Cabin Fever

Inspired by a news article about a falling-out between (presumably) Russian scientists at a remote research base at Bellingshausen in Antarctica.

Apparently one sadistically-minded inmate baited a colleague by telling him the spoilers to books, movies and TV series.

This lasted until the one doing the spoiling was – possibly quite understandably – stabbed to death.

The Discworld has no Antarctica. It does have a Hub. And who would in my fics be the nearest police presence?

Ooh, I sense a ficlet coming on... tying it in to my own burblings on FanFic...

The tragic and horrifying events at the Joint Research Station, as close to the Hub as Unseen University and its co-funding partners consider prudent, have been attributed to the condition known as Cabin Fever. This occurs whenever people with little in common are forced into close proximity by necessity, in this case the bleak and inhospitable conditions in the most remote part of the Vortex Plains. (Known in the locally spoken language as "Siber'ya").

The research station at Новое слишком холодно, Novoya Slishkom Kholodno, was in fact so far away from any sort of civilization, that it took a full day for the nearest police officers to get there.

Officers Kiiki Pekisaalen and Marina Raskova, trained in Ankh-Morpork and who now administer justice and civic peace along the ill-defined border between the Swommi Country and Siber'ya, investigated the circumstances of the killing and took witness statements.

Officer Pekisaalen merely shook her head and said "Perkele!" , whilst Officer Raskova has stated that in her opinion this could either be Suicide on the part of the deceased, or Justifiable Homicide on the part of the perpetrator. Their reports have been sent on to Ankh-Morpork and Bonk for the attention of the authorities, as well as to the nearest thing to a capital city in the Vortex Plains, Novo Obmorozheniye(1) so that the lawyers can work out in whose jurisdiction the case is tried.

(A Zlobenian research scientist stabs an Überwaldean Wizard in a research station funded by Ankh-Morpork in the Vortex Plains. It is thought that the lawyers will be arguing about this one until the statute of limitations expires.)

Meanwhile Officers Pekisaalen and Raskova have said "If that is everything, we are only part-time volunteer police officers, and we have a reindeer farm to return to". and "Perkele."

Novoya Slishkom Kholodno – best Russian I can get for Ye Gods, it's bloody cold

Obmorozheniye – affliction of the extremities – chilblains, frostbite.

(1) OK, referred to elsewhere as Novo Sibersk, and one other Russian-ish name I can't quite recall just now.

Also thinking: Marina and Kiiki dropped out of the unfolding tale in "The Price of Flight" after the Lancre War to go and set up their Steading together in the backwoods of the Discworld's Finland. Oh, they came back: Kiiki is too good a character to lose and those readers who have established a preference consider her to be a favourite.

But in the nine or ten years between leaving the Air Watch and their return to active service... what did they do? Kiiki is not somebody who could settle down to farming a herd of reindeer and doing nothing else but. Marina didn't want to fight again after Lancre, but she is still a Watchwoman.

Living on an ill-defined border with Hubsvensska in one direction and Rodinia - well, the Vortex Plains - in another, on a border where three peoples and cultures meet, there'd be a definite need for Witches. And in a place like that, ocassional law-enforcers. I see them as being Watchwomen at need on that border. Also thinking in terms of classic buddy cop shows like "Cagney and Lacey" or "Rizzoli and Isles". The ones with a sort of Sapphic twist. And the cop trope of the two complete opposites - one shy and methodical, the other basically the loose siege weapon. There could be more here... Nordic Noir with a "Finn" and a "Russian".