The Outer Moon (A Sapphic Sci Fi Adventure)

Chapter 21

               Just over a week later, Pepper and Vanessa found themselves in the little common area of Emma, Viv and Lexi's place, staring in amazement at the scene in front of them. Bree and her friend Rosie were chattering away in the same language that the foxes spoke in the holograms, using the knitted plushies made by one of the women in the town who was making them for anyone that wanted. They were innocently playing a game with the toys and Fluffy, and it would have been adorable if not for the adults being baffled at the scene. Lexi was sitting on the floor with them, contributing to the conversation in the same language, while the older adults just stared.

"How did this happen?" Pepper asked breathlessly.

Viv let out a little snort. "Ask Lexi, she's the one that figured it out."

Lexi heard her name, then looked over at the other four with a rueful grin. Heaving herself up off the floor, she came over to the others to explain. "Well, Emma has been up in orbit helping to bring back salvage every day, and Viv has been helping out on the solar panels and seeing if the water turbines can work on the river here, so I thought I should try something. I never finished high school, and I guess I thought I'd go back to school, but it was a pain using the translator. But then I remembered Emma telling me that the little helmet thing in the ship helped her learn to fly almost immediately, so I thought it might help learn other things too, and I wanted to check out the designs you got from the fox ships since everyone else seems to be looking at the Atlantis. So, I plugged the helmet into the translator, and started looking over the options. It had one for learning the fox language, the translator calls them Alopex, and it taught me."

"It taught you to speak their language in a week?" Vanessa exclaimed.

Lexi shook her head quickly. "Just a few days. I didn't say anything at first, because I wanted to make sure I did it right, but then the girls heard me practicing, and wanted to try. They learned it even faster, I guess because us humans learn languages easier when we're kids, and now they won't stop."

"It makes sense," Emma pointed out. "The medical beds seem to do the same thing for the body, stimulating it and making adjustments to fix things. The helmets must do the same thing to the parts of the brain that are necessary to learn whatever the subject is. With all the knowledge we have between the two ships, plus what Jason sent, we could have a lot of people with vast quantities of knowledge very quickly."

"Unbelievable," Pepper muttered. "I can't believe it was so simple, and we never thought about it." She just shook her head and muttered to herself.

"Like not packing sunglasses?" Vanessa said, poking her ribs. "None of us thought about it, honey, this isn't all on you."

"It was luck, really," Lexi said quickly. "I knew the helmet was in Emma's ship, and I already had the tablet, and so I just gave it a shot. How many more helmets do we have?"

"Hundreds," Emma said quickly. "They're all over the place up on the Atlantis, and we can bring a bunch back for the new school. Hell, Bree and Rosie might graduate by the time they're ten with those things."

"Okay, give me a second." Pepper held up her hand to stop the conversation as she did some mental planning. After a bit, she spoke back up. "We need everyone in this room to learn the language, as well as at least one of Rosie's parents. Emma, please talk to your sister, as I'd like her and Miles to do the same. Nessa, can you please have our social anthropologists do the same? If we have all of that done in a week, then I'd like to go visit the foxes. Bree and Rosie can put them at ease by going with us, and hopefully having a common language will make things easier."

Everyone nodded at that thought, as having a solid team there, plus non-threatening kids, would make for a good group to hopefully make an appearance.

"How would you like to get there?" Emma wondered. "One of the ships, or should we get faster at building a boat?"