Chapter Text
*
I surfaced sometime in the middle of the night.
The room was dark and warm. For a few foggy seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was. The mattress felt wrong beneath me, softer and wider than the narrow sleeping platforms I had known for six years. Cool air brushed over my face. Somewhere far beyond the walls, artificial waves folded quietly onto the shore. Something solid curved around my back, big-spooning me from shoulders to hips. Familiar, steady heat pressed against the length of my body.
Then that something made a low, sleepy hum behind me, barely louder than an Eridian snore vibrating through the mattress. It felt strangely sexy at first, and then my brain put the universe back together.
Erid. The biodome. My first night inside the tiny piece of Earth my mate had built for me. Rocky. And he had come back.
I kept my eyes closed. I was too tired to do anything useful with this discovery, or to start the argument he deserved, but there was no mistaking the curve of his carapace against my back or the arrangement of his limbs around me. I knew exactly how Rocky held me when he thought I was asleep. He supported my back, kept one arm across my waist, and left just enough space around my ribs so I could adjust freely without ever feeling like he might let go or crush me.
A small, vindictive part of me woke up immediately.
So. He had run away from me on the beach, hidden behind government work for half the night, then crawled into bed after I fell asleep. Interesting strategy. A cowardly one, though.
I was going to make him regret it in the morning. The thought occurred to me as I shifted backward until my spine fit more closely against him. Rocky's arms tightened around me before I finished the move, drawing me securely into the warmth of his body, and another soft vibration rolled through his shell.
He didn’t wake properly, simply holding me closer, like some part of him had been waiting for permission. The soft sound he made was undoubtedly an Eridian snore. Hm. Rocky snored. It might be weird to think that way but he was kind of cute when snoring.
A ridiculous amount of irritation drained out of me. Not all of it; I had standards.
I tucked one hand beneath my cheek and planned several devastating things to say when morning came. I got as far as imagining Rocky’s offended noises before sleep pulled me under again.
I floated toward consciousness several more times during the night. Once, Rocky adjusted his grip when I rolled too near the edge of the mattress. Once because I was thirsty, though apparently not thirsty enough to open my eyes or move any part of my body. I considered the enormous effort required to sit up, and decided dehydration was tomorrow’s problem. Each time I could feel the dent from his weight on the bed next to me.
When I finally woke for good, sunlight lay warm across my face. I tried to hide from it by turning my head into the pillow, and it worked for perhaps ten seconds. Then something clinked and clunked elsewhere in the house. I frowned without opening my eyes.
A scrape followed. Then some quick metallic taps, a pause, and a long grinding noise. Perhaps someone was dismantling a car engine with bare hands near my house? Except there shouldn't be anyone but Rocky and me.
I rubbed one hand over my face and tried to locate the sound. The bedroom felt too large and too bright. Another clang echoed down the hallway, sending a burst of migraine through my head.
My first coherent thought was that Erid had finally begun dismantling itself.
My second was a little more disastrous: some part of the biodome had already broken by day two and I was going to die crushed like a cola tin can under the weight of a whole alien atmosphere and this was all Rocky’s fault.
I reached behind me by habit but my hand only reached cool sheets. I opened my eyes and turned around. The space beside me was empty, and the sheets were still ruffled.
For a few seconds, I lay there with my arm stretched across the mattress, watching dust drift through a beam of artificial morning light. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing. The embrace and the warmth. Fragments of memories of Rocky twisting his arms around me.
Had I dreamed the whole thing up? No. Absolutely not.
My imagination was talented in several deeply inconvenient areas, but it could not reproduce six years of muscle memory that accurately. He had come back. And he had definitely held me while I slept. Which meant he had to be hiding somewhere inside the house now, doing whatever was causing that god-awful noise.
Fine. I pushed myself upright and immediately resented Erid’s gravity. My body felt heavy and pleasantly warm from sleep. My hair was a mess, a few locks had fallen across my eyes, and one side of my face carried the imprint of the pillow. I rubbed both hands over my cheeks, blinked until the room came into focus, and listened again.
Tap. Tap. Another clunk came from down the hall.
“Rocky?” I called. No answer came, except for a rapid series of metallic clicks. “Oh, come on, I know you can hear me.”
The clicking stopped only for a second, then it resumed with renewed determination. I stared toward the bedroom door, growing increasingly suspicious.
