Episode 3.11: The Ana Special (Patreon)

# Fading from Alexander's voice to Ana's

Hello world, my name is Ana.

I am 14 or 15. I think.   Alexander connected our radio to the bunker systems so I can send a message to you.   I’m not very good at this.   I don’t have much practice speaking with people.   But Seth said you’d be interested.

I’ll start at the beginning.   We never had a home.   Oh, it’s not as bad as that.   I mean we never had just A home.   We had many.   My family is part - was part - of a scientific community,   attached to no settlement, aboard our research ship, the Bondar

The ship itself was our home.   Large enough for the crew of 25 to live and work for many months at a time.   Though it seemed like work was the only thing to do.

When Alexander wasn’t busy, I took up fishing as a way to escape the monotony of the work.   It was mostly map-making and sonar sounding of the Novamediterra, to make it safe for shipping.   It was very boring.   Our mother, Katherine, was head of the team.

She spent all her time thinking about cartography, and not about us.   Even when we were helping her, it was a thankless task.   Of course we would help her, she assumed, it was our duty.

In many ways we were raised by the crew, not by her.   It’s a poor substitute for a mother’s love, but there it is.   The crew were our friends, our teachers, our family.

I was the most popular one with them.   Obviously!   No-one is as good at fishing as I am.   And on a ship stocked with dried food and mouldy fruit,   fish are the most important!   No matter what Adrian says…

All through our formative years, we travelled the Novamediterra.   I suppose I don’t know where you are, so maybe you don’t know what  it’s like here.   As you must know, there’s no ice up here inside the arctic circle.   The old maps note the lack of trees in the arctic, some even drawing a  “treeline” around the northern sections of Russia and Canada.   We still use those maps, because the treeline is still valid, it’s  just that now, no trees grow south of it.

The last human cities are all dotted around this new Mediterranean ocean, I remember visiting them:

• Samoylov, on the northern Russian coast
• Hornsund, on Svalbard
• Thule, in Greenland (which is actually green, these days)
• Utqiagvik, North Alaska

And so on.

Alexander got me my first fishing rod in Utqiagvik.

The people there were really welcoming and helpful.   I was taught by a native Alaskan woman.

She took me out on to the metal pier during the day,   well, it was summer, so it was daylight for 65 days,   but after we had our breakfast, we went fishing.   She taught me how to cast the line, what bait to use in which season,   how to look for the currents and eddies in the water that fish like.   It was so fun!   In the evening we would have dinner with her wife and family.

And then, in a few days, our ship, the Bondar, would load up with stores and water, and we would be gone.

It was hard for people like us, with no fixed address, to make connections with the land folk.   They operate on such a long timescale.   “You must come to my son’s wedding next year” they say.   Who plans that far in advance?   I didn’t know where I would be next MONTH let alone whole seasons away.

So as Seth has told you, one day we were sounding in the Kara Sea when an unpredicted storm hit.   We were off the coast of Severny Island in Siberia.   Which I can still see, from the top of our lighthouse.

I was fishing off the stern of the ship, when the sea turned into a mountain.   I didn’t know what to do, and as people started running and shouting around me, I just froze.

Suddenly someone pushed me inside and all the doors were sealed.   But that didn’t help.   The last thing I remember was the water smashing through the windows.

Alexander saved us.

When I became aware of my surroundings again, Alexander had set us up in this lighthouse,   and here we’ve lived ever since.

Many years,
many summers.

Alexander spends most of his time building little machines from the remains of what washed up from the wreck.   A large waterproof container, five times as long as it was wide, full of parts and provisions, washed up on the first day.   I’ll admit this has improved our quality of life here.

But I’ve always thought technology is trouble.   An opinion only solidified by Seth’s arrival.

He seems a nice boy.   But we’ve been fine here by ourselves.   Now he’s here, Alexander keeps getting us into trouble.   Like with the reactor.   In Arina’s haunted house on the hill.   We still feel very tired after that ordeal.   Luckily, I found some iodine tablets and other medicines in the metal container,   so we should get better.   I hope.

Fish are simple.

When we first arrived, I built a metal pier, just a few meters long, out into the sea.   In the best place I could find for fishing.   A pier is super-useful, to avoid a rogue wave washing away your kit.   The fish I catch we dry in the summer months to store for winter.   It’s easy to dry things in the summer, as it’s light all the time.   But winter is a different story.   I don’t like the winter.

Did you know the ancient Romans had one long month called “winter”?   The old calendar didn’t mark time from the end of autumn till the first flowers of spring.   What would be the point?   It’s dark and cold and nothing grows.

Well, in the Arctic, it’s even more applicable.   For 60 or so days round midwinter, the sun never rises above the horizon.   Adrian can only grow mushrooms.   And we rely entirely on fish and stored food.

Sometimes when I go to bed during the winter, and we turn off the generator-powered lights,   I like to imagine I’m going to hibernate.   Like a bear.   I’ll go to sleep wrapped in blankets, nice and warm,   and when I wake up, it’ll be spring!   That would be so handy.   I suppose I’d have to eat loads of fish beforehand…   I could manage that!   Tasty!

I’m getting tired.   Alexander wants to shut up the lighthouse for the night.   Or - what counts as night up here.

Tomorrow we’ll get up and fish and farm and tinker with electronics.   It’s the same every day.   Although…

I suppose we might visit Arina’s cracked house on the hill.   She likes playing with that little robot that Alexander rescued from the crashed plane.   That’s pretty fun I guess.

I would like to talk to some NEW people though,   and make some friends.   I wonder if that’s something a crashed satellite can help me with?

I’ll ask him tomorrow.

Technology is trouble.   
But Seth can stay.