The first thing Vivi registered upon waking was the profound, aggressive silence.
It wasn’t the gentle quiet of a Parisian morning, hushed by thick curtains and the distant hum of the city, but a hard, elemental void that pressed in on her eardrums.
The second was the cold, a dry, invasive chill that seeped through her thermal-weave pajamas and settled deep in her bones.
Her room—a term she used loosely—was a cube of painted cinderblock and brushed steel.
The bed was a narrow cot with a mattress that felt suspiciously like a repurposed gym mat.
A single, mercilessly thin blanket offered little comfort.
Across from her, a small metal desk was bolted to the wall beneath a window that looked out onto an endless panorama of white.
No trees, no buildings, no variation. Just a flat, glaring expanse that seemed to absorb all color, all life, all scent.
She had slept, but she hadn’t rested.
Back in Paris, her apartment was a symphony. The ghost of last night’s tuberose oil on her wrist, the rich, dark note of brewing coffee, the buttery hint of a croissant from the boulangerie downstairs.
Her world had been built of layers, of top notes and base notes, of stories told in molecules she alone could decipher.
Here, the air was a blank page. Sterile, thin, and utterly meaningless. It was like living in a vacuum.
Dragging herself from the cot, she pulled on layers of merino wool and fleece, the utilitarian fabrics a constant, scratchy reminder of her new reality.
Her designer parka, hung on a hook by the door, looked obscene in its opulence, a peacock stranded in a penguin colony.
The station’s common area was no warmer.
Long steel tables were bolted to the floor, surrounded by mismatched chairs.
The air here was not entirely scentless, but what smells existed were crude and functional: the acrid tang of burnt coffee, the greasy hint of fried eggs, and the sharp, disinfectant odor of industrial cleaner.
It was a cacophony of necessity, not pleasure.
A woman with a formidable gray braid and forearms like ship’s ropes stood at a griddle, flipping something that might have been a pancake. This had to be Marta.
She moved with an economy of motion that suggested any wasted energy was a personal affront.
“You’re up,” Marta stated, not looking at her. It wasn’t a question.
“Good morning,” Vivi offered, her voice sounding thin and reedy in the cavernous room.
Marta grunted, sliding a rubbery-looking disc onto a plate and shoving it down the counter.
“Coffee’s there. Don’t use more than two sugars. Supply truck’s not for another month.”
Before Vivi could respond, a cheerful voice cut through the gloom. “Don’t mind Marta. Her heart’s two sizes too small until her second cup.”
A young man with a shock of black hair and a grin that seemed to generate its own warmth bounced over to her. He was wrapped in a brightly colored down vest and held a tablet covered in complex graphs.
“Kenji Tanaka. Seismologist, part-time aurora-chaser, full-time coffee addict. You must be Genevieve Dubois. The famous Nose of Paris.”
Vivi flinched at the title, a phantom limb aching where a part of her used to be. “Just Vivi, please. And not so famous anymore.”
Kenji’s smile didn’t falter. He seemed to run on a different, more optimistic fuel than everyone else.
“Nonsense. Your work is legendary. I read about that perfume you made, the one that supposedly smelled like a forgotten memory? How do you even do that?”
He leaned closer, his eyes wide with genuine fascination. “Is it true you can identify three hundred separate notes in a single blend?”
“I could,” she corrected, the words tasting like ash. She busied herself with the coffee, pouring the sludgy liquid into a chipped ceramic mug.
He either missed her tone or chose to ignore it.
“Well, your equipment arrived on the last transport. Alistair has it in the main lab. I was just heading over to check the ice-penetrating radar data. Want a tour?”
Anything was better than another moment in this joyless room, contemplating the culinary tragedy on her plate. “I’d love one.”
As Kenji led her through a series of sterile corridors, he pointed out labs and storage rooms, explaining their functions with an infectious enthusiasm that Vivi found herself envying.
He spoke of glacial dynamics and atmospheric particulates the way she used to speak of Bulgarian rose and ambergris.
It was the language of passion, and for a moment, she felt a pang of connection.
They arrived at the main lab, a large, hangar-like space cluttered with monitors, exposed wiring, and hefty, weather-beaten machinery. And there, in the center of the room, sat her life’s last hope.
Her atmospheric treatment system was encased in three sleek, silver crates.
Even packed away, they looked utterly alien amidst the station’s rugged, purely functional equipment. It was a couturier’s gown in a mechanic’s workshop.
Alistair Finch was already there, crowbar in hand, prying open the first crate alongside a burly technician.
