Chapter 28 : THE ARCHAEOLOGIST
[SRD Office — Room 114, Level 25 — Day 27, 1400 Hours]
Dr. Robert Rothman carried his research files the way other people carried children — close to his chest, both arms wrapped around them, chin resting on the top folder to keep the stack from shifting. He navigated the SRD office doorway sideways, shoulder-first, and nearly dropped everything when his hip caught the frame.
"Sorry. Sorry, I — the door is narrower than I—" He caught the sliding top folder with his chin and shuffled the rest of the stack onto the conference table with a controlled avalanche of paper and manila. "Dr. Rothman. Robert. We spoke on the phone. You said to come up?"
"I did. Have a seat."
He sat the way academics sat in unfamiliar environments — perched on the edge of the chair, knees together, hands immediately reaching for his files like a security blanket. Mid-thirties, wire-rimmed glasses, a face that would be forgettable in any crowd and became memorable only when animated by the specific intensity of a mind wrestling with something it couldn't let go.
Kawalsky watched from his desk with the flat assessment of a soldier evaluating a civilian who'd wandered into operational space. Siler didn't look up from the infrastructure manifest he was organizing. Walter tracked the interaction from his laptop, cataloguing the way he catalogued everything.
"You mentioned irregularities in the xenoarchaeology database," I said.
The word "irregularities" transformed Rothman. The nervous energy focused, channeled into the precision of a researcher who'd found something wrong and needed someone to care.
"Not irregularities — systematic failures." He spread three folders across the conference table, each one tabbed and cross-referenced with a thoroughness that reminded me of Walter's gate traffic analysis. "We have over four hundred catalogued artifacts recovered from off-world sites since the program began. Of those, approximately sixty percent are classified using a taxonomy that was designed for Egyptian archaeology in the 1980s. It doesn't account for the technological, linguistic, or cultural distinctions between Goa'uld-manufactured items and actual Ancient artifacts."
He opened the first folder. Photographs of stone tablets, crystal fragments, metallic components — each one tagged with a catalogue number and a classification that, as Rothman demonstrated with increasing frustration, told you nothing useful about what the object actually was.
"This—" He tapped a photograph of a crystal shard. "—is catalogued as 'mineral sample, unknown composition, P3X-403.' It's not a mineral sample. It's a data storage crystal. Ancient manufacture. I can tell by the lattice structure — it's identical to crystals Daniel described from Abydos. But because the recovery team classified it as geological, it's been sitting in a drawer in Lab C for eight months and nobody has tried to read it."
"Why hasn't this been flagged before?"
"I've flagged it. Three times. Memos to the archaeology division head — that's Dr. Ballard, who retired six months ago and hasn't been replaced. Memos to the science advisory committee — returned with 'noted, pending review.' Memo to Daniel directly — he agreed with my assessment but he's on SG-1 missions three weeks out of four. He doesn't have time to overhaul the entire cataloguing system while he's being shot at on alien planets."
The frustration in Rothman's voice wasn't performance. It was the accumulated weight of a competent person being ignored by an institution that valued his work product but not his insight. I recognized the tone — Andrew Callahan had heard it in Raytheon's engineering bullpens, from the mid-level analysts who saw problems their managers didn't want to acknowledge.
"How many artifacts do you believe are miscategorized?"
"Conservatively? Two hundred and forty. Of those, at least thirty show characteristics consistent with Ancient manufacture rather than Goa'uld derivation. Some of them could be technology. Some could be data storage. Some could be weapons." He adjusted his glasses with a push that was less precise than Walter's — more anxious, a habit born of stress rather than thought. "We're sitting on a library we can't read because nobody's organized the card catalogue."
I leaned back. The system had been tracking Rothman since the Mission Board flagged him at Level 2 — a hero unit with a C-rating in Research and Ancient Knowledge, destined in the original timeline to die during a Unas encounter that I was already planning to prevent. But the system's assessment was secondary to what I could see with my own eyes: a researcher who cared more about the work than his career, who'd been pushing against institutional inertia for months without support, and who'd walked into my office because he'd heard — through the SGC's informal network — that the new division head actually listened.
