Chapter Text
My claws tap on the ground impatiently as I wait. The aliens take so long to get ready to go out, and, from what I can hear, they were communicating with each other instead of getting ready, even though they clearly know I’m done fixing the wall and filling the other side with their atmosphere!
Of everything I expected when I saw an alien ship arrive at the system, I did not expect to be waiting so long because aliens are so slow.
Then again, so are many Eridians.
Oh, I haven’t talked to anyone in so long, far too long, and it hurts to wait any longer.
Eventually, the aliens come through the airlock in their odd suits. Both of them this time. Why send one the first time but both now? Was it that they trusted me more now? Perhaps the first one had been a sacrifice, in case anything went wrong. Weird. Eridians would never do something like that. I decide to think similar of these aliens. There must be some other reason for only sending one of them the first time. If they were so afraid I may harm them, they would have both come in, to guard each other!
Is that the thought now? Have I accidentally done something these aliens perceive as threatening?
They’re so weird.
Their carapace is flexible, unlike an Eridian’s. On top of their long bodies are what look like very thin quills. They have five limbs, like an Eridian, but are not symmetrical. Two of their limbs are used for walking, two for working, and one holds odd features which move around as they make the noises which seem to be their language. Why have specialized limbs? Strange design.
One of the aliens floats up to the xenonite. They don’t even stay tethered to the walls because only two of their limbs can actually grip, and they’re busy using those for other things, like tapping on the xenonite barrier. This isn’t the one that was sent out earlier, that one stays farther back, but only by a little.
I return the tapping. I’m not sure what they’re tapping for, but maybe returning it will get them to check out the models I made. Models are the only communication I have right now. I can’t exactly tell them they can remove the odd outer carapace they wear. Their side of the barrier is their atmosphere and safe for them, but I can’t just say it!
Can I?
Though I know it won’t work, I move air over my speech organs, forming words. It has been a long time since I spoke and knew someone would hear, though they won’t understand. “That is your atmosphere!”
Both aliens startle and turn to look at me.
“Check out the damn models!” I trill, tapping in the direction of where they float. Can they not hear the models? Their atmosphere is very thin, perhaps sound does not travel as well through it… no, I can hear just fine. Stupid Rocky. Their hearing must be worse, then. Bad design!
Finally, one of the aliens jerks their top limb up slightly and pulls themself over to the models. Must they need to be so close to hear them properly? Their hearing must be terrible. How did they do anything?
“Why the fuck are you built like this?!” Maybe Adrian would know. They would talk about adaptation and evolution…
I miss them. They would know better how to handle such an odd new species. They would be… fascinated.
“I haven’t talked to anyone since–” I stopped. “This is so exciting, but why are you fucking built like that?! You’re here! For the same reason as me! We work together.”
The aliens start conversing in their strange language. Finally, one of them removes the strange sphere covering their top limb. The other pauses for a moment, then does the same. They understand!
“Good good good! We work together! I’m so happy you’re here!”
The aliens are so squishy. Their form can change just by pressing against something. They do still have different shapes, held together by some sort of internal structure. I can tell them apart based on this.
We exchanged names. I made new words for theirs, since I cannot make the same noises as them. Their names are short, and they call me by a short name too.
The aliens and I exchange language terms. For some reason, whenever I give a word, one of them fiddles with a machine they brought into the tunnel. The machine repeats what I say in their language. The machine is amazing, but it confuses me that they cannot just remember the translations.
Even stranger is their extra sense. They can distinguish between objects that sound exactly the same. Some of their tools have textures that apparently sound different to them, instead of being engraved.
Strangest of all, after exchanging a lot of language, Mark convinces Grace to go back into the alien ship and take an action I don’t have a translation for. Grace argues, but Mark promises not to have too much fun while they’re gone. I ask about the word.
“It means we sort of… turn off for a few hours. It keeps our brain healthy.” Mark explains after Grace leaves. “You don’t <unknown>?” Mark’s tone changed, indicating a question.
I thought for a moment. It sounded a lot like… but it couldn’t be!
“It’s like… this.” Mark straightened out, the structure that went from their main body to just under their head– which I had learned was not a limb, strangely enough– coming into line with their bottom limbs. The claws on their upper limbs went to rest beneath their head.
Oh no! “Die?! No no no! Grace go die, question?!”
“No! No, Grace not die.”