Rocky had filled the wardrobe with enough human clothing to support a small department store. Most of it looked suspiciously comfortable, plush and soft. I found a pale cotton robe hanging inside the door. It was thick for the morning chill and much nicer than anything I would have chosen for myself. I pulled it on, pushed my arms through the sleeves, and tied the belt badly around my waist. I considered fixing the knot, then another car crash sound from the hallway nearly made me jump.
Good enough, I quickly decided. I was investigating a noise and a missing husband, not attending a summit.
I followed the noise through the house with slow, cautious steps.
The floor felt cool and smooth beneath my bare feet. The whole place looked unfamiliar again. Yesterday evening, everything had been painted gold and blue and almost unreal by the sunset. In daylight, though, I could see every detail Rocky had worried over. The sky was bright with sunshine, the windows stood open to a cool, refreshing breeze, and the trees outside threw moving patterns across the wooden floor. I could smell salt from the beach, damp soil from the garden, and coffee. The smell of hot coffee came from the direction of the kitchen. Rocky had made that, I assumed.
The noise led me past the kitchen and down a short hallway toward the bathroom, the source of the noise. The bathroom door stood open. A toolbox sat on the floor just outside it, surrounded by several neat rows of equipment.
I reached the doorway and stopped because, obviously, the one leg protruding from beneath the sink was Rocky's. What was he doing down there?
The cabinet doors had been removed and placed carefully against the wall. Most of Rocky's body had vanished into the dark space below the basin. The exposed leg shifted whenever he reached deeper into the pipework, and the tools attached to his bandolier clicked softly against the cabinet frame.
Mmm. I folded my arms. What a sight.
No. I needed to focus. I had no idea what Rocky was doing. I didn't know whether anything had actually broken, whether this was scheduled maintenance, or whether he had woken before me and invented an emergency excuse just to get away before I woke up.
Maybe in his capable multitasking mind, bathroom pipes were less frightening than whatever had happened on the beach last night. I didn't notice when a cold, humorless little laugh escaped me.
The movement beneath the sink stopped immediately and the noise was gone all at once. Whatever Rocky was doing, he didn't do it anymore.
Satisfaction warmed my chest. Yes. I had his attention. I leaned into the room, trying to look past and peer into the open cabinet. “What are you doing in there?”
Rocky began backing out before I could see much. His legs unfolded, and the rest of him emerged with a series of scrapes and metallic knocks. Dust marked the front edges of his carapace. A heavy utility bandolier was strapped across his body, loaded with tools, fasteners, and a couple of instruments I couldn't name. A pair of work gloves covered his two hands. "A plumbing problem," Rocky muttered without turning back. "Figured I'd fix that before your first morning shower."
God, he was serious. He looked like he had spent the whole morning repairing a spaceship reactor, not crawling beneath a sink and doing the grunting work. I rubbed my hands against the robe and swallowed. "A plumbing problem," I stuttered, probably looking like an idiot. What else could I say?
"Yes. Plumbing. I sense you have some questions. Bring it on." Rocky set down the tool he was holding, unfastened one glove, and pulled it off finger by finger. It was kind of torturous to watch him do that in a non sexual way. Then he removed the other one and placed both neatly beside his toolbox. He turned toward me.
The angle of his body shifted subtly as he took me in. I could feel his gaze move over me slowly, from my bare feet to the crooked belt at my waist, then up to my face.
An interested hum gathered in his carapace, possibly delighted by my drowsy eyes, and the fact that I had apparently wandered into the bathroom just like this. And I just realized that I hadn't done anything about my messy hair.
Really wasn't a charming morning look. So I just stared back at him for a few more seconds, trying not to look down and check my outfit. The robe suddenly felt like a very consequential clothing choice.
“Since when," I said, leaning back against the door frame. "did I call a plumber for home service?”
"Oh." Rocky’s carapace lifted a bit. Another chime rolled out of him, so bright that I could practically hear the smugness beneath it. “You mean this brilliant, attractive, incredibly charming plumber with degrees in three different fields, experience as an astronaut, two saved worlds, and a tenured professorship?”
Jerk. Suddenly I figured out what this was all about. Sort of. Partly, anyway. Rocky couldn't resist it, participating in a cheap role-play scenario without ensuring everyone understood that he was the most overqualified tradie in recorded history. Good news: the Rocky I remembered finally came back.
“Oh, boy.” I leaned one shoulder harder against the doorframe. “That is a concerning amount of education for a plumber. He sounds expensive to me.”
