"For entertainment not reliant on nature, there were outdated scientific journals and old New Yorkers but invariably something had eaten through the most interesting paragraphs. Dr. Swenson had a complete set of Dickens and she kept the books wrapped separately in heavy pieces of plastic tarp and tied with twine. She would loan them out and then do spot checks to make sure they were being read with clean hands. A cinnamon stick was lodged in the plastic wrap of each volume, as ants, Dr. Rapp had once told her, would always avoid the scent of cinnamon. Dr. Swenson believed that ants would be the standard bearers for the end of civilization.
Other than the brief and unsatisfying diversions of walking and swimming and reading, all that was left [...] was the lab, and the lab was not unlike a Las Vegas casino. They existed there without calendar or clock. They worked until they were hungry and then they stopped and ate [...]. They worked until they were tired and then they went back to their cots in the small ring of huts that sat behind the lab [...]. They read some Dickens before they went to sleep. At the end of her first week, Marina was halfway through Little Dorrit. Of all her possessions lost and gone she was particularly sorry to be without her James novel[*]."
From State of Wonder
*The Wings of the Dove.
Comments