Chapter Text
“Why is the ship not moving the way it's supposed to?”
“We're stuck in a fudging wormhole!” I scream as I try my hardest to get the ship's thrusters to jettison us away from it, but all the astrophage gets sucked into the wormhole and creates zero thrust for us to escape. “We're stuck!”
Rocky scurried through his tunnels rapidly, trying to find a way to get us out of this predicament. The ship moaned and groaned as we kept moving towards the wormhole. It at least was staying stable, which was a positive. The wormhole was possibly sending us millions of light years from Erid. Less so.
“Rocky update!” I screamed.
No response.
“Rocky!”
Still nothing.
“R-rocky!” My words were slurred this time. I released myself from the pilot seat. I felt as if I was moving through jello. Every step was sluggish and labor-intensive. “R-ra-ra-rocky!” I called again, slowly making my way along the tunnels. Going in the direction he vanished in.
I kept walking. Each step felt harder than the last. I walked along the line till I could not anymore. I hit the ground hard. Eyes starting to droop.
Ship still being pulled into the wormhole.
“R-rock-”
Was all I could get out before everything went black.
I woke up to Rocky chirping, which wasn't uncommon. He was very good at being a very annoying alarm clock. One that could not be turned off. Ever. But this time it was a little different; his pitch indicated concern. I rolled over a little, feeling all of the comfy warm sheets around me, making me bury my head into my pillow.
“Grace?” Rocky said, again with a hint of worry in his tone. I pulled a hand out of my blankets to wave him off. This only made things worse. “Grace!” he practically screamed. It started me so bad I fell right out of bed.
“Ow,” my voice sounded cracked and broken, probably from the fact that I just hit the floor, hard. But my body didnt hurt too bad, which was a plus. But my emotions felt crossed. It was just a small tumble, but I felt tears pricking at my eyes, as if I was gonna burst into tears at any second, which was odd. Yes, Rocky liked to tease me; I cried a lot. Which, yes, I guess I did for a human male, but that was just a weird stereotype. I thought I cried a very healthy amount, especially considering the situations I had been put in.
But this was different. It felt like I had no control over it, and before I could properly stop it, I started wailing. Loud, piercing cries.
“Grace! Grace, hurt!”
I didnt respond. I couldn't stop crying.
“Wait!” Rocky yelled from his side of the wall; I could hear him running away quickly. Presumably to get his ball. It didnt matter to me; all that did was I had hurt myself, and my body was in such shock that all it could do was cry. I hadn't been like this since i was-I felt Rocky's hand reach out to me. But he wasnt in his ball. No, through tear-blurred eyes, I could tell he wasnt in his ball, but in a form-fitting suit made of hundreds of xenonite panels.
“Wah?” is all I could manage out between sobs. Rocky didnt respond, and just pulled me in close. He took one of his claws and rubbed it against my back. It was strange…Rocky had never been that big of a fan of hugs. It wasnt something eridians did. I typically had to initiate them between us. But this hug was so soothing and comforting I found my sobs quickly subsiding. It was nice to be able to hug him properly. The ball was fine, but this was so much better.
“Was a surprise for Grace.” It was a very good surprise! I just wished my crying hadn't been the reason for him to show it to me. Regardless, I leaned more into the hug. My eyes closed, the heat from his body soothing me, and my body quickly forgot the hurt it had been feeling.
‘Thanks,” I mumbled. And that didnt sound right. I opened my eyes to stare at Rocky, and did he seem bigger? “What?” I said, but again my voice sounded wrong; it was high-pitched and squeaky.
“Grace, relax?”
Relax? Why did I need to relax? I scrambled out of his arms and stood up. To my horror, we were basically eye level with each other. I took another step back and tripped over my own jumpsuit. The trip startled me more than anything; I couldn’t help it, I started to cry again. Rocky moved back over and pulled me in close. “It's okay, Grace. We will figure it out.”
