The Rosetto Stone

[rosetto 0]

The Rosetto Stone

 

Ethan snapped his paperback copy of The Art of War closed. It was late. He climbed from his bunk and stuffed the book into his duffle. He then paused for a short stretch and strolled out the door.

 

 

Some negotiation of the QoB later and he entered the galley from the central corridor. Save for Sal Rosetto – one of the QoB’s scientists, recalled Ethan – it was largely empty. He wasn't sure what Sal was doing, but he'd apparently annexed most of the table, having covered the surface in a spreading flood of documents and tablets. There was a soft rustling of papers and occasional tapping. As the other man seemed busy, Ethan opted not to interrupt by saying hi. Instead he cornered, walked toward the preparation area and frowned.

 

 

There were dirty dishes in the sink, left from some of the crew's evening meal. Not one to which he'd been invited, but that wasn't necessarily a snub from the crew. There wasn't a lot of room for even the entire crew much less guests.

 

 

The QoB’s crew didn't strike Ethan as slobs. Obviously they managed to keep up with the daily stuff. The preparation area looked clean except for those few dishes. But given the time of night, others might have seen the stack of dishes and decided it wasn't their turn to clean up or argued they hadn't made the mess. Ethan was different; his philosophy was different. Certain things just needed to be done by whoever was there to do them when they needed to be done. In some cases, like dishes, that time was better off being immediately and, though he wasn't a crewmember, he was there so he might as well get it done.

 

 

He'd learned a long time ago that no job was beneath the team-player and those who thought otherwise wouldn't last. Much of who he was had been built around that concept; it was an integral part of his driving force. Cooperation was about respect, exclusive of rank, rate or other status. Sometimes that meant pulling more weight than expected. How did that saying go? 'Never give 100%; anyone can do that. There are times when you'll have to give 200% and fill both your role and your [buddy's].' Well, his mother hadn't exactly put it that way; she'd been talking about marriage and parenting, but it more or less fit.

 

 

No point in complaining or holding back. Get it done now and no one will have to come back later, he reasoned. Food could wait. Ethan grasped up a sponge, turned on the sink and got to work.

 

 

Sal had not been completely oblivious to the motions of the newest crew member. He too had frowned at the dishes earlier but had decided that they could wait until he was at a breakpoint in his research. He had spent the last several hours poring over the documents and images of the Zoalus artifacts. Although he had been complete enamored by Dr. West's analysis of the glyphs, his translations seemed to be nonsense. 'The blue man brought quickly from friendship'

 

 

He was beginning to get frustrated and tapped needlessly at the tablet display in front of him. Finally, he simply tossed it onto the pile of papers that lay strewn across the table, got up from his seat and walked over to where Ethan stood. There was a small dish towel hanging on a hook and Sal grabbed it up and started to wipe the dishes that Ethan had just cleaned.

 

 

"Thankless work, isn't it? Dishes I mean." Sal wasn't afraid to lend a hand in domestic chores. He was practically living alone for the last six mons on K'Normia in their vacation cottage. There were no servants and the replicator was limited to food processing. He might as well have been camping out on the plains of Mars. Life on QoB wasn't what one would called extravagant but Sal had enjoyed the escape; the departure from his sanitized life in Southgate. You pulled your own out here but you only did what was required of you and no one expected anything more.

 

After the events on Tranquility, Sal was having second thoughts about his taking this job but now that they were finally back to exploring, which was why he'd come out to the cluster in the first place, he was starting to enjoy his little assignments. The pay left a lot to be desired but that was at least something of which he had little worry. Also, he liked Pher and Chris and Troy. Even Shane was wearing nicely on him. The others, the crewmembers that they had recently taken on were still pretty much strangers to him. This one here kind of interested him. Vulcans had always interested Sal. He was curious of their motives but knew that logic did not define them. There was always more to the puzzle with Vulcans. One just had to look for it.