An amused hum was his reply. Then, “He is very expensive.”
Rocky arranged three of his legs beneath him and lifted his body with unnecessary confidence. Dust clung to one side of his carapace. The bandolier made a soft metallic jingle when he moved. The whole thing was ridiculous. It was also doing something deeply unhelpful to my ability to reason.
My face grew warmer. I tugged the robe closed and pushed away from the doorway, hoping the movement looked casual. It probably looked like i had only just realized what I was wearing.
“I happened to make a little too much coffee,” I said.
Rocky tilted forward. A thought occurred to him. He stopped fiddling with his tools entirely. I could hear the question in his posture.
I cleared my throat. “Coffee," I added. This was totally bullshit. "And… ore biscuits.”
He tapped his fingers in open interest. I had no idea whether ore was a good choice for an Eridian, or whether it was the equivalent of offering someone a raw potato, but I was committed now.
“Maybe that expensive plumber would like to stay here and chill for a while after he's done?”
A thick, shameless melody rolled out of him immediately. I watched him process the invitation. Rocky backed away from the sink and faced me fully. One hand rested against the cabinet, another tapped idly against the handle of a wrench.
“A beautiful, adorable human like you, should understand something,” he started.
I raised my eyebrows. “Mm-hm.”
“That I, am a working-class, blue-collar laborer,” he continued. “Life is hard. I earn my living with my body. And my strength.”
Darn, that was cheeky. My mouth went dry. Rocky kept tapping against the wrench, watching my reaction. The bastard absolutely knew what he was doing.
“Every second of my time is valuable,” he added. His voice carried a hint of cheeky authority. “If I stay here, I will lose a great many paid working hours. It's unacceptable for my job, pretty human.”
I covered my reaction with a small cough. My heartbeat probably had betrayed me already to a creature who could hear it through walls.
“…But?” I prompted him kindly. "I sense there's one but."
Rocky paused, apparently giving the matter serious consideration. He drummed his fingers against the tool again, then produced a grave series of notes. This thoughtful posture was also impossible. He was only making me wait because he enjoyed watching me suffer. Anyway. I bit the inside of my cheek, playing along.
“But,” he said at last, “if this beautiful human offered me better compensation, I might be persuaded to stay for two or three long, enjoyable hours.”
Heat climbed all the way to my ears. Well, maybe I shouldn't guarantee him access to my laptop later. I lowered my head, pretending the flooring of this seaside cabin had suddenly become fascinating. This did nothing to hide my face, I suppose. When physical pretenses didn't matter, you just got whatever remark the lie-detector alien came up with.
But we were pretending. And within the sacred rules of great porn, the plumber had no access to any medical telemetry. I didn't even know what he was planning. He didn't seem to want to explain, either.
But I had to beat him in this game, even if it was a porn one. This unwavering belief gave me some more confidence.
“The truth is,” I whispered in feigned despair, “I don’t have any money to pay you, sir.”
Rocky tapped his fingers again, his whole body settling into exaggerated contemplation. “That is. Very unfortunate.”
“Yeah,” I nodded in agreement. And sniffed.
“How could you have no money, question?" Rocky's voice dipped into a warmer register.
Whatever was going on in his mind, I had a feeling that I wouldn't like it.
“It’s been a difficult week, i think,” I said.
"Someone as pretty as you must have a very loyal husband providing for you.” He leaned toward me, chiming with brazen amusement. “Surely he would fight anyone who allowed you to go without what you need.”
I blinked, feeling the cog start spinning in my head.
Oh.
He really had some nerve bringing up the husband.
For a second, the wife role slipped a bit. I felt the irritation from yesterday evening rise beneath my ribs, sudden and hot. So we were doing this now.
Again, what was all of this about?
I knew. My husband had run away from me on the beach with a crappy excuse. Then he had crept back after I fell asleep, wrapped himself around me like nothing had happened, then disappeared again before I could wake up.
And now the plumber wanted to defend him??
Fine. I could work with that.
I turned my face away and caught my lower lip between my teeth, summoning every terrible lonely-tradwife performance I had ever seen in a movie. When I spoke again, I softened my voice.
“Mm. You don’t understand the situation, sir.”
Rocky’s tapping stopped. "Yes?"
“My husband used to be considerate,” I continued. “Very attentive. He took care of me in every possible way. He was everything I ever needed.”
A low, pleased chirp came from Rocky. It sounded suspiciously like agreement.