Figure what out? I wanted to ask, but I was still crying too much to do so. Rocky gently stroked my back again and started to hum something. I wasn’t sure what the song was, most likely an eridian soothing song, and soothing it was. I felt myself lean more into Rocky. My body went a bit limp. The words were a gentle cradle that was carrying me off to sleep.
I moaned a little and gently stirred. I found myself still in Rocky’s arms, the latter trilled softly to me as I let out a small yawn. “Yes, Grace awake.” I just nodded sleepily to him and curled up more into his arms. He was so big and comforting; I didn’t want to move. I felt my eyes drooping again, but Rocky sang a sharp chord that startled me. Thankfully, this time I didn’t cry. “No, no more sleep. Grace just got up.” I moaned and slowly stood.
And that’s when I realized what I had forgotten from earlier. Rocky and I were now about the same height. I looked down at my feet and noticed my jumpsuit was dragging on the floor. How in the heck did I shrink in my sleep? What was going on?
“Grace, go check human viewing device.” I was a little confused by what he meant but quickly realized he was referring to a mirror. I nodded, grabbed my pant legs, so I didn’t trip again. I toddled my way over to the bathroom to use the mirror.
But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Instead of looking at my about thirty-five-year-old face (give or take a few years; time dilation was tricky), I was looking at a child’s. Approximately an eight-year-old child. I screeched, startling Rocky, who came running over. “Grace okay?”
“I’m a kid!” I yelled, pointing at myself.
“Ah, that is why Grace is shorter.” I shot him a look that he promptly ignored.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Tried, Grace kept leaking, then sleeping, and I do not know what a human “kid” looks like.” Right, of course. In Rocky’s brain, I could have just been having a strange reaction to the wormhole…which I was, or it could have just been a strange human thing.
The wormhole!
“The wormhole!” I said and quickly took off towards the cockpit. Rocky followed close behind. Mostly because I was so much shorter now and also because I had to hold my pants so they didnt fall, making me so much slower. We got into the cock pit, and I quickly crawled into the pilot seat.
“Pilot not detected,” Mary informed us.
“Mary, override pilot commands. Pilot in seat.”
“Command ignored. Pilot override can only be done by Captain Yao.” Well, that’s a very stupid thing to program into the ship. I would need Rocky to override that later.
“Does not recognize Grace,” Rocky said, going over and trying to examine the controls.
“Clearly,” I crossed my arms and pouted. Rocky looked over at the chair and climbed into the pilot seat.
“Pilot detected!” Mary happily confirmed, and all the lights in the hull turned on for Rocky, which wasn't helpful to him since he couldn't see the light.
“Hey, no fair!”
“Rocky is a better pilot than Grace.” I rolled my eyes and moved closer to him. “What does Grace need?”
“Our flight log. See what happened with the worm hole. Then find another one.” Rocky let out what could only be described as an eridian swear.
“Why would we want to do that?”
“So, I am not stuck as a child!” I said indignantly. I really did not want to arrive on Erid as a literal child. I was already considered young by eridian standards at thirty-five. If I showed up as an eight-year-old, I think the eridian councils would actually break down, which would not be good for either of us.
“But Grace is cute,” Rocky said as he moved over to the screen and urged me to guide him on what to click.
“Easy for you to say, you didn't randomly become a child in your sleep.” Rocky clicked a button and took off to the flight logs. I took it from there and started reviewing our flight paths from the past few days. I found a detailed chart of where we had gone, and to my surprise, it was essentially a straight line. The whole trip thus far basically had been. Rocky programmed the path to Erid, and it was essentially a straight shot from there. But we should have been able to see the wormhole had appeared on the flight path. An anomaly that large should have been detected by the Hail Mary, especially because of the radiation it would give off.
“Hmm,” Rocky said, and I turned to look at my friend.
“What is it?”
“Rocky may have gotten younger in sleep.” Oh, he was still on this. Of course he was. Rocky was often still ruminating on something for hours, if not days, after the fact. We were just discussing a movie and how human romance worked when, just a week later, he came crashing in on me with more thoughts and opinions on it. He thought it was weird. “Would not know if I got younger.”
