ODDITY ⇆ DOCTOR WHO

0.1 | M.M

〖  MARTIAN MAN   〗

THE IDEA WE ARE not alone enthralled her. It absolutely thrilled her to her core and made her spend long periods staring at the sky, hoping to see a peek of something never seen by man before.

The small green alien she hoped to see waving to her as a child never came. No Martian man landed on the roof of her house. No small woman from Pluto lived in her pink nightstand drawer. No one ever came from Saturn, with hula hoops crafted from the space debris that formed Saturn's extraordinary rings for her.

No one ever came, and the girl grew up.

Well, not entirely. The girl never really grew up. Not quite. She still, somewhere deep in her core believed it all. That a Martian man was coming to wave 'hello', that the small woman from Pluto had simply gotten lost on her voyage here, and the person from Saturn simply was taking their time crafting the hula hoops.

Okay, so she didn't quite believe the hula hoops thing.

But she believed the rest. The idea that there is much more beyond the actually small planet of Earth. That her home was just a fragment to some huge. That each living, breathing human carried particles of stars in their bloodstream. That the dark side of the moon wasn't as dark and forbidding as it seemed.

So, she took up arms to prove it. She took up arms in the form of words and books. In the form of knowledge and the pull towards the stars that every human felt once or twice. Before the girl 'grew up', she would spend many-a nights hiding under a blanket fort an architect would be proud of, studying books from the schools' library.

She would hide out under blankets with a flashlight after the lights were turned out, reading until her small body caved from exhaustion, and would be found an hour later by her mum who was checking up on her, fully aware her daughter had stayed awake to read. She would then be tucked in, and in her mind dream would play like an action movie from the cinema of what she thought was out there.

As an adult, Valarie Scott was still the same starry-eyed girl she was as a child. So it seemed natural that she incorporated her passion into her work. When the open internship at a new 'Brion Laboratories' was announced, Valarie jumped to the first call for employees. In an advert, it promised research in space, and more exactly the possibilities of humans colonizing other planets and possibly extraterrestrial life. The mere thought of working in a place with the same beliefs as herself sent her over the edge with excitement.

Now, she didn't quite think they would accept her application. The initial shock of her receiving an email claiming she had been hired was real. In her luck, many large companies and such didn't take interest in a student, who majored in astronomy, at least.

No, most craved the usual med-student, law student, or just about anything basic enough as that. But Valarie wasn't that; she loved the stars so she chose to study them.

She had practically memorized the email she had received that informed her of her being hired. She even repeated it, like she still didn't believe it, on her way to work after she began her new job.

       "It is with our great pleasure that we welcome you, Ms. Valarie Scott, to the Brion Lab. Family. After careful consideration and a grueling elimination process of other applicants, your application was deemed the most notable. You have that intuition, spark, drive, and love of space we need here at Brion Laboratories. The following attachment is your work special.
Welcome to Brion!"