“But last night, he dumped me,” I continued. "Abandoned me, actually. There was no other way to describe his action."
Rocky’s whole body tightened. "Oh." His limbs drew closer. The casual posture vanished, and the tools hanging from his tool belt gave a faint panicked rattle.
“My husband was so cold-hearted, he left me all alone,” I said, letting my voice trail off. “And now I’m nothing but a desperate, lonely, leftbehind wife. I have no money. Really. No one protects me anymore. I could offer you nothing in the world, except my-- ”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Rocky raised two hands. His voice climbed over mine before I could finish. “Lovely human, I assure you, you must have misunderstood. Your husband would never abandon you and leave you alone. He would never let that ha--”
The plumber had barely known me for five minutes, yet he sounded personally offended on my husband's behalf. "Well, mister." I narrowed my eyes. “I do believe--”
“Actually, lovely human, you do not--”
I raised my voice and spoke straight through him. “--that a plumber who met me minutes ago knows absolutely nothing about my marriage!”
The words bounced off the bathroom walls.
Rocky raised both hands between us. I put my hands on my hips, my loosened robe be damned. The air was so tense that I might as well have been holding a hostage and he was about to negotiate. Or run. I couldn't tell. I couldn't read an expression from a face he didn't have; the rigid set of his limbs suggested that he was likely thinking about climbing out of the bathroom window because he had just realized the game had become dangerous.
After a few tentative micro hand motions, Rocky tilted his carapace slightly back to his normal pouty mode. Thank god, he wasn't considering the bathroom window.
“Okay," he said after a heartbeat. "Apology. Apology words.”
"You can't just say that. Apology words." I made air quotes with both hands and leaned forward. Perhaps a lonely, deserted wife shouldn't have been so aggressive in front of a hot plumber, but I couldn't care less.
“Fine," he was obviously taken aback. He conceded, utterly reluctant. "My bad. Sorry. Shouldn't make this beautiful human mad. Already regret. But the sexy, brainy plumber happens to have a very good theory about his OOC talking.”
I was approaching the outer edge of genuinely angry now. The impossible little roleplay had begun as revenge, then become flirting, and had somehow circled back to Rocky refusing to say what he meant as himself. I smiled anyway, sweet enough to injure him.
“Then this lonely wife would be very happy to hear it.”
Rocky made a cautious sound. “The theory is…”
“Yes?”
"I do believe." He shifted his weight. Both hands dropped to his sides. “That your husband had his reasons.”
*
I didn’t even need to say anything.
I could just stand there, hands on my hips, and let the dead silence between us do the heavy lifting. Sooner or later, his ego would crack.
I waited, and calculated how long it would take before he simply gave up--
"The first reason is--" Rocky stumbled over the words. It cracked much sooner than anticipated. "-- is that your husband is in awe of your beauty. Mm. Just like me, a working-class laborer."
An unimpressed snort left me. "How can it even be a reason? You're not seriously telling me that my husband dumped me because he loves me too much."
"Absolutely--" he cut in. "Not! No, no. Wrong. Deduction so wrong. First, he did not dump you. I believe. Second..." Rocky hesitated. His anxious finger-tapping was back again. Then he lowered his chords.
"I heard that his age is problematic for you."
I gave that some thought. An epiphany struck through my foggy mind. Then all the stupid pieces fell right into place.
OH MY GOD. He thinks I think he's too old.
Rocky was clearly the jealous type. And having some kind of Eridian midlife crisis. Yet I had joked that I would marry Aurora yesterday because they were younger. Then Rocky panicked and ran away at the beach. Therefore: THIS OLD ROCK IS SUFFERING. Fudge. Had I accidentally spent yesterday stomping all over his ancient male ego? Worse, had I been bullying an elderly man?!
Look what you had done, Ryland.
Guilt came down on me all at once. Now I had to fix it, which was unfortunate, because I had no idea how to fix it without making the whole thing worse.
I should do something. I shifted my weight and tried to recover the lonely-wife persona. "Well," I softened my voice, carefully. "What if the lonely wife happens to have a specific taste in older... plumbers?"
I could see from Rocky's posture that he got what I meant instantly. To my surprise, he lifted his carapace with immediate offense, adding what looked suspiciously like an extra inch of height. "By Eridian standards, this plumber is anything but old. He is in his prime."
"Oh?" I bit the inside of my cheek.