Right. Eridians lived so much longer than humans. It would have been easy for Rocky to have gotten younger without any physical signs. He could have aged backward by a hundred years, and neither of us would be privy to it. While if that were to happen to me, I would literally cease to exist. Which is not something I wanted to think about. Since most of the time these days I tolerated living.
“Okay, so let's just say we both got younger. But we do not know how to fix it.”
“Grace no want to be a cute baby?” I shot him a look, and he just chuckled a bit. “Well, if a wormhole did it, a wormhole could reverse it.” In theory, yes. The wormhole could also do dozens of other things to us. Many of which would be worse, yet it was our only lead, and we were forced to start with it.
“Yeah, only issue. Wormhole wasn't on the map.”
“Hmm,” Rocky sang, thinking again. “We go back to the coordinates. Wait there. See if it appears again.” Not a bad plan.
“Yeah, that would be a good place to start. We just can't stay there longer than a week. We already have a very limited supply of food and fuel. So, if it doesn't appear again. We have to continue towards Erid.”
“Yes, and Erid will love baby Grace.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the flight map. I quickly found the coordinates from our log and encountered the wormhole before the two of us were knocked unconscious. It wasnt too far from us, thankfully, only about a day or two’s worth of travel. Which was good for the lack-of-fuel-and-food problem. I quickly typed in the coordinates, then set the Mary to autopilot, and Rocky happily crawled out of the chair. All of the lights flickered off, and the two of us just stood there.
“So, now what do we do?”
“Grace is not being careful,” Rocky complained as I swung my smaller body over his back leg. He braced it up a bit more either to help me get up on top of it or to make it easier for me to fall. Not sure.
“I just wanna get some energy out,” I announced as I pulled myself up on top of his leg like it was a monkey bar on the school playground. I laughed happily as I got one leg on either side of his. “Yes!” I cheered and patted his carapace. “Go, Rocky, go!”
“Rocky hates this.”
“Hey, I told you kids have a lot more energy, and you said you wanted to help.”
“Did not think the helping would be this,” Rocky grumbled but slowly started to walk through the dormitory and towards the “Dont Go Crazy Room,” very, very slowly.
‘Faster,” I said happily and instinctively kicked my legs like he was a horse. Thankfully, I didnt actually hit anything since he had me up pretty high. Rocky grumbled again but started to move a bit faster. “Yay!” I giggled. I could not remember the last time I “giggled.” I was a grown man after all. We, men dont giggle. We cry. A lot. Which I also seemed to do a lot as a child. Rocky moved even faster, starting to move up the ladder to get into the room.
“Hold on, Grace,” he sounded like a worried parent when he said that. I just laughed, then leaned forward and grabbed the front of his arm. He slowly climbed the ladder, me holding on tightly. It took several minutes before we got into the room, and Rocky lowered his arm. My pony ride was officially over.
“Aw,” I complained. “Your np fun.”
“Yes, not fun,” Rocky declared, and started setting up the screens for us.
“Why are you no fun?” I said, actually stamping my foot with the words. Rocky just ignored me. “Rocky, listen to me!” He still ignored me. I felt my brain flip, and I started to lose it. “Why won't you listen to me?!” I screamed, throwing myself onto the floor and screaming. I couldn't stop it! It felt as if I had just completely lost control of my emotions. That I was at the mercy of the childish emotions this body currently possessed. Rocky, for a creature with no eyes, looked utterly shocked. He quickly moved over to me, gently putting a hand on my back.
“Grace, please. Is okay.”
It is not okay. Rocky hates me!”
Rocky let out a cry, and before I knew it, he scooped me into his arms. Two arms wrapped around me in a hug, one running a hand through my hair, while the other two were moving us to the center of the room. “Rocky, hate, hate, hate me!” I shouted. His efforts to calm me did nothing to curb my childish emotions.
“Not true,” Rocky said, and there sounded like hurt in his tone.
“Yes, true!”
