Challenge Submission An Old World Holiday

[Rimechapel]

Acrid, ochre raindrops pattered on the pitted panes of glass that stood in stoic but resigned defiance of elements they were never designed to withstand. Not indefinitely, at least.

The windows rattled subtly in their aluminum moorings with the dull thud of a shutting drawer. A pudgy purple hand with a pink palm and stubby fingers pulled another drawer open, making the antique, weathered wooden desk squeak softly. The hand rummaged about, displacing partially unwrapped candies, well-loved erasers, styluses, and upcycled miniature Na-ion batteries. A deep, grunting squeak sounded when the hand closed its chubby fingers around a galvanized bronze fountain pen. The hand moved the pen up, turned it around, and pushed the round end against the bridge of a pair of thick, circular glasses, through which two big, bright eyes blinked. The owner of these eyes, and, by extension, the hand, glasses, and pen, appeared to be a squat, overly rotund humanoid, except for the fact that his little wiggly ears and bald, pudgy head bore features that very much seemed to belong to a hippopotamus.

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Spoiler: With a musical, mellow bass, he began to hum as he wrote.

1 Hilltop Drive
86.5°N & 162.9°E​

"Hello there, neighbor. I know it's funny; we live a mere dozen or so kilometers apart, subject to a few... shall we say, 'intervening' occupants of our little island, and I have never shown you the civilized decency of extending a greeting. I am embarrassed by this, and I hope you can forgive me. I am afraid of many things, with judgment being the chiefest of my fears. Judgment, I find, is nigh inseparable from socialization. Today, however, I am facing my fear... even if, perhaps, I do so under the aegis of this letter.

My name is Maurice Blomquist. If you have heard of me before, you may recognize my station as a foremost expert on the nature of the mammalian brain, and on hoppatipian anthropology. Neurological and historical discourse aside, I would like very much to celebrate a special day with you. You may know that as of tomorrow, seventy Old Years ago, the MAD war came to an end! Of course, as any acronym for Mutually Assured Destruction would suggest, it wasn't because anyone came to their senses and did the... well, the sensible thing! Far from it! No, they blew each other all up; thousands and thousands of warheads laden with all manner of radioactive and biological agents, all fired off in a moment, and nearly everyone on this planet died. It was a shame that all of the terraforming went to waste, and worse still that all this fluorine got into the atmosphere, but I am pleased to announce that my scans have revealed that atmospheric radiation has reached only trace levels! Of course, the air quality is still not exactly lovely, but I gather you already knew that.

Curiously, although it was summer here at the time, the explosions caused a chilly nuclear winter. Kicking up that much dust and smoke into the atmosphere has a way of blocking the sun, although all of that only lasted maybe twenty years or so. It might not seem immediately intuitive, but the nuclear winter caused parts of the ozone layer heat up dangerously, mostly depleting it around the equator. That's why you can't go there anymore, at least not without the right heat and solar radiation protection. How fortunate for us that up here close to the magnetic northern pole things are now merely pleasantly warm, at least during astronomical winter.

As a point of trivia, the end of the MAD war fell upon an Old World holiday during which time they celebrated the solstice. The same astronomical phenomenon does not quite hold true on this planet, but it is a lovely excuse to bake cookies. To wit, enclosed please find one dozen sugar cookies. I have shaped and decorated them to resemble mythologically accurate angelic beings who purportedly appeared to early humans, wished them peace and goodwill while floating around in the night sky, and admonished them to not be afraid on account of their terrifying countenance. I think they look like nightmarish things, with their many eyes and wings, but it was a great deal of fun to engage in such a culinary challenge, and I endeavor to be as true to the Old World holiday as I can. Its origins are some lightyears and millennia in the past, of course. As an aside, I grew and harvested all of the ingredients in my own hydroponics facility! Yes, even the eggs. Cadmium roe is much more nearly sustainable than fowl eggs, and there's no risk of salmonella! (You don't have a shellfish allergy, do you?)

In keeping with some of the altruistic sentiments of this Old World holiday, I, too, wish you peace and goodwill. If you can make it to my humble abode tomorrow, you will be greeted by a feast great enough to make you pop the first button of your britches, and I will be happy to send you off with leftovers as well. I am enclosing directions to my residence, as well as an RFID chit that will prevent the automated defense system from attempting to zap you with electricity.

Cordially yours,
Maurice​

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With a scribbling flourish, Maurice signed his name, then folded the letter and tucked it, the RFID chit, and a paper with directions into a wrinkled envelope, onto which he scribbled a set of coordinates. He opened his big, round mouth and licked the envelope with his big round tongue, stuck it closed, and hopped off his reinforced metal stool with a grunt. He grabbed a cardboard box off of the desk with his other hand, and taped the envelope to it. The box rattled faintly with the muffled sounds of many cookies that threatened to break into crumbs before they reached their destination. Maurice chewed his lip, weighing the merits of opening up the box and nibbling on one (just one!) of the cookies, but soon shook his head and blinked the gluttonous thought from his mind. Hurrying over to the door of his shelter before he could change his mind, he fastened a breathing filter over his face and pulled the heavy metal door open.

Outside, the wind whistled furiously, making the precipitation seem substantially more profound than it really was. Maurice waddled down the pitted steps of his porch and over to a waiting L-series rover, handing the android driver the package.

"I'm transferring the postal fee to your account now!" Maurice shouted over the wind, tapping on a small device with two buttons and a tiny screen. "And a little extra for yourself, too! I know you don't eat cookies, or I would have made some for you, too!"

The android stared at Maurice, its three bright, glowing blue ocular sensors showing no hint of comprehension. The rain pattered softly onto the rover, which showed only the faintest signs of corrosion on its roof and hood. Once the transfer was complete, the android turned sharply away from Maurice and drove the rover away with a lurch.

Maurice stood of his tippy toes and waved at the android as it drove away, then hurried back inside his shelter. It wasn't much to look at, at least not from the outside; Maurice had cobbled and welded together scrap, wreckage, and salvaged pieces of architecture to form the above ground portion. While he had been fairly clever in joining everything in an efficient way that made maintenance simple, it was the below ground portion that was a thing of wonder; a stable, powerful reactor, a comprehensive hydroponics gantry, basic medical facilities, and three separate processing and manufacturing units. He scurried down the stairs to hydroponics, and dragged a relatively small, potted evergreen tree back up the stairs. He descended the stairs again and went to the uppermost manufacturing unit, and grabbed a box off of the end of the conveyor belt output and back up the stairs. As he began to take strange baubles out of the box and hook them onto the evergreen tree, he hummed a jaunty little tune and tried to keep intrusive thoughts of rejection out of his mind.

"I really hope they come visit!" he squeaked to himself, reaching up to put an astronomically correct looking star on the top of the tree.