A Memory of Snow

It didn't quite look like the surface of Mars. yet. But it definitely looked more desolate and desert-ish than it had done even only a handful of decades ago.

Dr. Snow, they called her. For her obsession, partly, but also, now, for the colour of her hair. It had grown more and more silver as the years passed, and now it was pure white.

She remembered, in the Spring of her life, juicy green grass underfoot. Sprinklers, bikinis, laughter. Gone now.

Even then, snow had been a rarity. The few times it had fallen in any quantity represented wonder and magic in her memory. Happy shrieking, gloved fingers, pink noses. Intense snowball battles, epic snowmen (and snow-women of course).

Officially, publicly, the pursuit of snow had begun out of a burning desire to save the world. Fix the climate. Lately, that wish had been sincere.

Privately, as a little girl she was always disgruntled how little of it fell, and even less at Christmas. As a young woman, she was sad to think it was gone forever.

She had been one of a group of scientists with this special interest. They bounced off one another, burning in their almost evangelical belief that this was the way to advance the human race.

She had been among an even smaller subset of scientists had backed the horse called Nanotechnology a in the race for climate control.

As night fell over the barren earth, and fat white flakes fell for the first time in forty years, the Dr beamed.

What could possibly go wrong?

She was struck by a girlish impulse to be out in it, to feel it land on her skin, reach out her hand through the thickening curtain of it.

I shouldn't. It might not be safe. I should stay here, and observe. Record. Children played in it for hours, but others died of cold, or got lost within miles of their own homes. Soldiers froze, people lost fingers and feet. Ice forms, to ensnare you, make you slip. Break old bones.

She pressed a buzzer on her desk to request her assistant bring a hot chocolate.

"A... what, ma'am?"

"Chocolate, Jones. Chocolate. Hot. Cocoa. Good Lord, boy surely you know what that is!"

Throughout this exchange her gaze stuck to the window, refusing to be peeled away. Rather like a curious child's tongue might stick to a frozen lamppost.

She made dutiful notes while she waited, the darkness deepening all the while, and throwing her snowflakes into even sharper relief.

When the drink arrived at last, she pushed away from the desk and stood at the window. In truth, the entire western face of the building was all windows. The view was spectacular, and surely she deserved a moment to enjoy it? To bask in her success?

With this, perhaps the planet could be brought back from the brink. Unless men used it, as they usually did. To kill each other.

The badly-made cocoa scalded her tongue, and the cloying sweetness made her gag, but she sipped at it anyway, gazing at her snowfall across the desolate night-clad landscape.