“No, not true! Cares for Grace, so, so, so much! Grace's body just making him angry. But Rocky…Rocky loves Grace.” This pierced through my temper tantrum to hit my adult mind. Rocky loved me? We had never admitted that to each other before. It was clear that this was what it was—a type of love. But I hadn't wanted to say it. I am not sure what love looks like on Eridd. Rocky had told me a bit about his relationship with Adrian, giving me a narrow understanding of how it worked for them, but not enough to know he could love me, too. A squishy, leaky human, who was currently throwing a huge fit because the universe decided I was supposed to be a child once again. My tears stopped, and I buried my head into one of the arms he was holding me with.
“Love, love, love, Rocky,” I told him. I gently wiped away my tears. “So much.” He trilled and pulled me in closer. Our heads touched like they did that day I rescued him. We gently nuzzled each other for a few moments.
“Grace better?”
Sniffling, I nodded a little to him. He nuzzled me once more before setting me down on the ground. I did not want him to leave my side. I wanted to stay curled up in his arms. Be protected by him. The child in me needed it. I reached out for him, and he patted my head. “Will be right back,” he assured me and headed up the ladder and into a different part of the ship.
I sighed and looked through the movies we still had to watch—something Rocky would enjoy to repay him for all of the things he had done for me today. I found one that I think he may like and clicked it.—getting it ready for when he came back.
A few minutes later, I heard his familiar chirping sounds and saw him come back down the ladder. My quilt in one of his claws, his viewing camera in another, and a portion of food for me too. Okay, so I may be a literal child right now. But Rocky was really acting like a parent.
But didn’t I really give him a choice to act any other way?
No, not really.
Rocky draped the blanket around me before curling up right beside me. This new xenonite suit of his was his best invention yet. It allowed me to curl up right next to him. My head flopped onto one of his arms as I started the movie.
‘What is this about?”
“A robot who lands in the wild,” I said softly. My eyes started to feel heavy. I reached for my food, and Rocky handed it to me. I opened up the packet of food and slowly began to eat. “The robot learns how to survive in the wild and finds a family.” I kept eating slowly, but my eyes were getting heavier and heavier. Soon the packet slipped onto the floor. Eyes fully shut.
“Sounds like us.” I heard Rocky say before he started to sing a soothing song to me.
“Uh, huh,” I mumbled as I quickly drifted off to sleep.
“Sleep well, friend Grace.”
I awoke to find myself still on the floor of the “Don't Go Crazy” room. Movie long since finished. I rolled over to say good morning to Rocky, but to my bewildered mind, he wasnt there. That was extremely odd. Rocky never let me sleep alone. He wouldn't have just left, especially since he knew I was under immense stress yesterday; something must be wrong. I quickly rose to my feet and noticed very quickly something was very wrong with me!
I was shorter than yesterday. I was already pretty short, but I had lost several inches, maybe even a foot during the night. This was bad, bad, bad. “Rocky!” I called out. My voice was even squeakier, younger. I needed to find a mirror.
After I found Rocky.
I quickly climbed up the ladder, still calling his name. But no response. Maybe something truly was wrong. I knew he could hear me from all parts of the ship. He wouldn't just ignore me like this. “Rocky,” I screamed. My body was starting to panic. Where could he have gone? What could have happened to him? ‘Rocky! Please, where are you!” Still no response. I desperately searched through the whole ship, but there was no sign of him.
No.
No.
No!
Something could not have happened to him right after we both admitted that we loved each other. I couldn't lose him after that. I never wanted to lose him. “Rocky!” I whimpered, tears starting to stream down my face. I was terrified. For myself. For my friend. Big fat tears fell onto the floor as my now even tinier body started wailing in the middle of the ship.
I was suddenly a very small child. Dozens of light-years away from my home. My friend was missing. What was I supposed to do? This was a terrifying situation even as an adult; for my new child self, it was utterly devastating.
I sat down on the ground still wailing and crying out Rocky's name and begging him to please be okay. I needed him to be okay.