 

 

Ethan glanced with a lifted brow at Sal and found he was uncertain how to respond. His gaze narrowed. What would a Vulcan say? Would they pull out the catch-all, apathetic 'indeed'? Or would one wax philosophical and articulate some kind of valid nonsense on how the reward of 'thankless work' was in the result, or, in this case, having clean dishes? Slowly a subtle smile grew as he thought over his dilemma.

 

 

"Well, thanks for your help," he replied, settling on what felt like a more human approach. He shut off the water and gestured toward the table as he dried his hands. "You've been hard at work."

 

 

After placing the last dish back into the cupboard, he replaced the towel on its hook and followed Ethan back to his work. Ethan had picked up a couple of pieces of paper and was casually glancing at them. Sal was usually not shy when it came to his work but he was a bit embarrassed by his current dilemma.

 

 

 

"I have been preparing for our meeting with Dr. Phantos’ people and the other scientists on this expedition. This culture is fascinating. It seems to be unlike any that the Federation has encountered and yet extremely, pardon the expression, human." Sal didn't want seem candid; to offend the Vulcan. "Note the use and mixture of geometric and psychological symbolism in their text. It is reminiscent of the ancient Earth cultures."

 

 

Sal approached the table and picked up the tablet that he had tossed down earlier and tapped it back to life. Dr. West's analysis of the Zoalus' glyphs returned to its display. She had depicted a circle of eight symbols, labeling them Father, Warrior, Seeker, Sage, Mother, Amazon, Companion and Mediatrix. From each she had drawn various branches with additional terms and symbols. The structure was patterned off of one of the artifacts that had been recovered by a past expedition. That image was a wheel or tree shape constructed of these glyphs. Each grouping diverged and had become progressively smaller and longer in sequence. It had reminded Sal of a mandala.

 

 

"I have always been interested in alien cultures. That was one reason why I had joined Star Fleet. I'm guessing my curiosity comes from my mother's side of the family. She would see the rich beauty in all of these glyphs. Have you studied Xenolinguistics?"

 

 

"Xenolinguistics?" he repeated. He over-pronounced the e and first syllable a bit – a side-effect of the faint contrast in Ethan's dialect compared to the Martian-born Rosetto. It was a mixture from two distinct regions, the second having tempered the first in his adolescent years. Professor Henry Higgins would have had a coronary.

 

 

"No. But, uh, isn't that normal for most sentient cultures; the mixing of symbolism in languages? I mean, it seems to me that most species start out on emotional instinct so, logically, their sense of expression would be based on what they psychologically identify with. I wouldn't say its human so much as evolutionary. Even Vulcans had an extremely emotional history before they embraced stoicism."

 

 

"Very true", Sal commented as he tapped away at the tablet in his hand. "Here's something that you mind find of interest. There seems to be a cyclic behavior in the Zoalus system of ten days due to its primary; a gaseous giant that should appear very large in the Zoalus sky."

 

 

Sal was always intrigued by the rich variety of planetary systems that contained class-M objects. This provided many unique environmental conditions like those that existed, albeit temporary, on the Xorax Colony. There, its seemingly endless winter was merely another cyclic event in that planet's elliptical orbit. There were long winters and summers as the planet reached its apogee. On Zoalus, according to the system schematic diagram, there were long day-cycles but the tilt of the planetary axis did provide seasonal changes. This was not uncommon.

 

 

 

At first, Ethan minimally responded with a short nod. He'd barely caught himself earlier and was mentally cringing at his slip. But it seemed Sal hadn't noticed or put much importance on his third-person reference to the Vulcans. It was just one word and he might have taken it as a distinction between proto and modern Vulcans rather than a mistake. He relaxed for a bit.

 

 

"No offense. I'm more interested in knowing how that affects daylight cycles; how many hours of sunlight we'll have," replied Ethan.