"His physical condition is excellent, fully capable," Rocky added. "Peak performance."
Woah. He was practically flexing. Definitely a middle-age crisis.
“But you literally just told me you were a professor long enough to get tenure and then apparently got bored and became a plumber-- ”
“Regardless, you are diverting the conversation so you can accuse me of-- ”
BRRRRRRRR
Before either of us could say anything further, the urgent video-call indicator flashed on the wall display and the alert tore through the biodome. It was so loud I had to cover my ears. Who had designed that?
A three dimensional image of a marble appeared on the projection display. The bathroom was suddenly full of purple ambient lighting. It was Aurora. They caught sight of us, and paused.
“Hope I didn’t step into something personal...?”
Their attention moved from me to Rocky, then back to me. I looked at us too, properly this time.
I was standing in my bathrobe, both hands planted on my hips. My face was hot from our nice little talk. Rocky was covered in dust, wearing a tool bandolier, standing high beside a half-dismantled sink across the floor. There couldn't possibly have been a more lewd or more pathetic domestic role-play scene in the history of Erid.
The silence that followed was nothing I had ever experienced before. Even Rocky was radiating a "don't look at me and don't ever ask anything" wave.
Aurora looked between us once more. I felt their attention shift toward the sink, then back at me again. Their carapace darkened into indigo blue.
“…Or sad,” they finished.
I slapped a hand over my forehead.
“Should I call back later?" Aurora asked. "When you’re…done?”
“No!” Rocky and I said in near-perfect unison.
“This isn’t what it looks like, Aurora,” I rushed to explain. “You’ve misunderstood. Whatever it is you think you’re misunderstanding, you have absolutely misunderstood it.”
“Household repair,” Rocky said over me. Calmly. “A hot-water pipe ruptured in the biodome.”
I whipped my head toward him and dropped my voice. “What? I thought the pipe was just an excuse.”
Rocky’s posture tightened with outrage. “Why do you think I require an excuse to repair things for you, my beautiful human, question? I repair anything I wish to repair-- ”
“Oh, excuse me," I folded my arms. "That lonely wife was under the impression that the plumber was being paid to be here-- ”
Rocky pressed one hand dramatically against his carapace. “And the working-class plumber had genuinely believed the lonely wife was penniless.”
Aurora released a loud, chittering cough.
Rocky and I fell silent. Right. I had completely forgotten there was a third party on the call. I looked at the deep blue spreading over Aurora’s carapace, then at Rocky, who had somehow recovered and forced himself back into his elegant, composed posture. The effect could have been more impressive if he hadn't been wearing his work gear, with the plumber tools scattered around his feet.
I pressed the heels of both palms over my eyes.
“So,” I broke the silence. “Aurora. Something happened, I guess? This call seems important.”
Aurora ground two of their arms together. “There has been a development following yesterday’s density portrait incident. Rocky is required to visit the Government District today to receive a formal apology from the Eridian government...”
“He’s receiving the apology?” I interjected. Come on. I was the one who had been grilled by an alien flash.
"Dr. Grace," Aurora added. "You are the injured party, but Mr. Rocky is the formally registered host responsible for your protection. You may come along if you want."
A feeble, resigned chime came from Rocky. I stared at him. He stared at me.
I stared at him.
“...and there is an Eridian public cultural event that especially requires Dr. Grace’s attendance. Mr. Rocky can come along too.”
Before I could ask what kind of cultural event required my personal presence, another call cut into the line. This one directed to me. I gestured at Aurora. "Hang on." They chimed in a short acknowledgment, and I switched over. I blinked at the notification, surprised.
It was Atlas.
“There has been a change to your schedule,” they chanted, chords professional and reassuring. I could see why Aurora was all nuts about them. Apparently, the security office needed my personal approval before changing any plan.
That is to say. After yesterday’s minor incident involving a tabloid journalist, an industrial scanner, and my nearly barbecued arm, the regular security detail assigned to me had been upgraded. Atlas would serve as my primary security officer for the day. What were the chances, right?
I hummed thoughtfully. "Sounds good to me."
Naturally, my immediate agreement had nothing to do with the fact that, if another homicidal reporter appeared, chickening out and hiding behind a mineral mountain sounded considerably safer than hiding behind a purple marble. The call ended.
When I switched back to Aurora, my attention had already wandered miles away from Rocky’s constant weird notes in the background.