My cries were so loud I didn't hear the sound of an all too familiar ball approach me until it tapped my foot. I was startled and looked at the xenonite ball. I was expecting to see Rocky, but he wasnt there. My eyes flicked down, and my jaw dropped.
There was a much smaller xexnonite ball than his usual one. Was a very small eridian. He looked just like Rocky, just tiny.
:” Rocky?” I asked in my squeaky child voice.
The little eridian let out a tiny note that I knew to mean yes. I threw my arms around his small xenonite ball and sobbed again. “Oh, Rocky!” I cried. “I thought you were hurt.”
“No, no am okay.” I looked at him and smiled.
“Now, who is the cute one?”
“Still you,” he shot back and wanted to move away from me in his ball, but it and he were so much smaller now that I wondered. I grabbed his ball and quickly picked it up. He weighed nothing like this, and it gave me a better chance to examine his changes. He still looked like the Rocky I knew, just a lot less jagged. His carapace was much rounder, and he had only a few of the green jems he was typically littered with. “You are very cute,” I told him again. And he was! He was basically pocket-sized. If we were compatible in each other's atmospheres, I would totally put him in my pocket.
Rocky just grumbled at my comment, so I set him down. “I guess we both really did get younger,” I told Rocky, who nodded.
“Yes, Grace, Rocky babies.”
“Yep,” I said softly. We were both babies. Out in the middle of space. Alone. “We might be screwed.”
Without much else to do until we got to the location of the wormhole. We decided to spend time in the Dont Go Crazy room again. The two of us curled up together in my quilt. Rocky was in his tiny ball, seated right next to me as we watched endless amounts of movies. Eventually, the two of us got bored of that and decided we needed to try something else at least. I carried Rocky back upstairs and brought us to the lab. I sat him on one of the lab stools, while I struggled to get up on one.
“Grace, short now,” Rocky teased.
“You're one to talk!” I snapped.
“This is normal for young eriidans.”
“This is normal for young humans.” Declaring as I managed to get on top of the stool. After careful examination early in the day, my guess was I was about four years old now. Rocky guessed he was about ten or so years old for an eridian. He told me most pebbles wouldn't even be leaving their nest at that age. While I told him most four-year-olds were barely allowed to be anywhere without a guardian in sight.
We were most certainly screwed.
Now that I was on the stool, I lifted Rocky from his stool and placed him on the lab table. He promptly rolled around back and forth a bit. Now I wasnt the only one dealing with sudden and unwarranted bursts of energy. I laboriously reached over and grabbed the microscope. I let out a small moan since it was far out of my tiny arms' reach. I managed just barely to reach it with two fingers, but it was enough to pull it close. Once it was close, I plucked out a piece of hair and began to examine it.
“Grace, notice anything?”
“No,” I mumbled. My high-pitched voice was not properly conveying how annoyed I was by Rocky's question. I heard him roll back and forth as I examined the hair. The squeaking of the ball was very quickly getting on my extremely sensitive nerves. “Wocky, can you stop?” his name slurred a bit on my tongue. I had a pretty bad speech impediment when I was a kid. I was wondering when that was going to show up again.
“Can not stop,” Rocky said and kept rolling back and forth. I grumbled a little more to myself, trying not to let Rocky upset me right now. I magnified the microscope a bit more and carefully examined my hair. Everything seemed normal at first. The makeup of the hair is what you would expect to find from organic material like it. However, as I kept working, I started to notice little purple specs in the hair.
“Huh,” I said mostly to myself. That little word caused Rocky to stop his insistent rolling, turning to look over at me.
“What, what grace find?”
“Wittle puple particles.” I examined more and could see that the hair was covered in these microscopic dots. They almost looked like astrophage in a way. But they were the wrong color. These particles emitted purple light without UV exposure, unlike astrophage. “It's all over da hair.” I moved away from the microscope and quickly sketched an image on Rocky's image pad. This allowed drawings to be seen by eridians. But it made them more three-dimensional. I quickly drew a line, which was harder than it should have been, with my now chubby fingers making gripping the pen rather difficult. It managed to slip out of them twice, which did not help my already irritated state; it took everything in me not to throw the pen across the room and start screaming.
