Thank you for reading my story, I hope that you enjoy it. Love Mica xx, Yorkshire England.
All comments good or bad welcomed. I will try and reply to each and every one but please note that all anonymous comments will be deleted immediately and will not be read.
HavΕysund was cold, and I mean bloody cold, even for Norway it was on the bitter side. There were around three hundred and fifty inhabits, mostly fishermen, you could even hire a boat for about six hundred krone a day including crew. Mostly married people lived here, few singles, which meant when I went to the pub I didn't get continuously hassled by men looking for a good time with me. Yes, there was a pub, Det nordlige vertshuset, or Northern Inn. The only one in the village, it was next to the small supermarket, and it was pretty much the centre of village activity. All news started there and ended there. It was warm and almost always open.
A new oil field had been found in the Barents sea, and the oil was the oldest that had ever been found, believed to be from after the time of the Permian--Triassic extinction event, possibly the Carboniferous Era. Very, very old. This being the nearest port a laboratory had been set up here in the village to test samples of the oil, and I had been sent here by the company to do that testing. It was well equipped with basic equipment and some medicines, antibiotics etcetera, as well as all the standard lab gear and chemicals. I was suitably educated and medically trained and had been offered the post of running the lab. The company had also hired a local fishing boat to go to the field and collect the samples. It was interesting that virtually everyone here seemed to speak English. This was good because I didn't know any Norwegian.
So far pipelines had not been laid to bring the oil to a terminal, although that was only a matter of time. The company had simply set up and equipped a laboratory for me to use and rented a house for me to live in. What they didn't tell me about was the polar bears. This was polar bear territory, and by that, I mean it really was theirs, they were the apex predator. No one here went anywhere without a gun, actually two guns, a rifle and handgun. Also, no one walked, anywhere, always by pick up truck or four-wheeler SUV. You always reverse parked so that if you had to make a run to the vehicle the door opened away from you, and you could get in quickly and shut the door.
They said that when you encounter a bear, if it's brown you can try and fight, if it's white, you say goodnight. The trick was not to encounter a bear. Before you opened a door, house or car, you looked very carefully, winter was better, you could see their tracks in the snow, sometimes, but the nights could be twenty four hours long. We don't tend to get Polar Bears in Yorkshire so I was a bit unfamiliar with them, apart from seeing them once at a zoo. You don't get complacent, you get careful.
Eric, who skippered a supply boat and also managed the pub, told me that he had a new sample for me to test and apologised as the container was a bit messy, some of the oil had spilled when they filled it up and no one had bothered to wipe or clean it. I had no intention of touching raw crude and so I asked him to hold on a while whilst I got some gloves. Medical quality gloves on and a sterile container, in hand, I took the sample and secured it inside the container, along with the gloves which I would dispose of later. I drove to the lab and put the container in the 'dirty area' and opened up, lights on, kettle on. The gloves I put in the contaminated disposal bin, the sample I put in the cleaning sink and thoroughly cleaned it, the cleaning liquids were in a closed loop and would be disposed of later.
Satisfied that the sample bottle was sterile, I went to the clean zone and opened it under the extraction hood, I dipped a pipette in and took a 0.5ml sample and put it on a microscope slide. Analysis of the oil earlier had it as a light crude, low in sulphur, and therefore highly desirable for low emissions fuels so demanded of these days. Through the microscope I could see all the usual suspects, but also something I did not expect. celleonites, small microscopic single celled animals, and they were moving, so therefore alive. I was right to take precautions, pity they hadn't taken precautions at the drill site.
I destroyed the slide after I had taken a number of images and saved them to the hard drive, which uploaded to the cloud hourly. Cleaned down the lab, put the sample container in the hazard safe, turned everything off and left, locking up as I went. I headed back to the bar; I would grab a few drinks before I headed back to my rental. As I was driving to the bar, I couldn't help but notice several large polar bears wandering around town, I would have to be extra careful tonight.
I couldn't find a spot right outside the bar entrance, I was two or three slots down. I sat in the car and checked all around before making a run for the bar, I left the car unlocked, for a speedier getaway if required and hurried to the bar.
"Bears are active," I said to Eric, "beer please."
"Yes, folk have been reporting it all day. Sample okay?"
I don't comment on my work, so I was careful in my response. "Took some cleaning, make sure that you tell them that I won't take any more sloppy work like that, and the company won't pay for the boat to carry any more samples like that. Anyone who touched that needs to be self aware for any symptoms of unexpected illness."
"Gosh, gee, it was only a bit of oil."
"No Eric, it wasn't. The container was contaminated with crude that has unknown properties, any one of which could be a lethal contaminant."
"Pah, they've been dealing with that stuff for years."
"Eric I am not joking, if I get another sample like that, then the company will cease to deal with you, and likely this town too. You can't fuck around with this stuff. It is millions of years old, God knows what's in it, and we would have no natural defences against it. Stop being so fucking cavalier."
He put his hands up as if in surrender. I drank my beer, amusingly the bottle had a picture of a polar bear on the glass. I wasn't amused, the bloody things half scare me to death. I had another bottle.
Anders, the police guy, came in for a beer and sat next to me. "Mica" he said.
"Anders," I replied, "how are things?"
"Fucking bears everywhere, people don't secure their garbage bins and the bears get into them. Loads more at the moment, lucky no one has been attacked."
"Yet," I answered, "they scare me."
"Good, they should scare everyone, then they might be a bit more careful. Idiots."
Anders was the police force in HavΕysund, it was a pretty easy job. As far as I knew there had never been a robbery or violent crime, it is just that the rules were that every settlement over two hundred inhabitants had to have a police station and police guy. Anders was that man, he was young and this could have been his first posting. His main concern seemed to be an increase in the number of polar bears, I doubt he would know what to do if a real crime occurred. But he was okay with that, he streamed all the world's police TV shows in his office whilst nothing was happening, he would be prepared. 'Training' he called it.
I stayed drinking for a few hours, nothing really to go back to. People came and went, some chatted, some didn't. Eventually I was alone, apart from Eric. I went to the door, opened it and shut it again very quickly.