He didn’t acknowledge their arrival, his focus absolute.
The muscles in his jaw were tight, a roadmap of stress.
“Careful with that!” Vivi called out, a reflex of professional pride. “The internal gyroscopes are sensitive.”
Alistair shot her a look that could have flash-froze seawater.
“I’m familiar with the concept of sensitive equipment, Ms. Dubois.” He returned to his task, his movements deliberate and tinged with aggression.
With a final groan of stressed wood, the lid came off.
Inside, nestled in custom-molded foam, was the central unit of her system.
Polished chrome and smoked glass, it looked more like a piece of modern art than scientific hardware.
Kenji let out a low whistle. “Wow. That’s… shiny.”
Alistair circled the device, his expression a mixture of contempt and disbelief.
He ran a hand over his tired face, then turned to face Vivi, his arms crossed.
The handful of other researchers in the lab fell silent, sensing a confrontation.
“So this is it,” Alistair said, his voice dangerously low and carrying across the cavernous space.
“The machine that’s going to cure you by letting you… what was it? ‘Re-acclimate your olfactory receptors through concentrated atmospheric inhalation.’”
He recited the phrase from her proposal as if it were a line from a bad joke.
Vivi felt a hot flush of shame creep up her neck. “It’s a prototype. A targeted therapy designed to stimulate—”
“It’s a nebulizer, Ms. Dubois. A very expensive, very beautiful nebulizer that is taking up space and power that this station cannot afford to waste.” He tapped a finger on the glass casing
“My team is analyzing ice cores that contain a quarter-million years of climate data. Kenji is measuring seismic shifts that could predict catastrophic melt events. We are dealing in hard, quantifiable facts.” He added.
“What, precisely, are your metrics for success? A feeling? A whim? A ‘phantom note’ of jasmine on the wind?”
The words struck her like physical blows.
He was taking her life’s work, the art and science she had perfected, and reducing it to frivolous nonsense.
Before the accident, she could have answered him. She could have described the molecular structure of scent, the complex interplay of aldehydes and esters, the neurological pathways that connected smell to memory and emotion.
She could have silenced him with the sheer, unassailable authority of her gift.
But that authority was gone. Her “nose” was a memory, her expertise a ghost.
All she had left was a desperate, unproven theory and this beautiful, silent machine.
“The science is sound,” she said, her voice wavering slightly.
“The loss of olfactory function is often neurological, not physiological.” She added.
“The system is designed to bypass the noise of common pollutants and deliver pure, layered atmospheric samples directly. To retrain the brain.”
“Retrain the brain,” Alistair scoffed, a bitter, humorless smile touching his lips.
“And who is interpreting these ‘layered samples’? You are. The instrument of measurement is the very thing that’s broken.”
“It’s a closed loop of subjective, anecdotal nonsense. It’s not science.”
“It’s wishful thinking subsidized by a grant committee that clearly has more money than sense.”
He turned away from her, dismissing her as he addressed the technician. “Get this… thing moved to Storage Bay C. We need this space for the new core drills.”
“But the proposal approved its placement in the main lab,” Vivi protested, her voice rising with panicked indignation. “It needs a stable power source and temperature regulation.”
Alistair turned back, his eyes glinting with cold, hard logic.
“Storage Bay C has a stable power source,” he explained. “As for temperature, I’m sure your Parisian miracle machine can handle a little bit of cold. This is Alaska, Ms. Dubois.”
“Everything here has to be tough enough to survive,” he continued.
“If your experiment can’t, it has no business being here.”
He paused, letting the final, brutal assessment land.
“And neither do you,” he stated.
He strode away without a backward glance, leaving Vivi standing in the echoing silence of the lab.
The other researchers quickly busied themselves, their gazes averted, leaving her utterly, humiliatingly alone.
Kenji placed a hesitant hand on her arm.
“He’s… under a lot of pressure,” he offered quietly. “The funding presentation…”
Vivi shook her head, unable to speak. It wasn’t just the public humiliation.
It was the terrifying accuracy of his critique.
She was the broken instrument. She was asking the world to believe in a sense she no longer possessed, a language she could no longer speak.
Alistair hadn’t just questioned her equipment; he had held up a mirror to her deepest, most profound insecurity and confirmed that it was all true.
She was a fraud. A perfumer who couldn’t smell, a memory of a person trying to justify her own existence.
She looked from the gleaming, useless machine to the vast, white emptiness outside the lab window. The tundra stared back, silent and scentless, the perfect reflection of the hollow space inside her.