Chapter Text
When Grace first explained to Rocky what a human heart was, the concept was easy enough to follow.
Human tissues need oxygen to function. Big system of pipes called veins carry the oxygen wherever it needs to go in a substance called blood. Simple. Rocky understands that—heart stops, blood stops, human dies. Humans need oxygen, need blood, need heart.
Meta-phores are not as easy for Rocky to understand.
He has time to think about it now, stranded in a graveyard soon to be his own, orbiting the star that saved Earth and doomed Erid.
No, Erid was already doomed. The problem following Grace’s—what is word—leaving? Leaving doesn’t fit. Too small of a word for something so big.
What-ever. Grace left Rocky alone. Rocky’s ship malfunctioned. Well, it wasn’t the ship. It was the Taumoeba. Rocky couldn’t figure out why, but the Taumoeba escaped containment. Tried for days. Couldn’t fix.
Didn’t matter. Whatever caused the breach, it has something to do with xenonite and has spread through all of Blip-A. Including the fuel lines.
At first Rocky was optimistic, thinking of Grace and his unending chain of dumb ideas that Grace always strings together into one half-decent idea.
Then Blip-A’s functions started to fail. Rocky got weak. He slept, with no one to watch, and when Rocky woke up, he and Blip A were worse than before.
Rocky did not want to give up, but he did not get a choice. Rocky became ill, like crewmates did.
Rocky doomed himself. He was Erid’s only chance at survival, and he doomed that chance.
Grace saved Earth. Grace is going home to be hero and save his planet and Rocky is stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck.
More than stuck. Heart-broken.
That’s one of those meta-phores Grace used. It is what started the conversation about human language not always concerning the physical, about feelings and how difficult they are to communicate.
It happened when Rocky woke up after burning himself in the Hail Mary’s small-atmosphere, when Grace was hurt and not moving and Rocky did what had to be done, as Grace once described it.
“When I woke up and saw the trail of ash, it broke my heart,” Grace said, in a string of human-words that Rocky will never forget.
Rocky will never forget the feeling of fear deep in his core, maybe where his human heart would be if he were one.
“You died?” Rocky screeched. The computer translated it with much less urgency than Rocky’s native language. “Grace died? But Grace right here. Humans only die once. Grace said that.”
“Rocky!” Grace’s voice echoed in the small atmosphere. “Rock, calm down. I didn’t mean it literally. It’s a meta-phore.”
Grace understood Rocky’s feelings anyway. Humans are special like that. Grace is so good at understanding. Rocky wondered if all humans are special as Grace.
Still, Rocky didn’t know that word Grace said. Rocky made a noise of not-understanding. What’s the human-word? Confusion.
Grace ran a hand through his hair. “A meta-phore is like, uh, translating the language of feelings into words, usually. We invented them so we could connect with each other when we talked or wrote stories. Describing feelings in the literal sense helped us understand how each other were feeling.”
Rocky considered Grace’s words. “So, not actual heart failure, but makes same emotional feeling?”
“Yeah,” Grace said, after thinking for a while. He sat next to Rocky on the floor of the Hail Mary. “Sometimes, when you feel something, the whole world could be ending and it would feel… meaningless beyond your own head.”
Rocky tried to imagine a situation in which Erid wouldn’t be the most important thing to him. It didn’t make sense. “Grace and Rocky both care about world ending. That’s why we are here. To save worlds.”
Grace looked away from Rocky then. Rocky remembers wondering what was so interesting about the ceiling.
“That’s right, but sometimes we feel things so strongly that it drowns everything else out. It’s like all of our fuel is dedicated to feeling that overwhelming emotion and there isn’t enough left for other things, no matter how important they might be.” Grace spoke with a much quieter voice than usual. At first Rocky thought he was afraid of someone else hearing, like when he was talking to Earth on the computer.
Then the thought came to Rocky that, maybe, this was one of those times when Grace felt a strong emotion and didn’t have the energy left over for speaking.
“What is Grace feeling now?” Rocky asked, because he was curious, but also because understanding Grace had become a mission almost as important to him as saving Erid.
