The snow was falling on New London, the rain having frozen into powdery flakes as the mercury fell, gave up, then froze. Children had flocked to the streets, and were now heaping the acidic drifts of powder-ice into lumps. Carefully, and with tender love, a number worked together to roll three large balls on top of each other. They found some sticks to give him arms, a few dog-coals for eyes. A mottled scarf was draped around his neck, and a father's pipe was gently pushed into its head, just below the little button nose. But it still didn't quite look right. A few of the mitten clad urchins ran away to go and find the finishing touch.
***
Dr Kim Drexler was hurrying along a few streets away. His feet crunched loudly through the snow, moving quicker and quicker as panic gradually mounted. Someone was following him. Someone who wanted his work, his research. Probably the same someone who had ransacked his lab earlier that day while he'd been at the local pub tucking in to a well deserved Christmas dinner with his assistant. He clutched the briefcase he was carrying tightly, hunched over a little further and sped up a little more. That was a decoy really. Sure it contained papers ' important in their own way ' but the real prize was hidden inside the band of his old silk hat. Four glass containers holding the sum of several million credits work.
A shadow loomed over his shoulder. Time seemed to slow to a standstill as he saw a skiff scream down towards the street, towards him, towards his work. As he turned to run, to scream, something hard jabbed him in the ribs. He looked down in horror in time to witness slight flash, a muffled hiss and his own death. This was accompanied by the quickly dispersed stench of burnt flesh. Dr Drexler lolled dead, and was thrown (briefcase and all) into the skiff as it levelled with the corpse and its attacker. The whole thing was over in seconds: no witnesses. The only evidence of his passing was an old silk hat that had rolled away into a snow drift during the commotion.
***
A few minutes later a small group of children walked past, scuffling their boots through the snow and kicking up trails of muddied destruction in their wake. One of them spotted the hat and picked it up, out of curiosity. She called to the others to come and have a look. After quickly conferring among one another, they giggled and grinned and flocked back to their snowman, who stood genially pretending to smoke his pipe in the twilight. The girl who was carrying the hat tripped on a spot of black ice and landed on the hat, already bawling crocodile tears before she even landed. On top of the hat. None of them noticed the quartet of tiny smashes in all the commotion. One of the older children picked the girl and the hat up, then set the latter on the snowman's head with a smile. After a short while, they dispersed to nearby homes. That night, something magical would happen.
Minutes after the last child had vanished, things began to change inside the snowman. This continued throughout the night, until the sun rose, pulling its vast bulk over the horizon to glimmer down the slushy streets. It took a little longer for the snowman to feel the star's first kiss, for it rested in the shadow of a large apartment tower. At 8am, almost an hour after New London first lit up, the snowman's face was dyed gold in the cold morning light. It shivered all over as something inside it awoke and began to draw in solar energy, powering itself, feeding. The button nose shook out and dropped to the floor with a plop as the snow it was contained in rattled and swayed. A door slammed in the distance, and the shivering stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
The children came out to play a little while later, chattering and running around. The off-white of the snow was further muddied and churned beneath their boots, to a sucking brown paste. One of them picked up the button and pressed it firmly back in to place. They had the day to themselves because it was the weekend. At any rate, the schools were closed because of the weather. It was a nice break from the rain, whatever the grownups said. The snowman was left ignored and unattended; there was only so much you could do with one after it was finished. As snowballs were flung and festive songs sung, the snowman's head swivelled. Looking. Tracking. No-one noticed, or at least if they had, they didn't mention it. Who would believe them about a moving snowman?
Inside, away from the clamouring children, parents sat down in the warm confines of their flats and watched the news. Skimmers grounded due to weather, public institutions closing due to budget cuts, and an esteemed professor of nanotechnology missing. No-one really paid much attention to the last. His name had done the rounds recently, given that he'd purchased a building a few streets away. But no-one ever saw him, and he didn't even live there. So no-one cared. Outside, the snowman continued to watch and wait.
The day came and went, the temperatures plummeting with the light. The children flocked home to their parents, and the snowman continued to wait. A BPA night constable strolled past just before midnight. There had been reports of prowlers in the area, so he was doing his bit to keep the residents happy. He had a bulky communicator in his hand. He didn't need to hold it, but the inefficient power cell kicked out heat, keeping his fingers from going numb inside his mittens. He stopped in front of the snowman and grinned, remembering the days when he could legitimately build them without being mocked. There was a loud crack from behind him. He spun around, jumping. It was just a falling icicle shattering on the pavement. There was a far louder bang, again from directly behind him. He flinched again, accidentally dropping the communicator in the process. Swinging around he couldn't see what could have made the noise.
But the snowman seemed a little closer. He spent 10 minutes looking for the communicator, then scratched his head and wrote it off as a lost cause. He'd requisition another. Spooked, he shuffled back to the Station as fast as he would allow himself. However, the communicator slowly worked its way deeper into the snowman, moved on and up, as if by osmosis. The snowman continued to watch and wait.
