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A Cold Day in Hell

Right now, Robert Caine wonders what he'd ever liked about snow.

It probably started when he was about four or five. Christmas Day, snowing, presents under the tree...and being a good Christian, he was obliged to go to church before enjoying any of it. It was a ritual he would willingly perform in later years until the Cheyenne Mountain and later Icarus Base made it a bit difficult to give the Lord His due, but back then, it was chore. In fact, the only good thing about it was the snow. Hanging on the eves, the windows, making snow angels in 'dedication' (lame excuse, but he was allowed to get away with it at that age)...well, it made the freezing church slightly more bearable.

Right now, sitting in an Ancient shuttle and slowly freezing to death, he still wonders what he liked about the snow. He also slightly wonders about whether he'll go to Heaven or Hell. Only slightly, because either way, he'll be a lot warmer in either of them.

He feels like Adam in a sense. Calling the planet Eden, settling on it with some other scientists while Destiny moved on through purgatory...granted, none of the fruit here was forbidden as far as he can tell, but it seems that Eden's vanished completely, covered by snow as far as his pale eyes can see. The door of the shuttle is open, as if beckoning him to try and gain the lost paradise. It can't be closed, thanks to a loss of power and life support, but on some instinctual, spiritual level, he doesn't want to close it. If he does, Eden can never be returned to.

What did the others think in their last moments, he wonders, as he glances at his friends. Or former friends, if friendship stops with death by hypothermia. That they'd damned themselves in false paradise? That they should have gone with Destiny? Were they thinking what he's thinking right now, the words Christ it's cold rolling over and over in his head like the waves that buffered the Ark (could really use a bloody ark now)? Are they thinking now, on some level? Are they thinking give us back our blankets you bastard, the last resident of this world haven taken them all to himself in the hope the dead won't need them? Like he won't need them soon? He'll be joining them within the day, he's got no doubt about that.

He's also got no doubt that this is what a cold day in Hell would feel like...