Wait. The conversation had implied that Grace would come back. Stupid Rocky. That meant this thing must be more like…
“Sleep! Grace go sleep!” I exclaimed. But… “Grace sleep and Mark not watch, question?” I scolded. What was wrong with them? They couldn’t leave Grace defenseless! Mark would just let them sleep alone?
Alone, like I had been every time I slept, ever since–
“Watch him sleep? Dude, that’s creepy.”
“Is not creepy! Is necessary.” These aliens found a lot of things creepy. They found my perfectly normal tunnel creepy. “Mark leave Grace! Leave Grace in danger! Bad bad bad!”
“Woah. Okay, if it makes you feel better, I can watch Grace sleep.”
“Rocky watch too!”
“Okay, well, I’m gonna have to convince him to come in here.”
I listened as Mark went through the airlock, and talked to Grace.
“You want me to sleep in the tunnel? How am I supposed to do that when you two will be talking the whole time?” Grace asked.
“Rocky’s pretty adamant. Take it up with him. He wants to watch you sleep.”
Their conversation was odd. Why should noise prevent Grace from sleeping? Why didn’t these aliens find it normal to watch each other?
What kind of world did they come from, where they didn’t even stay to defend each other from danger?
“I’m not just going to move so Rocky can watch me sleep– or listen to me sleep? Either way–”
“He needs this.”
“Why?”
“Let’s both bring our beds and then ask him about it. We can learn something about his species.”
Grace moves the joints of their upper limbs up for a moment, then starts gathering up large objects. I strain to hear their shape.
Soon, Mark and Grace enter the tunnel holding their strange objects. Those clearly have something to do with their sleep cycle, and were stored in the same room. They sleep in the same room, but don’t watch each other?
“Rocky. The Blip-A is a lot bigger than the Hail Mary. Where are your crewmates?” Mark asks. Grace moves the weird object on their head back to rest on the ridge that sticks out from it.
Oh. This. It was a wonder they hadn’t asked about that yet.
“They die.” I told them, surprised at the clarity in my voice.
Mark and Grace each turned the bumpier sides of their heads towards the other.
“What happened?” Grace asks.
“Rocky not know. Crew get sick. Crew sleep. Crew… not wake up.”
“Oh– oh.” It wasn’t really a response Grace gave, more like a reaction.
“Grace wake up, question?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll wake up.”
Grace still moved, but Mark claimed they were asleep. Mark also talked at a lower volume, but I could still understand them clearly.
“Noise mess with sleep, question?”
“Too much noise can wake a human up.” I’d had to come up with a new word for their species name, too. It was a shortened version of alien from Sol. Sol was a recent word in the Eridian language, relatively.
“Wake human how, question? Cannot hear in sleep.”
“Yes, we can. It’s weird that you apparently can’t.”
Grace moved.
“Grace not sleep. Is moving.”
“We need to be quieter.”
Well. I didn’t like it, but I stopped talking.
“Rocky? Can you watch me sleep, too?” Mark asked.
“Mark sleep. Rocky watch. Rocky always watch.”
Grace did wake up, just like they promised. Mark was still asleep when Grace woke up. Supposedly. Humans moved so much while they slept, inside and out. It made no sense.
I had so many burning questions, but Mark now needed quiet to sleep. This was ridiculous! How was their body supposed to complete its sleep processes if the cycle was so easily interrupted? Why didn’t they guard each other?
Eridians had an instinctive need to find a sleep watcher. The instinct stung the corners of my mind every time my cycle came. I thought I should be used to it by now, and perhaps I was, but it still felt so deeply wrong. How was I supposed to fathom that humans didn’t care about watching each other?
So many questions. I had to ask.
“Grace move in sleep. Mark move in sleep. This normal, question?”
“Well, I don’t know about Mark, but I’ve always been a restless sleeper.”
“Is weird to move at all!”
“Is it? So, Eridians stay completely still?” Grace moved closer to the barrier. “Tell me everything! I can explain how it works for humans.”
Grace does explain, in a way that reminds me of something. Someone. I choose to avoid the thought for now. I can’t think about how long it’s been.
In reality, I can’t avoid thinking about how long it’s been since I’ve heard Adrian’s voice. Really heard it. Sometimes, I do hear their songs echoing through the ship, but they’re never there. Just a product of my mind. The realization that none of it is real hurts.