“Me?” Grace sounded surprised as he turned to look at Rocky. “I’m great, Rock. I’m so glad that you’re alive, and I’m here explaining human stuff to you again instead of rambling to myself about nitrogen for the millionth time. I know enough about what’s going on in my head. I don’t think I could stand to listen to myself for much longer.”
“Apology.” Rocky said, chirping to emulate the vibration sound humans do with their vocal cords that Grace makes when he can’t think of the human-word for something. Humming, Grace called it. “Did not know how long Rocky would be sleeping. Did not intend to scare you.”
“I know, pal.” Grace leaned so close Rocky could see the bend in his eye that Grace called a stigmatism.
Rocky was never sure what a stigmatism was, but he knew it was why Grace wore that device on his face.
Glasses. Grace’s glasses.
Rocky thought the name was dumb at first because he could tell that the glasses were made of plastic and metal.
“It’s not dumb,” Grace said as he studied one of the screens in front of him, curled in the pilot seat even though Grace pilot skills are not very good. “They were made of glass back in the day, like, a couple hundred years ago. When we got better technology, we didn’t bother to change the name. Most people still think the lenses are glass, anyway. It would just be confusing.”
Rocky found it strange that they didn’t update their language as their species evolved. “Humans strange. Accurate human-words not confusing.”
Grace had laughed, then, a beautiful sound similar to Rocky’s own language.
Grace leaned over and patted the top of Rocky’s ball. “We humans are lazy, so if we can get away with using a word for a long time without losing its meaning, we will.”
Grace tilted his head back. “There are lots of different languages on Earth. We don’t all communicate in the same language, but many of them borrowed words from each other. There’s this language called Latin that nobody speaks anymore, so we call it a dead language, but it’s like, the foundation of modern words that we still use. Uh, at least I’m pretty sure we still do. I guess I wouldn’t know.”
Grace sat up in his chair suddenly, turning to face Rocky. “Oh! Astrophage. It means star eater in Latin. I came up with it, and like, a day later the whole world was calling it astrophage.”
“Where does Grace come from?” Rocky asked. “Does word Grace come from dead word?”
“Uh, yeah.” Grace said, slower than usual. “It comes from the root word grātia, which means kindness.”
Rocky shakes his carapace up and down like Grace does with his head. “Good name for Grace. Grace is kind, choosing to save Earth over Grace life on Earth.”
Grace was quiet after. Grace never liked talking about that.
Rocky wanted to keep talking about human things, but Grace looked tired behind his plastic glasses.
Rocky wasn’t sure about human signs of fatigue, but he learned early on that Grace is not one of those humans that supposedly hide their feelings from those around them.
When Grace tires, his human-words meld together like Eridian metal. He makes less sense than usual, but he talks more, yet Grace was not talking at all.
Hm. Experiment.
“Rocky watch Grace sleep, question?” Rocky stomps the floor of the Hail Mary twice.
Grace nodded. “Sure, bud.”
Most of times, Grace would say something dumb about why he can’t sleep—something about work or a problem that needed fixing that Rocky argued he could solve after sleep.
Sometimes Grace acted like human sleep was closer to Eridian sleep than he described.
Grace would refuse to sleep until his human-flesh failed on him. Though he looked to be in pain like that, forcing his body to do something unoptimal for some reason Rocky could never understand.
Grace always said that human sleep was voluntary, but they could only go so long without it.
Grace resisted sleep like it was going to overtake his body at any moment. Not only that, but Grace was most active before he slept, doing as many tasks as possible.
Sometimes Grace woke up suddenly, sitting upright immediately. He breathed like he had just come back from trip out on the hull. His heart beat much faster than it should.
It always took him two or three Earth-minutes to calm down, as though he expected danger that never came.
To Rocky, this behavior did not suggest that sleep is a voluntary rest period for humans. It suggested that sleep is more of something that happens to humans regardless of consent, and there’s a good chance they will not wake.