 

 

"According to these calculations there should be over twenty hours of daylight on average," Sal was shocked by this realization. He never did get used to the long days on Tranquility. This would be even more extreme but it was not unusual. The fact was, most planetary systems had their own unique day/night cycles. This one on Zoalus was similar to what Vulcan days were. "This should be something that you are quite accustomed to, Ethan; long days and nights."

 

 

"I had been meaning to ask." Sal paused and looked at Ethan's facial expressions. He wasn't necessarily probing. It was simply Sal's curiosity, "How much Vulcan blood do you actually have? I mean, it's obvious to me that you are not 100% Vulcan because of your reddened skin tone."

 

 

 

"Hmm." Ethan flatly frowned. He finally sat down in a chair across from Sal and suddenly wanted to rub a hand down his face in mild exasperation. First it was Soora who condemned him for not recognizing her as Vulcan – the girl with the human left ear. Was he supposed to be some kind of wizard?

 

 

Now Sal was asking innocent questions because he didn't look green enough. He knew that Vulcan blood was green – oddly enough, it wasn't blue like the mollusks that also had copper-based blood on Earth. But he'd always thought that the effect Vulcan blood had on their skin tone was lessened by its rusty color when deoxygenated; sort of how deoxygenated human blood had a bluish tinge and played a part in the blue appearance of their veins. Was there really that large of a difference between fair-skinned Vulcans and humans? Romulans, maybe, but he'd never noticed it being quite that pronounced in Vulcans. He knew a few humans that looked as pale and a few Vulcans that looked as ruddy in comparison. And maybe this uncanny ability to read that much in the difference right off was just a phenomenon of Bull's Head.

 

 

 

He could lie; tell Sal that he was another mixed-breed like Soora, but what was the point anymore? If they don't all know by now, they'll figure it out eventually, he relented to himself. He wasn't fooling anyone. He'd known from the beginning that this type of cover wouldn't hold up under close scrutiny; that honestly hadn't been the point. He wasn't taking his situation on the Qob lightly and rushing to make the truth generally known. But now that they were catching on one by one, it was more insulting to try and keep the game going.

 

"'Not a lot'...'in fact, none.'"

 

 

 

“Oh.”

 

Sal noted Selek’s restlessness and knew that for whatever reason this guy had been role-playing. It wasn’t really Sal’s concern. Apparently he had his motives, Sal simply ignored the comment and quickly changed the subject. Sal picked up another tablet and recalled some information provided by Dr. Phantos, “So what do you think of Dr. West’s analysis of these vowels?” This was one of the things that had been bothering him. There was something wrong with her work but Sal could put his finger on it. Perhaps he was just too close to the work. He continued, “I don’t know what it is but something just doesn’t seem right… You see how she’s paired the single and doubled symbols?”

 

 

 

What they were looking at was a table of the lower-order glyphs. Dr. West had laid them out in their independent use followed by and English word that contained a similar sound. She had another table that contained each glyph doubled. In this table she showed that the doubled-symbol was representative of another sound. There were a total of 40 distinct sounds mapped out on the two tables. She stated that her research had been based on the analogy of one hundred other humanoid languages. These were the most common sounds used. She had chosen this method because the architecture found on Zoalus was representative of a humanoid culture.

 

 

 

Ethan's brow knit together as he regarded the scientist. He was surprised by Sal's response and wasn't sure what to make of it. It was almost blasé, like Sal passed people on the street everyday who thought it was perfectly normal to pretend to be Vulcan. It wasn't settling well with Ethan; didn't give him much of a hint on how Sal might use the information. It made him feel more uneasy than any reaction he'd encountered yet. He almost missed the point of what Sal was saying.

 

 

 

"Huh?" He focused on the tablet Sal was showing him. "Yeah, the, uh, vowel sounds. What's the problem exactly; they don't work like you expected?"

 

 

 

The other thing that had come to Sal’s attention was the gravity on Zoalus. It was about 80% standard. It actually sounded much like a paradise which was most likely why there had been so much interest in these ruins; temperate climates, breathable atmosphere, no other races squabbling over assumed rights, what else would be a better investment than to plant a new resort civilization away from any probing fingers or wandering eyes.