“Guess who just became Dr. Grace’s primary security officer,” I announced. I couldn't keep it in any longer. A grin was threatening to split my face. “Atlas!”
Aurora went expressionless. Granted, they had no face and therefore no expression to begin with, and yet I didn't think I had seen anyone look more expressionless than Aurora.
“Thank you for the information, Dr. Grace,” they said dryly after a few charged seconds.
The call disconnected abruptly. A guy in robes was smiling at me from the blank screen. I turned away and gathered myself. Okay. Today was going to be excellent.
I thought about changing into something more suitable than my robe for going outside. Hm. Something comfortable and sporty seemed good. Safest if the Eridian government planned to subject me to another culturally enriching near-death experience. I could take my morning shower in my bedroom's bathroom.
As i left the bathroom, I caught Rocky sagging beside the sink in the corner of my eye. Two calls ago he had been standing there defending himself like a gladiator. Now his posture had gone strangely loose and half-dead. I slowed for half a second, then dismissed the thought completely.
Well. I was definitely reading too much into it.
After all, this particular Eridian plumber made his living with his body. He was in his prime. He had to be in excellent physical condition. Full of capabilities. And at peak performance.
*
By the time everyone had arrived at the government district, I finally understood why my attendance had been considered non-negotiable. It was an exhibition program about human biology. Probably carried out to teach the public how to avoid casually killing the one and only alien sample on this planet.
Okay. That, I could understand.
I had spent years teaching middle school science. Occasionally, there had been children believing the mitochondria were a type of dinosaur. I had handled that well. Handling a room full of aliens who knew absolutely nothing about the human body should have been easy by comparison. At least Eridians wouldn't throw pencils at each other or giggle at two certain numbers while I was talking. Possibly.
I paused near the entrance and glanced back. I saw the avenues in front of me, dotted with pedestrians casually strolling by. Dark carapaces passed through one another in shifting clusters, all hard edges and reflected light.
So many moving rocks. Government workers, security officers and journalists, for sure, they made up most of the crowd. Celebrities and elite politicians too, I could only guess. I squinted and searched among them, until a familiar flash of purple caught my eye. Aurora!
They were moving along the outer edge of the plaza, their body easy to pick out between the larger Eridians. They turned in my direction for a moment and tilted their carapace forward. My mood improved immediately. I lifted one arm high and waved.
I was almost positive they saw me!
To my surprise, Aurora was motionless. I had just enough time to expect a late hailing wave before they made an abrupt turn around another official, and skittered away down a different path. My hand remained in the air. 'K. I lowered it to my side, pretending I just had a twitch. That was weird of them, right? I looked around in confusion, hunting for a reason.
To my left, Atlas stood like a piece of architecture with recently developed legs. Their armor was polished as always, though we had only met twice; smooth, menacing bands reflected off them when they shifted their stance under the light. Atlas had contributed about six words since picking us up this morning. I figured this could qualify them as wildly talkative by today's standards. This was my security guard.
I looked to my right. Rocky stood close enough that I could have reached out and touched him whenever I wanted. But his posture was oddly economical; he had somehow become nearly as loquacious as Atlas today. And this was my dear husband. What a happy trio we made.
Okay. Maybe Aurora had the right idea.
I supposed I could meet up with Aurora and make fun of them later.
Then, somewhere in the back of my brain, a truly excellent theory appeared and began putting on shoes. More importantly, it came with a testable hypothesis. I smiled to myself.
The smile vanished the second I entered the exhibition hall and discovered what had been put on display in the gallery. The wind was knocked out of my chest. I stopped dead just inside the entrance.
"Oh shoot." I gasped. "What the fudge are those?"
The entire hall had been arranged around a series of silver-gray xenonite sculptures, each mounted separately beneath carefully directed heat sources and vibration emitters. The material made everything look elegant and expensive. Which somehow made the gallery worse. The color was all wrong, but there was no mistaking the shapes.
That was a skeleton. I leaned slightly to one side to get a closer look. Yep. Definitely human. That was a brain. Those were eyeballs. With tails of optic nerves. A heart. A pair of lungs. and a disturbingly complete length of intestinal tract. Every piece was labeled with a shiny, all-caps GRACE.
I slowly turned my head. There appeared to be considerably more Ryland Grace in this building than I had authorized. Okay. A little spooky. Take a deep breath. Wind back to the mindfulness tutorial in the manual. Let it out. Another breath.
Why had no one told me this?!