This might have been one of the worst predicaments I have found myself in yet.
I managed to hold back my toddler screams and finish up the drawing without dropping the pen again. Once finished, I moved it over to show Rocky. “See,” I pointed to the little dots. “They are all ower the sample.” Rocky nodded to me in his little ball.
“What are they?”
Great question, Rocky. Except Kit was actually a dumb question. Because of course I didn't know what the heck they were. “If I knew, I would tell you,” I grumbled a bit to him. His air bladders cleared, and he let out a loud hissing sound at me, and I realized I was being very rude to him. I ran my hand through my hair and put my hand on his ball. He had been nothing but patient and kind with me. Mind you, he was still an adult at the time, but I could still work on being better for him. “Sorry, wocky,” I told him gently and placed a hand on his ball.
He moved closer to me and put out his itty bitty hand to touch where mine was. I couldn't help it; I started to giggle a bit. His hand was so little now. It was honestly adorable. “Why, Grace, laugh?”
“Sowy, your hand is just so cute!” I said, and an honest-to-good squeal came out of my throat.
“Yes, very cute. What else did hair show?”
“Just da puple dots.”
Rocky hummed a bit, thinking to himself for a moment. “From wormhole?”
“Dats my only guess,” I said and pulled the hair from the microscope. “We won't know more till we can find it again.”
“So, what do we do till then?” Rocky asked with a small hum. We still had about 12 hours of travel left before we reached the wormhole site. I shrugged a little bit. “Whatever we wants.”
“Im gonna find you!” Rocky sang, and I held back a snicker in the storage bin I was currently squeezed into. Rocky had asked many questions about young humans. How they behaved and how their bodies worked. I went over basic anatomy and growth cycles until our young brains got bored of it(which was only about fifteen minutes). I had told Rocky there were a lot of games that children on Earth liked to play. Since I couldn't play the Eridian games, most of them were singing games, and Rocky loved to remind me that I had a terrible singing voice. So, we settled on an Earth childhood classic.
I could hear the soft clicks of Rocky's ball as he got closer and closer. Then I felt a little bump against the drawer I was in, and I pushed myself out. “No, fair, you can see through walls,” I complained, but I was laughing. I should have expected that this game would be extremely easy for Rocky.
“Rocky is just much better at this game than Grace,” he said, puffing up his tiny little body a bit at those words.
“Fine, we try another game.” I thought for a moment, reached my hand out, and smacked the top of the ball. “Tag your it,” I giggled and quickly took off into the Hail Mary.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you have to chase me!” I yelled and quickly headed back into the lab. I could hear the ball coming after me, and I quickly moved myself as far into the lab as I could. Making it just slightly harder for him to get to me. He rolled into the lab chirping a bit; I think he was maybe laughing too, a little hard to tell now that his song sounded so much different than what I was used to. He rolled up towards me, and I swiftly jumped over his ball and took off. I could hear his grumbled song as I ran off to the dormitory.
I curled up in the tiny crew cot, gently picking up Rocky and settling him next to me. It was nice that he was actually small enough to do this. He had always wanted to be as close as possible to me while I slept, and now he could be. Rocky rolled himself over so he was right next to my side. I laid one arm over the ball, and Rocky began to hum softly. I smiled a bit and laid my head down on the pillow.
“Grace?” Rocky asked softly.
“Yes, Wocky,” my speech made him laugh a little. But I didn't take offense.
“What if we can't fix it?”
“Then we screwed.” Rocky did not like that answer and just grumbled a bit. I pulled him a little closer. “We will figure it out.”
“And if we do not?”
“Then it will be okay.”
“It will?”
“Of course we will have each other.” Rocky liked that answer a lot better and nodded a bit. I let out a yawn and let myself drift off to sleep.
