Karen sipped her tea before returning to poking at the eggs laid atop a bed of toast before her. It had been about 24 hours since the Admiral informed her that she’d receive her own lab and staff, and she was nervously skimming the profiles of these people she was about to meet. 

“Theodore Hammons: Male, 51, Roslin Federation.
Expertise: Dermatology.”

 “Dermatology,” Karen mused quietly before bothering to take a bite of her food. It was somewhere in the realm of biology, she supposed, but far more specialized and human-specific than she had hoped. 
“Roland West: Male, 27, Martian.
Expertise: Zoology”
“Evie Oliver: Female, 25, Roslin Federation.
Expertise: Biology (Generalist)”

Closer, Karen supposed. Zoology may help, but she hoped that whoever managed the recruitment process didn’t focus too much on biology. With all the possibilities out there in the Galaxy, it’s plausible for the entire field to be completely obsolete with a given species. With another bite of eggy toast, she decided to simply skim the remaining specialties.

“Neuroscience
…
Pharmacology
…
Microbiology
…
Ecology”

It was decided. While Karen disliked all the trouble it would cause them, and they were quite possibly good people, half of them needed to go. It was clear that whoever organized the crew thought that biology expertise was what she needed, and scoured the ship’s databases for enough that weren’t needed medical practitioners. 

A small alarm woke Karen from her mild frustration. It was her little PDA tablet… Thing. The names kept changing too much back on Earth, so Karen never bothered to learn the models. Regardless, this one was informing her that it was time to get moving. Karen stood and took a solid three seconds to chug her remaining tea, which had cooled down to where it could barely be considered warm. She moved swiftly out to the nearest transit station and spent most of the ride debating whether or not to keep both the Zoologist and Ecologist. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After an unpleasant first 15 minutes, Karen was left in the lab, still under some construction, with the remaining three researchers. Roland West, a young Martian man with dark skin and darker hair who kept a casual, friendly attitude and studied zoology, stood at the front. To his right, and Karen’s left, was Evie Oliver, of the Roslin Federation, whose purple outfit and hair dye insisted upon asymmetry and small lengths of flowing fabric that concealed her small, fair frame. Karen was already bugged by how she tended to swish them about, even in a lab, where it was a liability to both her personal safety and that of any glasses on nearby tables.  Finally, to Roland’s other side, stood Erik Klein, a tall Armani man who looked to be in his early thirties, though his physical form was being let go a bit faster than average. How a man born and raised in the cold vacuum of space desired to pursue a life studying microbiology, Karen may never know, but she was interested to hear the story. 

The first order of business, now that the most confusing and, for Karen, emotionally difficult part was out of the way, was to properly introduce herself and establish the ground rules. While being very friendly. Karen definitely wanted everyone to be friendly, but it’s tough to do both that and establish the hard rules at the same time.

“Well then, now that we’ve got that sorted out, I’d like to welcome you all to my lab, such that it is. That said, while on documentation it will be listed as mine, and I am in charge, I’d like you to all feel as comfortable here as I do. More, actually, since I’ve honestly not been here before, and was only told of my reassignment yesterday as well.” She paused hoping for a warm reaction. To mixed levels, she got one. The older man, Erik, or should she say Dr. Klein, relaxed his pose at bit, while Roland leaked a small smile and Evie completely stopped pretending to stand at attention, pulling over one of the two chairs currently in the room. 

“That all said, we’re here to work, so there’ll need to be a few hard, ground rules. For instance, once we have our full staff, and especially once we have specimens, I’ll be setting up shifts so there’s always at least two of us here at all times. Since there will be eight of us, that means that around half of the time any one of you will be assigned to a night shift. I’m also going to ask Noah for a way to contact you all in case of some sort of emergency. Even though we’ll have guards, I have no guarantee we’ll ever get the same ones twice, so we have to be able to provide assistance, whatever form that may take, with the knowledge we gathered from our specimens.”

A glance around the room proved that, as made logical sense, nobody was happy about this news, but nobody was set to object either. Roland, on the other hand, had a question of sorts. “So does that mean we will be testing around the clock?” He asked, with a concerned tilt of the head. “Surely that’s unethical, and liable to kill the critters.”

Karen frowned slightly, not for the ethics question, but for gaps in understanding she was beginning to see. “No, we will not be doing constant testing. I expect observation, particularly on new specimens, but testing would be ridiculous. That said, constant action may have no effect whatsoever on specimens. And do not get whatever exists out there confused with the furry rodents of Earth, we have no idea what we will find. I understand you’re all tied to biology in some way, but that’s a box that must be broken, and thought outside of. Even the word “Life” as you know it may come into question, as we encounter beings that break supposed laws. For instance,” Karen said, moving towards a whiteboard on the finished, office-like half of the room. 

“Suppose you are wandering through some sort of alien desert, but it’s covered in rocks, poking maybe half a meter out of the ground. After a while, you decide to take a break and sit on one.” Karen was scribbling a bit frantically, trying to illustrate her point with wavy lines and a stick man. “Suppose that, after you get up and move around some more, you notice the rocks aren’t as big, then that they are all gone. Going back, there are none where you once were. They seem to have all fled into the sand, but never moved or reacted in front of you. You had even flipped the one you sat on, and saw that there was nothing underneath. Is it still a rock?” Karen gave the trio an expectant look, her not-quite-mad drawings being a trail of chaos across the board behind her. 

Evie volunteered first, offering what was clearly the expected answer to the terrible example. “No? If it can move on its own in response to stimulus, maybe it can think.”

The response elicited a grin from Karen, who was happy to see someone who apparently got it. “Exactly! And that’s our job- to figure out if it can think or do anything else. What stimulus does it respond to? Does it grow, or process materials? Where does it get energy from? Does it even use energy in a way we understand?”

The remainder of the hour passed away with Karen giving terrible examples to answer questions, and Evie being the most active, and increasingly enthusiastic, responder. By the end of it, Karen hadn’t really taught them much, but they all understood that they should expect the unexpected to appear, and that they should try and explain things to each other themselves instead of deferring to Dr. Anderson.