CowprobeI’ve always wanted to get off my ass and write "Who Grows There?" an FMG tribute to John Cambell’s "Who Goes There?" which was the basis for both of "The Thing" movies. Cambell’s story as do the other two versions take place in a remote Antarctic research station. Scientists find -something- frozen in the ice millions of years old. Terror results. The book version having a really cool look at how a bunch of practical thinkers/scientists might defeat an alien menace.
H.P.Lovecraft’s "Mountains of Madness" is an intense look at an ancient world hidden by the Antarctic ice and snow with a terrible secret. Ruins and the mind numbing conjectures they summon in regards to mankind’s true place in history are just the tip of the iceberg (Pun aggh 😳 ). The ante keeps getting weirder and disturbing with the narrator facing the legacy of a shattered civilization and the things that even THEY feared. Read it if only to get a nice education on what it takes to actually travel there.
How does this relate to Monty Banks? Well it might be cool to have him and one of Big Sister’s uber-marms having to work together to survive. You might be able to throw an intense moralistic curveball his way if Big Sis excavated ruins show that an early advanced civilization swapped the natural strength of it’s female members to enhance that of the males. What would he think about disturbing the world Sis has wrought if its actualy a return to an earlier ‘order’ shrouded in prehistory?
OR you might be able to have this base be one of the centers of resistance hidden from Sis-net sattelites as a result of the hole in the ozone layer. However one of the members is a traitor. The scene of a woman hidden in arctic gear running to a plateau of ice in order to get her Beamed reward and the curves jutting from the fabric, flesh so enhanced the South Pole death winds just roll off her steaming new chassis. The plot may frame around catching this materially enhanced Mati Hari before she can SWIM?! to shore and alert the matriarchy.
Perhaps an undisturbed cache of pre-Beam humans in some cut off military base have gone about the tedious task of trying to survive. This being triple secret structure it has enough advanced undisclosed tech to be relatively self sufficient. These great minds might be able to formulate some way to at least balance the current power structure.
Don’t discount Antarctica. It’s potential is limited only by the amount of penguins you’re willing to have Monty fry 🙄 😉