This led Rocky to one of two conclusions:
Conclusion one: Grace was not telling the truth about human sleep like he did not tell Rocky he wasn’t going home.
Conclusion two: Grace was telling Rocky the truth, but for some unknown reason possibly related to his strange waking behavior, Grace feared sleep.
Neither conclusion was a favorable one.
Rocky wishes they’d kept talking. Maybe he would learn more about human-words and meta-phores and the songs Grace spoke of that are supposed to sound just like Eridian to human ears.
Maybe Grace would have told Rocky why he did not like sleeping, and Rocky could have fixed.
Rocky did not like seeing Grace like that. Afraid. It made Rocky feel afraid, too.
If brave Grace was afraid, it must be something bad.
Rocky will never know. Grace ship was not made of xenonite. Grace likely did not notice problem with Taumeoba. If problem was discovered, Grace ship contained it.
Brave Grace would not choose Rocky over his planet. Grace is on his way home. To save star and world.
Rocky made that happen. At least Rocky saved star and world, though star and world are not his.
Earth will welcome Brave Grace home and fellow humans will admire him more effectively than Rocky ever could.
Grace will never know that Erid was not saved.
Rocky doesn’t want Grace to.
Grace will forget about Rocky.
Rocky doesn’t want Grace to.
Doesn’t matter.
Nothing is more important than star and world.
Grace stares at the lab floor. It blurs before him. He stumbles backward, half expecting the lack of gravity to catch him before remembering the gosh-dang centrifuge and the whole stupid purpose of the lab.
Grace’s knees give out beneath him. He was prepared for this, his arms stretching out behind him as he crumples to the floor. He curls into a ball, pressing his forehead to his knees as his breaths quicken.
“Rocky…” He whispers to no one.
The leak is the xenonite. Rocky’s xenonite.
Grace listens to his heartbeat quicken. He watches his breaths grow ragged and fog the lenses of his glasses.
Think, Ryland.
Rocky is incredible. He survived God-knows how long on a spaceship by himself and solved every problem that came his way. If there’s a solution, Rocky has found it by now.
If there isn’t…
The Taumeoba are likely in Rocky’s fuel lines, eating the Astrophage.
Nausea gnaws at Grace’s stomach as if demonstrating.
Rocky may not have enough fuel to leave Tau Ceti’s vicinity. In all likelihood, he never made it out of the star system.
He didn’t stand a chance.
I could go back.
Go back? Huh.
There are no guarantees Rocky will still be nearby, or even alive, and Grace certainly doesn’t have enough fuel to turn around, pick up Rocky, drop him off at Erid and go home.
There are no guarantees anyone on Earth will be alive. Grace could be too late. Grace could save Earth and have no one to celebrate with.
It’s almost a no-brainer:
If Grace sends the beetles to Earth now, turns around, and finds Rocky, alive, who can successfully navigate the Hail Mary to Erid where his fellow Eridians are also alive and well enough to utilize the Taumeoba to dissolve the Petrova line, he can save Rocky and the Eridians.
If the beetles manage to reach Earth and any hypothetical survivors, and the Taumeoba don’t spontaneously combust, Grace can save Earth, too.
Where does that leave him?
On Erid, a planet not built for humans with no viable food source where he’ll inevitably die sooner or later, or dead in space like he was meant to be before he met Rocky.
Grace can save humanity. He can save the Eridians.
He can’t save himself.
That’s the caveat.
Grace doesn’t know how many people are left on Earth, if any. Grace can’t recall if Rocky ever told him Erid’s population, but it can’t be small.
Here’s the equation: one over a few hundred million. Say an even five hundred million, as a conservative estimate.
That’s… a number with so many decimal places that most computers won’t display it. Its scientific notation (2e-9) is synonymous with infinity in most software. Two times ten to the power of negative nine. Or, zero point zero followed by seven more zeroes and a two. Or two billionths.
In other words, Grace makes up two millionths of one percent of the total population at stake here.
If Stratt somehow figured out world peace and people aren’t killing each other to survive, that number gets even smaller.
Hell, if anyone could figure out world peace, it would be Eva Stratt.
