FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE

SHORT STORIES FROM: 50,000 A.D. The Awakening - Henry Matthews from the 21st century wakes up 50,000 years later.

FIRST DAY AT THE OFFICE

Today was a big day; the first official workday for all of Henry’s new employees including Trinisha. Fortunately, there was enough furniture to have a relatively comfortable meeting. Detric recommended a scan be done to search for any disagreeable spy-nanobots or other unwanted technology. That simple little action indicated to Henry that at least someone was on the ball and possibly loyal to his business (or possibly trying to appear that way -- one never knew).

They all eventually sat down at a table, and Henry explained what his business goals were, the standards of employment, legal rights, and what freedoms they would have.

“You can quit your employment here anytime you want, just have the courtesy of letting me know two weeks ahead of time, and if I want to terminate any of you, I will also give you two weeks’ notice or pay in lieu of notice.”

In short, all the standards and expectations of common business practices in early 21st century Canada would be applied in operating the business when it was legal to do so.

Next, the group was told to assemble all the technology they would require for the translation and documentation process in these new offices, but first they had to break for lunch.

Just before everyone got back to work, Nervi delivered the grand piano he had been building for Henry. Not a mechanical version, but a unit with android technology that could duplicate any sound Henry desired including harpsichord and clavichord.

Henry had already designated a special room to put it in, a place to entertaining clients and guests.

“Well, are you going to play something?” said Nervi.

“Sure . . . here is some music that was composed at about the time these first versions of keyboard instruments were invented. It’s by a person named Bach.”

As the room filled with music, everyone present listened with awe. Just before Henry finished that particular piece, the Princess walked in and listened with fascination. When Henry finished, she was the first one to applaud.

“Wow, I didn’t realize you were that good. That sounded pretty difficult.”

“It’s a little secret I’ve developed over many years. I actually play easy pieces that only sound difficult.” This of course was the usual Henry humor, and brought the usual chuckles from the princess. Question after question came, so Henry decided to give a little concert with everyone there that also included little lectures on the development of music from the baroque period, into classical, romantic, impressionistic, and modern music and threw in some ragtime at the end for good measure. He played music from the great composers he was familiar with when he was a serious music student, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Rachmaninoff.

All in all it was a memorable and fascinating first day at the office for everyone present.

*

The next day, Henry asked his new employees for advice on a translation process they would be comfortable and productive with since they were all experienced multi-linguists. He expected them to learn English quickly, which they did. Almost everyone had mastered the basics within a few days. The only difficult thing remaining was the cultural translation. Henry was going to be the key coordinator in that area.

“The first priority in dealing with this laptop computer is to extract the information out of it such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. If you can get it to work later on that would be a bonus, but for the most part you might be able to figure out how all these applications operate without even using this computer. I’m assuming your androidian technology will be able to handle these goals without any problems,” and so started the meeting.

Henry drew a block diagram of the computer and described the basic concepts of digital technology, nibbles, bytes, words, double words, and so on. He described how the data was located in a thing called a hard-drive, and he thought it was stored in a magnetic format but wasn’t entirely sure since the last time he had read about this sort of thing was 20 years ago before the asteroid event.

“Do you know anything about the coding?” someone asked.

Henry explained to them that text data was most likely coded in ASCII, and they should also search for a directory with files ending in ‘.bmp’, ‘.jpg’ and other extensions that have different meanings. He wasn’t sure about other types of coding and data formats except for basic binary. He certainly couldn’t tell them much about compression. His whole explanation on how a computer worked lasted about 30 minutes and when questions were asked, he couldn’t answer the majority of them.

Nervi was optimistic, “If the data on that hard drive is magnetic, and it hasn’t been wiped out, then I don’t see any problem extracting it. We’ll send in a swarm of nanobots that can detect even the tiniest of magnetic fields and can even tell if a magnetic field previously existed. When they’re finished, they will report back exactly where everything is and provide us with a complete map of the hard drive that can be copied without too much trouble.”

Henry's attitude, “Wow!”

“The next step is a bit more difficult. It has to do with decoding what we are able to retrieve. You’ll have to help us with this Henry. You mentioned that with this ASCII coding you’ll be able to identify text, and there may be formatting characters imbedded in the text?”

“Yes that’s right.”

Nervi continued, “That’s where most of the work will be done: processing the data over and over again until you can identify either pertinent data or visual information, and as time progresses it will be easier and easier as we become more familiar with the data formats.”

Henry also expressed his thoughts on a translation method and what problems could occur and was only too pleased to receive advice from his new employees.

The next thing Henry acted on was acquiring a contract with the ‘Alternate World’ 3D display Co. to replicate what life was like back in Henry’s time. His initial assessment of this project indicated it was going to be a full-time job, so he allocated the task to Justi.

He sat down with Justi and told him he wanted to recreate the neighborhood where he used to live on ancient Earth. Justi would have to study all the pictures of his house (both inside and outside) and neighborhood, and then handle the complex details in transforming it into an ‘Alternate World’ 3D display. There was also a political motivation for doing this first. It was to inform people how secular Henry’s ancient life-style had been as early as possible.

As this project progressed, he would examine it from time to time, making adjustments, and then ‘Alternate World’ would release it to the public. Justi loved the project and felt fortunate to get it. After that was completed, the next project would be to work on the great historic architecture all over ancient Earth.

Once these initial meetings and discussions were done, everyone went to work on their respective assignments. Henry and Trinisha conferred to setup a series of lectures that he planned to promote to any institution who sought to have him as a guest lecturer. He had already signed up with Lucharza’s ‘University of the Station’ and was preparing to give his first lecture in about a week on the same topics of the first meetings with the Awakening Project staff.