In Grace’s explanation of human sleep, I discover humans also perceive things that are not truly there. They call it dreaming when it happens during their sleep cycle, and hallucinating when it happens during wakefulness. I already have a word for the second but cannot even fathom the former. Grace doesn’t even know why it happens.
Humans don’t watch each other sleep because they don’t need to. They can wake from sleep early if there’s a threat, which is why too much disturbance would wake one up.
Mark wakes up midway into our discussion. He says something that’s hard to make out.
“Uh, last time I checked, yeah.” Grace replies.
“What did Mark say, question?” I ask.
“He asked if we were real.”
“Mark hallucinate, question?”
“No. It’s just– last time I was away from Earth, I ended up alone for a long time. I was remembering that. It seemed weird, when I was half awake, that there were people here.” Mark explains.
“Rocky understand.”
“Really?”
“Mark in space before, question?” I ask. My mission was the first of its kind. Had Mark returned from a similar mission just to be sent on another?
“Yeah. To another planet in our star system. I’m still remembering the details.”
The memory loss thing was strange. Eridians didn’t lose memories unless there was damage to their brain, and didn’t often get them back. The humans said this wasn’t normal, but neither knew why they had lost their memory.
“Mark alone. Why, question? What happen to crew, question?” I ask.
Grace answers this time. “There was a storm on <Unknown>, and the crew was forced to leave the planet. He got left behind.”
“Crew leave Mark, question? Bad bad bad!” I sputter.
Mark holds out the claw of his upper limb to stop me. “Not their fault. I don’t actually remember the details of how it happened, but it wasn’t their fault.”
“They thought he died in the storm.” Grace supplied.
“How long Mark alone, question?” I ask.
“Long time. Rocky. How long have you been alone?”
I do the math. Convert into the base ten units that humans use, then convert to their time measures.
“Approximately 46 years.”
“What?!” Grace exclaims loudly.
“The <unknown>? That’s a long <unkown> time!” Mark follows, nearly at the same time.
“Need words.”
“Hold on– we haven’t gone over this yet? Pause discussion. Okay, those words are basically used to add emphasis…”
One thing leads to another, and soon enough, I’ve learned a whole list of expletives. Alien expletives. They didn’t all have an equivalent in my language, so I came up with more new words.
Immediately after that, I learn I’ve been in space for longer than Grace and Mark have been alive, relatively, meaning they’re ridiculously young.
“Grace Mark pebbles! Earth send pebbles to space!”
“Erid sent an old person, then.” Mark responds.
“Rocky not old!”
“We’re not young, either.”
Turns out, humans age ridiculously fast. Their lifespans are so short, and yet, from what they’ve told me, their species has accomplished a great deal. In fact, their technology was far more advanced than it was just an Earth century ago.
Amaze.
The next time Mark and Grace sleep, I’m left to think. Unfortunately, my thoughts go in a terrible direction without the sounds of voices, and I think about my crew.
I don’t know what killed them, or why it spared me.
Grace starts talking utter nonsense at some point, which gives me something else to listen to other than the silence and all the weird things that happen inside human bodies.
“Grace awake, question?”
They don’t respond, instead continuing to utter nonsense.
“Grace!” I pull myself as close to the barrier as possible. “Grace!” This is bad. It must be. I tap a claw against the barrier.
Suddenly, Grace moves, the motion causing them to drift rapidly away from the soft objects they were encased in. Mark starts to move after a moment.
“Rocky? What’s wrong?” Grace asks.
“Grace make noises, like talking. Not sound like anything.”
“Oh– do I talk in my sleep?”
“Yes. Yes, you do.” Mark responds.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Grace asks, and Mark does that odd motion with their upper limb joints.
The humans fall asleep again– they can wake up and then go back to sleep immediately, which is strange– and wake up later.
We continue working on exchanging language. We’ll need it, to work together. Grace talks less than before, for some reason. Eventually they interrupt to ask a question.
“Rocky… what exactly happened to your crew?”
“They die. There many small things in Eridians, call cells. Those die. Then crew die. Rocky not affected.” I don’t like being reminded of it, but if Grace needs to know, I’ll tell them.
Grace moves the claws of their upper limbs to encase their head.
“Couldn’t fix. Tried.”
“Rocky. I, uh, I have a theory. About what happened to your crew. I need you to do something, though. Can you… put star-killer in the walls of the tunnel?”
That seemed like an odd request, but doable. “Can do that. What theory, question?”
“Well, space isn’t entirely empty…”