Chapter 5: Work

~~ Delta - Nov/02 - (Earth - May/2095) ~~

The next morning, I was introduced to my team.

I’d told Kale that if it was easier when we were walking down the halls for him to sit on my shoulder, then he was welcome to do so. He agreed to try this out and made himself comfortable. We had decided that since we were going to be buddies for at least a year, we needed to get to know each other.

As we walked, we swapped information back and forth on a range of topics. Kale told me he was supposed to go back to Fortuna to study under a professor this year, but he would have to put that on hold. When I asked what he was studying, he grinned and told me he was to investigate the life cycles of bees.

“Sorry, little buddy, but I’m reptiles. Hey, what if you looked into utilising the reptiles that lived here? I bet we can find an untapped market for your faerie family. Their skins can be used in a lot of ways as they do make decent leathers like for shoes, and many of them are tasty to eat.”

“That way, you can be on my staff as my student and assistant. It will at least give you something to do while you’re sitting around waiting to save my life,” I suggested.

“Well, I don’t know a lot about reptiles other than the big ones will eat me, and there are plenty of them on this planet, that is to be my new home. We don’t tend to eat much red meat, but we could always sell it. It probably would help to know more about the creatures I’ll be sharing the forests with,” he agreed.

“Good, at least that way you can be useful and not waste a whole year. You never know, you may even enjoy yourself,” I replied. Kale nodded, and when I glanced at him, I knew he was thinking about it at least.

When we got to the diner, he wanted to serve me, and I waved off the idea. I told him to sit tight, and I filled a tray with what we wanted. When we sat down, he happily got in his highchair, and we were soon hoeing in. I was amazed at the way he could fold his wings down, so they looked like a cape and were out of his way.

The girls soon joined us, and Barb asked how our first night together was? Kyle answered that it was very interesting. “Trixy has the most delightful nipples,” he concluded.

Barb nearly spat her coffee across the table, and I burst out laughing. In retaliation, I replied, “If he were five times his size, he’d have a cock any Porn Star would be happy to flash on camera.”

Kale blushed, but he also grinned at me. I could see he was pleased that I thought he had a big cock for his size. Nothing like stroking a male’s ego. I changed the topic, and we talked about the flying reptile.

I suggested that it would become Barb’s project to study it. I’d thought about as I settle down to sleep the night before. As much as I wanted to do it, I realised that I had a lot of other matters I had to sort out first since I was the leader of the project.

I mentioned that Alec had suggested that we co-ordinated with the other Earthers compounds on the northern continents to find similarities and to share our findings. The girls agreed this was smart since we had so much to learn as it was. We were soon headed to the labs.

I got to meet four of the other members of our small team. When I checked, I learnt that the other two members of the crew were out at a dig site.

Wain Frost was a Botanist. He was a Genteli from Davinia and twenty-eight years of age. He was about 160cm tall and had pinkish-red hair with the big purplish eyes of his race. He was slim and had a prominent aquiline nose and Adam’s apple to go with his backward pointy ears that were not quite as long as the Pix people’s ears. Foxy didn’t take long to check him out.

Delphy Lakes could pass as human, but she was in fact of the Burgis race, and she hailed from Dinas on the continent of Queland. Her ears were smaller and rounder than most Earther’s. She had a stocky build, was 150cm tall with darkish brown skin, and a higher forehead that gave her away.

Her features were, however, pleasing to look at, and her sunny nature and big brown eyes drew you in. She specialised in Palaeobotany, was about twenty-five years old and worked with Wain as his assistant.

Stephen (Steve) La Palene specialised in Palaeontology. He was comparing the history of the planet with its current environmental aspects. He was a Genteli from Arden; it was a city on the continent called Antalian.

Steve had the darker red-streaked brownish hair more familiar to his continent and the pale skin that looked like mocker-cream. He was thirty-four and stood about 162cm tall. He had a slim figure and a broad disarming smile.

Leann Mac Rena was 193cm tall. I topped her by 5cm, which seemed to irk her. She was of the mixed Grandteli race but obviously had a good portion of Genteli in her system. She was twenty-eight, but she barely looked seventeen. Her build was slim, and she had long blonde hair with light brown streaks. She also had smaller breasts than Foxy and me.

She was damn close to being drop-dead gorgeous, except for her thin lips. She also had the habit of scowling at those who displeased her, like me. She was Steve’s assistant. I think we took an instant dislike to each other, mostly because she seemed to see me as a rival, but I didn’t know why.

The missing members of my team were Paul Hunter and James Shaman. James’ credentials were Palaeontology and Archaeology. He was twenty-nine. Paul was his assistant and about a year younger. They were both of the Grandteli clans, but that’s all I knew. For some reason, their bios weren’t complete and didn’t even have pictures.

The team I had, and I sat down to chat. I got up to speed on what they were all doing. We told them about the flying reptile, and that Barb was going to catalogue and investigate the current live versions too. Wain said he would be pleased to help her get set-up and show her and Jill where everything was.

Foxy was going to start collecting whatever data she could find so far on the history of Harmony. We would set up a new database that cross-linked to the others we found. Apparently, Foxy had mad database skills and could ferret out information from any system.

She was effectively my right-hand, and I knew she was going to be invaluable to me. Kale mentioned that Professor William Essco, who was Wizard Zan’s Husband in Dinas, was doing something similar for Utopia. It would be interesting to see the difference in the ecologies and development of the plants and animals.

Foxy grinned and took note of this, and I’m sure she would take a look at what they have been doing. She told us she had acquired a lot of information before she left that she would re-stack in an Earth database so we can cross-reference to it as well.

I suggested that we have a morning meeting Mondays and Thursdays, to keep tabs on what was going on and they all agreed that this was a good idea. I told them that I had no intention of micro-managing the team, as they were professionals and knew their jobs. They all seemed to relax when they realised this.