«Hi. I am Lilian Orwell. I had an extremely simply life – till I met the Doctor.»
It was a kind of normal day. I exited the house and felt the chilly icy wind on my face. The sun shone brightly – I was happy it was June again. About 5 Celsius degrees – we would have a beautiful day – I thought. I smelled the fresh warm air and sighed. June. – I thought – Finally. With a smile on my face I went to check the cells. The others took their breakfast – it was my task to do the morning work that day. I was happy about it: for the next day our meteorologist said bad snowstorms. But it was Friday, and Friday was my day, and I would've not changed it with anyone for any other days.
Of course we worked on every day on ther week (except the free day: it was Saturday for me); we were scientists ot what. But so far in the North you can easily forget about the way of normal life. Day goes after day and sometimes the others have to tell you it's your day off. The only advantage was we did not have a boss. Everybody knew their task and no one said what you had to do. Of course, we had bosses, but they've sat somewhere in England and once a month asked for results. We did not went on fast with the research so we didn't have may to report.
We've been on the Severnaja Zemlja about for two years. No human being in hundreds os miles, three of four of the year winter and the other part a cold but all-the-time sunny summer. I liked that part. I got used to the cold so it did not effect me badly – but the darkness... Around the darkest month we had to do light therapy against depression. In December we worked less – four days a week – and played social games and made parties on Saturdays. The fifteen of us: a meteorologist, two IT specialists, a mathematician, two physicists, a chemist, two geneticists, two biochemists, a cell engineer (obviously, he was a bioinformatician, but he refused to call him so), an evolution-biologist and the two of us, the botanists. We growed plants – well, not ordinary plants but so-called “superplants” – in glasshouses. On zero Celsius degrees.
I accepted the job because I hadn't got any friends left behind in Glasgow. My parents were gone for a long time and my job wasn't the one which anybody could cope with – so I went. And the others had the same reasons, too. Some of them had good jobs or family back home but non of them were married or has stable relationship. We weren't aquianted to each other before we got to Moscow to the brief about the research. From another specialities, from another countries. The meteorologist was from Norway. The chemist was German, the bioinformatician (or cell engineer if you wish) from Poland, the evo-biologist Czech, the others English or Scottish – and a Russian, Sacha, the other botanist. At the beginning I did not understand how these people would get on with each other, but then, at the end of the second year, I felt like they were my family from ever. We became friends at least, except Nikola and Stvenko, who became a pair. It was funny to see how a German and a Croatian got on – however, they got on very well from the beginning; maybe because Nikola was a quarter Croatian too. And it was more fun to listen them speaking the Slavish language they called 'Gervath' from mixing German and Croatian. Well, it was quite disturbing 'cause almost all of us understood German but no one Croatian so we just had tipps what they were talking about. It was more annoying when they did it with work.
Along the two years we got to know each other quite well. We knew not to disturb Sacha early in the morning 'cause he was very grumpy after waking up and before breakfast. We called it 'Russian-effect' and laughed a lot about it behind his back. The others also had their little habits. Adrews (mathematician) sang while cooking. Julie (biochemist) talked to herself in the lab. Jalenko (cell engineer) laughed at everything. You shouldn't ask Christine (geneticist) about her life left behind unless you wanted to broke your friendship. 'The Guys', Jake and Yolo made computer-jokes shich no one understood but them. Kim (as we decided to call him because non of us could spell his unreasonably long Norwegian name) loved to paint the fjords from his memories. Allen (the other physicist) liked to explain the universe's mechanism to every living or non-living thing he saw. Marco liked to pull Julie's leg while their worked in the lab so when he limped we knew Julie kicked him again. Tvrevka (the evo-biologist) made filogenetical problem from everything. And Johnny (the other Johnny, till Andrews was called also John), he sat quiet most times. Not because he was sad but he liked to pay attention on everything. And I - I liked the plants. I liked to be with them. I think the others found it weird, but we all had something weird around us.
So that was our little group. Lot of other kind of people, but a whole 'band' – as we called ourselves sometimes. And we did a lot of research through the time. Most of it on each other.
The day I was talking about wasn't a special day at all. Just an average summer day with a little more sunshine than usual. I liked to go to be with 'my' plants. I was totally alone, the glasshouses were hundreds of yards apart the building. Because of the antropological effects we thought it would be the best. So I walked. I smiled to myself. Tomorrow I would be going to the town, do some shopping and watch the new Alisson MacWay movie with Julie. Well, the movie wasn't new, it was half a year old, but there it was totally normal occurrence they played in the cinema long-came-out movies. It was a surprise that there was a cinema in the town. Twenty-fourth century or not, the digital showing wasn't worldwide-spread.
So, to be honest, I was happy that day. I checked the plants, the termostate and the watering mechanism. And that was the moment when all my life changed.