refraction of every beam of aurora light above. Strangely enchanting, ghostly alive. I couldn’t help but to stop and look.

　　And that’s when I saw it.

　　Close to shore, almost completely buried under the snow, was a shiny metal object. My father’s words of caution echoed in my ears. But for a four year-old, curiosity almost always prevailed.
　　As I dusted away some of the looser snow on the surface, I stood stunned, at the little bit of what I’ve unveiled. Frozen and buried under layers of ice and snow, was the skeletal component of a human hand.
　　————
　　Be calm. Let senses do their job. Listen, with not just the ears but instincts too. Feel, where the opponent is weakest. Finally, strike, not where it’s seen but anticipate where it will be.
　　Zap,zap,zap. A string of blitzflies falls to the ground.
　　“19 out of 20” said my father in his usual matter-of-fact tone. “Something’s on your mind”
　　“No.” I lied without thinking. “Just a glitch I guess.”
　　“Calla…...” He let out a sigh.
　　“I know, I know. In real life I’d be dead.” I cut him off. “But dad, this is not real life. This is a game.”
　　“You know better than that Calla. If we don’t put a hundred percent into what we do, then there’s no point doing it at all.” He said as he bent down to collect the paralyzed blitzflies I shot down.
　　There’s no arguing with my father. I knew he’s right. I walked over to help him.
　　“Calla, if you’re not up for this tonight, let’s just call it a night. I’ve got some stuff to do in the lab anyway.”
　　I don’t disagree. We walked back into the house.
　　In my room, I sat down on the bed and rested my back awkwardly on the pillow. My thoughts trailed to the past to that particular memory.

　　I’d gone back to the lake the next day to investigate the shiny skeletal hand. I brought along a small trowel my dad gave me for gardening. The hand was exactly where it’d been; wedged solid in layers of glacier. I don’t know what it was about the object that peaked my interest; perhaps it’s the unnerving thought that this “thing” had once been attached to a human, or simply because, how strange it was, behind the great barricade of the Tundra’s infinite mountains and abyss, there’d be these bones......

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