“This is a very, very, very bad idea,” Rocky said as we both looked at the airlock.
“It's our only option,” I reassured him as I cleared out all the items from the airlock. Which would have been a struggle for a grown man already, but was pretty much impossible for two literal children. We had to team up: I would lift the items as much as I could, and Rocky would push them. It took roughly six hours to do so. Both of our young bodies were absolutely spent from it. But I didn't want to wait and risk us being stuck like this. If we used the collector now, the chances of that happening would be much slimmer.
Rocky gestured for me to grab the wench and secure it on our side of the airlock. The plan was to leave the collector in the airlock, open it, let the item be sucked out into space, wait an hour, then pull it up. Hopefully resulting in us getting some samples from the wormhole’s left-behind radiation, which we could then use to figure out how to reverse this. Then continue our journey to Erid. Cause again, not a lot of fuel and food; we had to get back on our journey one way or another, or we would never make it.
If that meant showing up as children, then we would do it.
“Are we weady?”
“No,” Rocky said, moving his ball behind me.
“Scaredy cat!”
“What's a cat?”
“What's a-never mind. Mary, open airlock!”
“Opening the airlock is not advised, Dr. Grace. Would you still-”
“Yes, open it!”
With a loud whoosh, the container was jettisoned into space, launching the two of us against the extra xenonite wall Rokcy had built for us. Even at a quarter of his size, he was still incredibly fast with the xenonite. We both let out small cries as we hit the wall, but thankfully it was nowhere near as bad as the last time we used a collector. Which nearly killed both of us. I scooped Rocky up and moved us both away from the wall. He sang a hum of thanks, and I brought the two of us back to the lab.
I sat Rocky back down on the table, and he once again got the “zoomies” rolling back and forth for several minutes. I laughed as I watched struggling again to get on top of the stool. I pinwheeled my legs a bit until I could get back on top of the stool. “What is it like for younger Eridans on Erid?” I asked him as he kept rolling back and forth.
“It is scary.”
“It is?”
“Yes, so small. So fragile. Many things could harm a young eridian.”
“Hmm,” I said, thinking. “You know children on Earth deal width same.”
“Yes, because you are so squishy,” Rocky said. “Young eridians are squishy too.”
“You are?”
Rocky nodded and rolled his ball over to me. He gestured to the little panel in his ball that would allow him to reach towards me and for me to do the same. However, he had only ever reached out towards me. I very carefully and slowly reached out to him. He moved his carapace closer to the panel so I could very gently touch it. He was right. It was squishy. Much like a crab, his shell hadn't hardened yet. “It's soft,” I said and gave it one more squeeze before pulling my hand out. “When do they harden?”
Rocky clicked his claws together, counting for a few moments. “Typically after about twenty years.” Wow, that was a very long time for a creature to be so vulnerable. But Eridians were at the top of their food chains, lived in societies, and had social norms in place to keep them safe during vulnerable times, just like humans.
“Eridians and humans more similar than we taught.” Rocky hummed and nodded. “We protect young very similarly. Humans' bones are very sensitive when whittle. Easy for young humans to get hurt. Have groups and places to keep them safe.” Rocky nodded and moved closer to me again.
“Because humans and eridians are cousins,” Rocky commented. I laughed at that, forgetting our conversations about the possibility that Humans and eridians originated from the same things. Creating very similar life.
“Yes, cousins.”
“One hour is done, Dr. Grace,” Mary helpfully reminded us.
“Tanks Mary!”
“Thank you, Mary!” Rocky chimed in as well. I swung myself off the stool and then grabbed Rocky's ball. I carried my friend over to the wench and hit the automatic retrieval button to begin its recall. This was so much better than manually having to do it like last time. Way less dangerous in this body too. After a few minutes, the collector came flying, literally, hitting the wall with such force it cracked our xenonite shield a bit. “Mary, shut airlock!” I yelled, not wanting either of us to get thrown out into space.
