White. White as far as the eye could see. Yes, we were indeed in Antarctica, on this block of ice that had always seemed like a world apart, a world within a world where no one could—or wanted to—live… The conditions were so extreme, weren't they ?

But the cold here wasn’t the cold to which we European scientists from temperate countries were accustomed... The cold was so dry that even if the electronic thermometer we were equipped with indicated -50°, it was as if we did not feel it... Perhaps also that past a certain number of degrees below zero, we reach a sort of petrification of the senses, I don’t know.

I must say that I couldn't think clearly. It was as if the notion of time dissolved into the one of space, in all this ice forming a block as far as my gaze could project. No more seconds, no more minutes, no more hours held, in this setting of static ice. There were only the reverberations of the sun projecting itself against the icebergs to testify to the existence of a flow, a current of life... This sun shining in this sky of a flawless blue, with rays that seemed unfailing and eternal, that seemed to proclaim its victory over the other elements of nature that surrounded it... Sun King, ultimate and only proof of life in this kingdom so immaculate that it seemed unreal.

Who knows, maybe we had landed in a vast film studio? Maybe the entire planet was a set designed to experiment on our primitive and pathetic selves... My mind was definitely no longer clear, in this icy desert. Or maybe, in fact, it had become as clear as the river water that fluctuated in a crack in the ice floe.