"Dr. Rothman, what would you need to fix this?"
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. The question had short-circuited whatever script he'd prepared — he'd come expecting to present a problem, not to be asked for a solution.
"Access," he said. "Full access to all recovered artifacts, not just the ones classified under my current clearance. A dedicated workspace with proper analysis equipment — spectrometric, linguistic, structural. Authority to reclassify objects based on actual assessment rather than field-team guesswork." He paused. "And someone above me who understands why this matters."
"What if I told you I could give you all of that?"
The shift was visible. The anxiety drained from his posture, replaced by something cautious and hopeful — the look of a man who'd been surviving on professional frustration and was being offered the first genuine opportunity of his career.
"I'd ask what the catch was."
"The catch is that you'd work for me. Strategic Resources Division. Head of Xenoarchaeology. Full artifact access, dedicated lab space, research budget, authority to build a cataloguing system that actually serves the program's needs." I tapped the table. "You'd report to me, not the military chain. Your job would be understanding what we find out there — and making sure nothing valuable sits in a drawer for eight months because someone wrote 'mineral sample' on the tag."
Rothman's hands tightened on his files. The knuckles went white, then relaxed. He looked at the SRD office — the whiteboard with its three priorities, the operations board from P3X-797, the desks where Kawalsky and Siler and Walter worked with the quiet purpose of people who'd found their place in something larger.
"Yes." The word came before the consideration. He caught himself, tried to add professional nuance, failed. "Yes. Absolutely yes."
His handshake lasted too long. The grip was too firm — the specific over-commitment of a person who hadn't been offered something worth accepting in so long that the muscle memory of accepting had atrophied. His glasses fogged slightly from the heat of his flushed face.
[HERO UNIT RECRUITED: DR. ROBERT ROTHMAN — RATING C (RESEARCH/ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE) — LOYALTY: 30% — ROLE: XENOARCHAEOLOGY HEAD]
[+200 XP AWARDED — RECRUITMENT MILESTONE]
[CURRENT XP: 3,750/5,000]
A shadow fell across the conference table. Daniel Jackson leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, watching with an expression I'd learned to read over weeks of collaboration — the particular look of a man who'd been waiting for someone else to do the thing he didn't have time to do himself.
"Robert's wasted where he is." Daniel's voice carried the quiet authority of someone who'd mentored Rothman and knew his capabilities better than any personnel file. "This is better for everyone."
Rothman turned to Daniel with the expression of a student receiving validation from a professor whose opinion defined his professional universe.
"Thank you, Daniel."
"Don't thank me. Thank the man who's giving you the resources I couldn't." Daniel caught my eye. Something passed between us — the shared understanding of two people who recognized talent and knew what happened when institutions failed to use it. "Take care of him, Ramsey. He's one of the good ones."
"That's the plan."
Daniel disappeared down the corridor. Rothman sat back in his chair, files still clutched against his chest, the dazed expression of someone whose afternoon had changed the trajectory of his career.
"When do I start?"
"Your desk arrives tomorrow. You start now." I pushed the crystal shard photograph across the table. "This data storage device from P3X-403. Can you read it?"
The nervousness vanished. In its place: focus. The transformation was immediate and complete — the anxious junior researcher replaced by the specialist who'd been waiting for someone to ask him the right question.
"Give me the crystal and forty-eight hours."
Kawalsky caught my eye from across the room. The look between us was brief — the compressed acknowledgment of a team that was growing, each new member adding capability that hadn't existed before.
By 1700, a fifth desk was being carried into the SRD office by two maintenance personnel who had opinions about furniture arrangement that they wisely kept to themselves. I rearranged the room to accommodate it — Rothman's station beside Daniel's informal research area near the whiteboard, where the archaeology and the Ancient knowledge could cross-pollinate.
The office was getting crowded. The organization was getting real.
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