“Sealing airlock!” She said in her typical cheery voice, and in just a matter of seconds the airlock was sealed. Rocky and I both let out a sigh of relief that we were not having a repeat of last time. We moved the shield, and I quickly grabbed the collector and brought it over to the lab. I really hope this stuff works, because I was getting a little tired of having to climb onto the top of the stool.
I was struggling more than usual this time, but thankfully Rocky noticed and rolled over. He banged his ball against the stool, and I slowly stepped on top of it and used it as a step to get up. “Tanks Wocky.” he chirped back, but I felt bad. There was no way I could reach him, leaving him stuck on the floor. Rocky did not care though.
“Open container.”
“Okay, okay, bossy.”
“Not bossy want fixed.”
Right, me too. I gently opened the containers, took my scraper, and scraped the samples out of the containers onto petri dishes. I did that with each of the collection vials until I had ten dishes full of samples. I could tell right away we had done the right thing because those same purple particles found in my hair were also in the dish. “Its da same,” I told him.
“As sample?”
“Yep, now I just gotta separate it from the other space junk and see what it can do.”
“Okay, hurry. Do not want to be baby.”
“Hey, you were having fun yesterday.”
“True.”
I slowly and carefully separated all of the purple dust, which I was calling Wormhole particles; yes, I am still bad at naming. We went from ten Petri dishes to four. It was better than only one, but that didnt leave us with much to work with. I was gently screwing the lid on the last dish, ready to examine them, when I felt Rocky get restless again. He was slowly bumping my stool over and over.
“Wocky, stop!” I whined.
“Bored.”
“Yeah, I know, but I need more time.” Rocky didn't care and kept hitting the stool.
“Wocky!” I swung one of my legs out in protest and managed ever so slightly to kick the top of his ball.
“Did you kick me?” Rocky said in a tone so angry I had the fortune of never hearing it before now. Rocky started singing a bunch of words I did not know, most likely swears, and threw his arms up in a fit. Glad to see I wasn't the only one who could have tantrums in their current form.
“Sorry, Wocky,” again, he didnt care. I picked up one of the dishes and began to unscrew it just as he came over and rammed the stool hard.
In one quick motion, the Wormhole Particles went flying, and I went crashing onto the ground in a spray of bright purple dust. I hit the ground with a loud thud, but luckily for Rocky I didnt feel the urge to cry. I did feel the urge to throttle him.
“Rocky!” I yelled, and my hands flew up to my throat. “What the-” I spoke again, and it was my voice, my normal adult voice. I glanced down at my hands; they were the right size again. I quickly rose to my normal six feet. “The particles work!” I yelled happily, looking down at Rocky, expecting to see my friend at his normal age. Instead, all I saw was a xenonite ball covered in purple dust. Moving over, I gently picked up the still little Rocky and brought him right up to my face.
“You're lucky that worked, and that you're cute.” He just gave me an undignified honk in response.
After sweeping up all of the particles, Rocky was back to his side with a small container of the stuff. Fifteen minutes later, my friend was back to his normal age, once again in his more flexible xenonite suit. “Rocky!’ I yelled happily, and the two of us wrapped each other in a tight hug.
I lay in bed, Rocky on the floor beside me; to his dismay, he was too big to fit in the bed with me. So on the floor he would have to stay. At least in his suit he could be relatively close.
“Good night, Mary,” I called.
“Goodnight, Mary,” Rocky echoed.
“Goodnight, Rock,” I said and rolled over to my side and closed my eyes.
“Goodnight, Grace.”
I smiled to myself and started to drift off. “Grace?” I regretfully opened my eyes and rolled over to look at Rocky.
“Yeah, bud?”
“Would Grace have been okay if we had been stuck that way?”
“What do you mean?”
“If we had been stuck that way.” He started to fidget with his fingers. “Would Grace still like Rocky." i smiled a little at him, letting one of my arms fall and touch the top of his head.
“Of course, bud. Because regardless. It's still you. And it was still me.”
“Right, still grace. Like grace.”
“Like you too, pal. And I always will.”