Erik sighed quietly as he slid into the chair in his temporary office in the archives. The [i]fjollet[/i] workers seemed suspicious of him, which was confusing. There was no point in stealing anything, as he could just come down to the Archives to look at it anyway. He shook his head. Perhaps they were so paranoid they had even gone so far as to bug his office. He laughed quietly to himself. What a ridiculous thought. He turned to his work.

He groaned inwardly as he reached into his bag, extracting the files for those who had applied to work under him. He would prefer to be working on the Devastator transmission, but this would have to come first. He had asked Noah to print the files; the feel of paper was comforting to him, though he wasn't sure why. Perhaps he was just getting old. He browsed over the files.

...Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese

...Evolution of Language

...French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese

...General Linguistics

...Written Languages

He sighed. Half of these people would be worthless. He didn't truly need any of the old-world languages. He would only take those people if they had many years of experience with language in general. The others would be more useful, but he would have to decide how many to take on. He tried to do math, asked Noah for help, and then began scrawling over sheets of paper, forming an enormous comparison tree, lines linking people with similar skillsets, rectangles showing incompatible people. It was a trick he had learned from his late father, when they had been trying to decide what language he should learn second (English and Scandinavian had been required in school). Finally, after what seemed like years (that he couldn't be working on the Devastator Transmission), but was probably only a few hours, he made his decision.

"Noah" he asked, into open air. The blue holograph of a man's head appeared, and Erik jumped. He hated the holograph. The AI asked what he needed. "What are my options on more permanent office space? I really don't need all these workers crammed into this one room." he asked, glancing around the small office. Noah sat for a minute, his "expression" showing that he was "thinking."

"Mr. Karlson, it would appear there are two medium sized office spaces available, and a large one. One of the medium ones is quite close to the hub, the other towards the laboratories. The large one is by medical."

Erik thought for a moment. "The one by the laboratories." he grabbed the files he had selected, and waved them towards Noah. "Inform these four that they have been chosen to work with me, and to report to that lab at 1300 hours." He checked his ancient, analog watch. 11:55. That gave him just enough time to find the remaining translation materials and make copies before he had to be in the lab.

[hr]

Erik's desk in the new office was bigger. There was also a piece of paper on it that said he could use the office, but would need to clear it for permanent use within the next week. That wasn't his concern right now, his concern was the four men and women who he had essentially hired. He smiled at them, sliding his chair out from behind the desk and into the front of the room.

Damian Barlow stood farthest to his right. The young man was tall, dark-haired, muscular, and probably significantly more intelligent than he looked. He spoke both English and Welsh, meaning he was a fellow Euro Confederate, but he had been chosen for his skill with written language. Next to him was Adeline Harrington. The woman in her early thirties was short and the tiniest bit pudgy, but she had a bubbly demeanor that distracted from that. She spoke only English, but was a master of discerning languages with little existing connection to anything known, given her work with Native American languages.

On Adeline's left was Lei Hirodeshi, a young woman from the Nagasaki Conglomerate, who had just completed her education upon her recruitment to the [i]Vitae[/i]. She was almost as tall as Damian, with long dark hair and pale skin. She spoke Mandarin, English, and Vietnamese; and he had chosen her for her understanding of how languages changed and grew over time. She had done extensive work with the evolution of the Mandarin Chinese language, an impressive feat. At the end of the line stood Sibongiseni Botha, a man in his mid fourties from South Africa. His dark hair had just started to grey, but his unsettling grey-blue eyes still shone with curiosity. He had asked them to simply call him Sibo. Erik had chosen him for his knowledge of general Linguistic tendencies, but also because he had liked the look of the man's file, and wanted his experience and advice on the team. He spoke Afrikaans, Xhosa, and English.

After looking them over again, Erik spoke. "Hello, [i]Dzieci[/i]. You all know why I've hired you all. The five of us will be working with Alien Languages. We have two goals here as a team. The first will be to help the crew and humanity understand the communications of other sentient races we may encounter. For this purpose, the Admiral has cleared me for away missions, and I will take at least one of you with me on each." The looks of both excitement and confusion on his assistant's faces brought the slightest smile to his lips.

He continued. "Our second goal is to work on some form of translation technology in order to ease, and perhaps eventually [i]Ustranit'[/i] our first goal. I know some of you would rather continue to translate by hand, but many of you will be needed to maintain our own, human culture, and carry on the languages you speak to the populace of this ship. Once I see how much time we have available, I may request the Admiral allow us to teach our languages to people onboard. That being said, the Admiral has given me two candidates for helping us with the software side of our translation issue, who I will be reviewing later. Any questions?"

The four people looked at him, uncertain, until Damian asked, "Where do we start?" Erik grinned. Things were finally getting started.