If I had been on Earth, I would have called this the opening scene of a cult ritual. Which I had unintentionally walked into and was about five minutes away from being tied to an altar. Being on another planet though offered surprisingly little reassurance.
I kept reminding myself that I was on Erid, being treated like an endangered animal. Then again. Who said aliens couldn't have cults dedicated to sacrificing other aliens? What if I wasn't the endangered precious soft-ish creature but rather a piece of xeno scum from their perspective?!
The NASA training manuals had certainly never issued me a handbook entitled What to Do When Extraterrestrials Build a Life-Size Replica of Your Digestive System. Alien sacrificial cults had apparently been considered too niche by Earth officials. Big mistake.
A shiver ran across my shoulders. I instinctively looked for Rocky. He was only a few inches away. Physically, anyway. I could nudge him with a stretch of my leg if I wanted to keep it down low. Mentally, Rocky appeared to have already entered power-saving mode by the beginning of the day.
He stood beside one of the curators with his body angled toward a portable console, one hand moving over the controls while another held a stack of data slates. His lewd bandolier had been left in our house; now every part of him looked alert and operational.
“Hey, Rock.”
He answered with a deep, distracted hum. He acknowledged me with the smallest possible hand motion before returning to the console.
I waited for more. That seemed to be the whole response. Do something, Ryland.
“Um, do you know what the actual schedule for the exhibition is?” I tried.
“The respiratory filters passed the pressure test,” Rocky replied after a few thoughtful seconds.
I looked at him in disbelief. "Okay?"
He hummed once, and continued entering information. I raised both hands in a helpless, full-body expression of what the hell are you talking about, but Rocky wasn't oriented far enough in my direction to appreciate it. Weird.
Maybe this was simply what he should be like when he was working. I had known him as a genius engineer for six years but there was a difference between Rocky fixing an astrophage problem with me and Rocky functioning as some terrifying government-adjacent national treasure in his own civilization.
After another moment, I decided to test something. It had a proven historical success rate. “How do astronomers organize a party?” I prompted. That was his favorite one-- or his most hated one.
Rocky continued working with the curator. I waited for a few seconds without seeing any reaction from him.
Wow. Tough. Completely immune to the natural charm of my well-constructed jokes. Never mind. I could test him later.
Still, there was enough alien cult ambiance for me to torture myself. I didn't know when I had accepted this concept but I gave up happily and wandered toward the gallery. It was full of art displays on either side of the main hall, lighted from atop. I said "art" but basically they were just metallic replicas of my internal organs.
I examined the part which I sincerely hoped wasn't my colon and thought about Rocky's abnormal behavior, before I stumbled head first into a maelstrom of compliments from behind. They ranged from a slurred "first living sample" to things like "very honored". Nearly gave me a heart attack. I jumped and turned one hundred and eighty degrees on my heels. Another Eridian?
Another Eridian scientist. Turned out they were my clan, with an intrusive interest in any bleeding edge knowledge they could find. I finally understood what I had been like in other Earth scientists' eyes. I decided to offer a polite smile when the one-sided chit-chat escalated. The scientist pointed a finger at the colon shaped statue.
"Dr. Grace, this your second mouth, question?"
......
What was I expecting.
Terrible question, but I had been a strong, seasoned science teacher. So I said things like, "Same general kind of tissue around both openings, but no. As a human, I only have one mouth. That end you point at is strictly exit-only." Since I had a feeling about what kind of misunderstandings their culture was gonna make, I added quickly, "It's an important distinction."
They thought it over, and took the colon reverently into their hand from the display. I was relieved to finally get the butthole topic over with but then became astonished by two different things. First, that sculpture could be taken out of its socket. Second, the colon bent. I had originally thought those replicas were all hard like rocks.
What did you mean you had made a squishy replica of my colon.
The Eridian scientist pinched at one end of it with excessive glee. I held back a groan. "Please definitely don't do that."
"Is this degree of flexibility accurate, question?" The genuineness underneath their tone hurt me. They bent it again, a bit more carefully this time.
"Uh," I said. I wanted to die. "I have never personally taken mine out to check."
Several minutes passed. I was forced too deep into this nightmare of colon diplomacy when Rocky suddenly trilled behind me.
“They planet!”
"What."
Where did that silly line even come from? I snapped around. It took my brain several painful seconds to travel backward through several stupid minutes of unrelated thought.
