SETTING:
-2053 CE
-Davis Strait (right in-between Greenland and Baffin Island)
-Small, retired 2020s military aircraft carrier (with 2000 endangered Gentoo penguins, Pygoscelis papua)
Backstory:
In the year 2053, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has had devastating effects on the Southern hemisphere's weather, especially at the South Pole. The coldest temperature recorded this decade, the 2050s, is -14.8 °C. This is compared to -89.2 °C in 1983.
As a result of this massive temperature change, Antarctica's icy coast has receded many kilometers. So much melting has occurred that the coast is no longer characterized by the gigantic cliffs of ice it once was. Instead the coast is largely made up of barren rocky beaches, with the ice cliffs beginning just south. With the melting of the ice, many species that depended on it have begun to decline in population size, the penguins included. Most effected by the change is the Gentoo Penguin (Pygoscelis papua). Their population is down from 300,000 mating pairs in 2000, to 8000 pairs in 2049 and still declining. The species is predicted not to last past the end of the century.
Now their is a team of 26 animal conservation activists from around Europe and North America who are willing to do anything to stop the Gentoo penguin from going extinct. They have acquired an old 2020s British military aircraft carrier and have gone south to Antarctica. At the end of the southern hemisphere's winter, the activists collect just under 2000 Gentoos. Against strict international invasive species laws, they plan to bring the penguins to the north pole, where coastal ice is still relatively plentiful.
On the ship, the penguins are kept out in the open on the massive runway deck, fenced in so they don't jump overboard. With enough frozen fish for the whole trip, the activists and their experienced ship captain, along with the penguins, start their transport north. It is late September, and they are expected to arrive at their destination in December.
The story starts in mid November, the ship cruising through the Davis Strait, in between Greenland and Baffin Island, Nunavut.
Plot Summary:
When their captain disappears from the ship in a lifeboat, the penguin conservation activists are left stranded in the north pole's cold winter ice fields, unable to call for help and almost out of food. The main character, the only real scientist onboard, decides to abandon ship with the rest of the activists, in hopes of getting out of the cold and finding food. They all die when the ice suddenly cracks and they fall into the cold water. Meanwhile the penguins start leaving the ship and venture into their new habitat as happy as can be.
Activating Circumstance:
The Captain, and only person onboard with any experience steering a ship and leading a crew, disappears, presumably having left in a lifeboat during the long night. The crew does not know how to continue, but they decide to keep going.
Rising Action:
The crew floats on for a day before they realise they can not continue through the ice. They turn off the engine for the night and start planning their course south. Over night, the ice creeps in around them and they are stuck. After the next three days, the ice has crept over 100 meters south. With no hope of leaving the North Pole on the ship, the activists and crew abandon it. Unfortunately for them, they find the ice to thin to walk on. Almost out of food, they choose to keep going on their stomaches. With as even distribution of their weight as possible (at the suggestion of the main character), they crawl hopefully along the ice and toward land.
Climax:
The ice breaks and they all tragically die.
Denouement:
Back at the ship, the unfed penguins start to funnel down the ramp onto the ice. With plenty of food underneath the ice, they happily begin life in their new habitat.
Conflict:
Man vs. Nature
The activists have failed. They are stuck in the North Pole with none of their electronics working. They have no way to go back, and they need to escape while coming to terms with the fact that they may have doomed the Gentoo Penguin to extinction in one foolish blow.
Atmosphere:
The activists are scared by the disappearance of the only experienced crew member onboard. The atmosphere reflects their stress at having no where to go, nothing to eat, no heat, and to top it off, 2000 penguins to worry about. A feeling of failure is prominent.
Theme:
Personal sacrifices are required in order to best undo the damage we have done during our sacrifice of the planet.
Point of View:
3rd Person, Limited Omniscient Narrative.
Characters:
Protagonist - Jonathan, a zoologist from the United States. He is one of the more prominent of the activists, caring deeply about getting the penguins to their destination, and caring less about the well being of the people onboard. He is extremely disappointed and pessimistic about their chances of success.
Others- random activists, their personalities are unimportant to the story
-Penguins, they are crazy
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