Which sucks for Grace’s margin of error.
Whatever. One of the many woes of being nearly twelve light-years away from home.
You can’t exactly get cable television to fill you in on whether Earth is an ecological wasteland yet.
Grace hiccups, which is when he notices the dampness of his cheeks. He blinks, but the blurriness of his vision doesn’t abate. He rips his glasses from his face and tosses them across the lab.
If he can’t find them later, he’ll just turn off the gravity.
That’s something he has the power to do now. A few buttons and whoomp, there it isn’t.
Okay, maybe that’s a gross oversimplification but Grace has the weight of two worlds resting on his shoulders and yet his stomach churns at the thought of controlling gravity. On a one-man ship.
The entire Earth and Erid and Rocky—God, Rocky—are depending on Ryland Grace and he’s blubbering like a child on the floor.
Even so, he can’t find it within himself to care about anything but himself; the power forced into his incapable hands.
If it were Commander Yáo or Ilyukhina in his place, maybe they wouldn’t have hesitated.
Maybe they would know the right thing to do or maybe they wouldn’t have caused the Taumeoba leak at all.
For Earth, the right thing to do is keep going home. In case the beetles don’t make it.
Grace could go home and be the sole savior of the entire planet. Statues would be erected in his honor. Buildings renamed. Maybe Stratt would finally respect him.
Maybe, just maybe, if more than one of the crew survived, they would return to Earth together.
Unfortunately, Grace is alone, and he would do just about anything to change that.
One of the many woes of sending someone to save the world against their will: no guarantees your hero will stick to the narrative.
Grace lifts his head from his knees, squinting at the burn on his arm.
There’s no decision to be made this time.
Grace is not leaving Rocky to die in his place, alone, surrounded by the corpses of his friends. Not before Rocky helped him capture the Taumeoba, and certainly not after.
It was never an option.
That is what troubles Grace. Somehow, Rocky wormed his way into Grace’s heart in a way no human ever did, or will.
Grace wasn’t willing to lay down his life for his entire planet, but the mere thought of leaving Rocky scared and alone in the middle of space-nowhere is enough for his stomach to threaten digestive expulsion.
That—the idea of connecting so deeply with another living creature that isn’t even human—is what scares Grace. More than space. More than astrophage. More than impending extinction.
On Earth, there wasn’t a single person Grace would lay down his life for. Not Stratt. Not even his students.
Rocky… If Rocky was willing to give up his fuel to send Grace home, then what does that say about his feelings for Grace?
In science, absolutes are scarce; yet if the roles were reversed, there is no doubt in Grace’s mind that Rocky would do everything in his power to rescue him. Of that Grace is certain.
As certain as two plus two equals four.
What would it do to Rocky if he held out hope, waiting for Grace to save him until he died a slow, painful death of radiation sickness or starvation?
Grace remembers how it felt when Stratt spoke her final words to him. It wasn’t anger that consumed his last conscious breaths, but fear.
Just think of the kids, Grace. All those kids you’ll be saving. Think of them.
I haven’t said goodbye.
Those words were his final terrestrial thoughts.
If he had a few seconds longer, Grace would have followed it up.
To whom?
Grace is glad he never got to finish that train of thought, though he guesses he’s finishing it now.
Would he say goodbye to his students? Would he even tell them where he’s going? What he’s doing? What would he say when they ask when he’ll be back?
Grace can hardly remember what his students looked like. Or their names. Even Stratt’s voice in his memories sounds more like his own than that of a Dutch woman.
It probably has something to do with the amnesia drug.
Go figure.
Did Stratt count on Grace not remembering he had no one to die for?
Any reasonable person would assume they, you know, consented to a suicide mission.
If that were the case, why would Stratt say that? Why mention the kids at all?
Why would Grace worry about saying goodbye to a planet he wasn’t willing to die for?
Grace stands on trembling legs. He blames it on the fast-and-loose approach to gravity on the Hail Mary.
“Okay,” Grace says to himself, clapping his hands together. “Mary, let’s turn this thing around.”