“Oh my goodness. Babe." What the heck was wrong with that processing latency. "Did you even hear anything I just said?”
“Yes, sweetheart.” Rocky made a downshifting noise. “Very reasonable.”
This wasn't an answer to anything I had asked. My partner apparently had no interest whatsoever in talking to me today. I wouldn't be surprised to find his battery dead after today.
Apart from that, his performance was professionally flawless. He reviewed the restrictions surrounding my medical data with the curators, reorganized my schedule around the government apology ceremony, and handled the reporters without missing a beat.
Rocky was still the same reliable one I had known on the Hail Mary. He had simply left his soul along with that bandolier somewhere between the biodome and the government district.
I watched him handle a cluster of government officials for a while, then scanned the hall again. I finally spotted that purple marble again; they were spider-walking rapidly through the crowd.
“Aurora!” I called as they approached. “Why didn’t you say hi to me outside?”
Aurora stopped in front of me with their limbs arranged in an unusual position. Their body was held high, and they produced a laughable greeting-- an official one, just like Rocky's. Or anyone else's here. "Good morning, Dr. Grace," Aurora said.
My mouth opened. Was that. Even. Possible. My unhinged friend had been replaced overnight by Government Liaison Aurora.
I glanced over my shoulder at Atlas. He stood beside me in complete silence. I could almost see my own confused face reflected in his carapace. Atlas offered no explanation. I tossed both hands toward the air in a silent appeal. Somebody should acknowledge how ridiculous this was.
Aurora was unmoved. No mirroring hailing or sarcasm anymore. Needless to say, I could not allow that to continue.
I leaned closer, lowering my voice into a confidential tone. “So,” I whispered. “How’s our cop crush?”
Aurora refused to budge. I could practically hear them dying inside.
A faint blue-purple hue deepened around the radiator slits atop their carapace. Holding their breath muct feel laborious for an Eridian. However, Aurora's liaison posture remained painfully intact.
“We need you," they said with professionalism, "to test whether the newly certified human civic route is actually human-accessible.”
I shrugged. “You’re using me as the crash-test dummy.”
For one beautiful second, Aurora displayed another quiet internal death in front of me. It was the same as what Rocky had been wearing all morning. They hadn't had an exchange of words, yet somehow both had mastered it. Maybe this wasn't an Eridian equivalent of slowly-dying-inside but rather a what-is-this-about face. You got what I meant.
“Officially, no,” Aurora said. Their body tipped closer to mine, and lowered their voice. “Don’t let Atlas see me.”
A huge, mirror-smooth shape appeared behind us, casting a shadow across us. Aurora stopped functioning. The purple-ish color spread across the upper half of their carapace, and one hand was suspended halfway through a tiny warning gesture. Atlas towered over us in absolute silence. With the unmistakable intention of starting a conversation they both knew they had been putting off. I locked my jaw so hard it hurt.
"Hi, official," sang Atlas. Their fingers tapping. "Have we met before?"
Uh, good. Aurora had picked a winner.
This was perhaps the cringiest line I'd ever heard. Still, Aurora turned into a petrified marble. I turned my face away before they could recover enough motor control to fire at me.
Wait. Aurora. I finally had an opportunity to test my theory.
Very carefully, I glanced over my shoulder toward Rocky. He was surrounded by reporters on the opposite side of the gallery. Several held recording devices toward him while another displayed a document beside him. Rocky had gone silent, but I knew he had been answering a question before I turned. I knew it the same way I knew physics.
Don't look at him. Look at Aurora instead.
With my flimsy knowledge of Rocky, I could tell from my peripheral vision that his body had rotated slightly away from the reporters. The widest receiving plane faced toward Aurora and me. The reporters waited around him in shared confusion.
A rush of vicious delight went through me. Theory tested.
Ha. Jealous.
I held my position beside the pathetic marble in love a little longer than necessary. Just for science.
Rocky remained not-so-subtly turned toward us for another long moment.
But he must have sensed the heat of my not-so-covert observation.
He turned sharply away from us, and his hand lowered to the document. A moment later, he resumed answering the reporters in a series of flat notes.
My mouth fell open. Oh god. He was so jealous he couldn't stand watching.
Problem solved: I had figured him out. The great Rocky, scientist, astronaut, hero of two worlds, scary professor, living monument, was having a midlife jealousy crisis. Erid had given him that halo but too bad I had just found a weak spot. A smile slashed across my face.
This was going to be so much fun.