 

 

 

Sal forgot about his tasks at hand for the moment and imagined contacting Harry’s father and making another unprecedented purchase. Did the old man still have the pull that he had years ago? Sal didn’t know. They had never ventured to far away from the K’Normian system in their dealings. He’d only wanted to provide for his daughter which was why Sal had been helped to build Southgate. This was something completely different and Richard was weeks away by the fastest transport. Here, in the Rimward expanse, they were days away via sub-space. Sal placed the thoughts to the back of his mind. This would have to wait until they had a better handle on the real situation on Zoalus, until he had knowledge of and the reason for their disappearance.

 

 

 

‘Huh,’ Sal thought to himself, ‘Was this guy even listening to him?’ He looked at Selek, sizing him up with his response. “Yeah. I have applied Dr. West’s translation to these images of recovered artifacts and the resultant text is one step above gibberish. It’s as if the gears line up but the machine is running backwards.”

 

 

 

While talking Sal was shuffling through the papers that he had on the table and he eventually presented Selek with the one to which he was referring. He had a small grin; one of embarrassment of his seemingly disorganized state. Sal then pulled out yet another image to be used for comparison. He then picked up the other tablet, tapped it a couple of times and then showed the results to Selek, expecting… Well, Sal really didn’t know what to expect. He was fishing for answers; hoping that this guy may see something that he’d overlooked.

 

 

 

 

 

Ethan was quiet for some time as he looked over the references. What was he supposed to do? If Sal thought his results were near gibberish, for Ethan all of it was completely meaningless and looked like some child's scribbles. Like little dancing things only a kid would understand.

 

 

 

He stopped and momentarily looked up at nothing in particular. Or dancing men, he thought. If only it was that easy, but tricks used for figuring out ciphers in English were unlikely work as well on alien languages. There was definitely a pattern; the puzzle was figuring out how it all fit together. But the real riddle was how Ethan, without years of training and study, was going to help figure it out.

 

 

 

Idly he began to tap on the tablet that lay on the table. Page after page on the alien language passed through his hands and back to the piles of documents. He was so utterly lost on how he could possibly help or where to begin that the chime of the tablet came as a surprise.

 

 

 

Then it spoke: "thoy."

 

Ethan knit his brow at it in confusion. Three of the alien symbols blinked back at him; somehow through his tapping he had combined them into a single, pronounceable syllable.

 

 

 

"Sorry, I was tapping on it. I'm not sure what I did to it,” he said and began to slide the tablet back toward Sal. He stopped half way as suddenly remembered the sequences of his tapping, so he repeated it. Sal smiled widely as the tablet thought a moment and then spurted out, “thoy-dok cha-sher-bak”.

 

 

 

It was strange to hear the tablet speaking a language that had not been spoken in 650 years. It was a language that no human had ever heard but it was now, suddenly a living, breathing language. Sal now accepted the tablet from Selek and hi-lighted an entire paragraph-like grouping of symbols. It thought a short moment and then began speaking to them. It sounded smooth and fluid.

 

 

 

Now Sal looked to Selek, “What you ‘did’ was crack a code that leading scientists have been trying to break for 25 years, sir! This is absolutely amazing.” He looked at the tablet and then back at Dr. West’s distribution. The tablet had re-ordered all of the symbols, pairing the vowels into monophthongs and diphthongs. It had also placed the consonant pairs into a similar, sound-based order.

 

 

 

Sal tapped on the ‘translate’ function and then the tablet stopped and started again. This time it was speaking in English:

 

 

 

“As the boy walked down the street he saw his mother from a distance. She was wearing the scarf that he had given to her last full-day. He waved and crossed the street to speak with her directly. It had been three phases of Shelok since they had talked and he was happy to see her again.”

Edited March 18, 2011 by rosetto