Chapter Text
Grace
I wake up naturally, which is a first. All night, I’ve been waking up to my body moving without my input. But, somehow, I’ve managed to get a decent amount of sleep anyway. Good thing.
I don’t sense the Thing in my body, at the moment. I can move normally, so it feels like it’s not there anymore. “Hello?” I say.
“You are awake,” the thing replies.
I sigh and sit up. “Mary, lights on,” I say.
I’m still having a hard time processing what happened last night. The Thing won the argument, and then it did what I wanted anyway. Why?
I stretch. It feels good.
“Good morning, Dr. Grace,” Mary says.
I laugh sadly. I’m not just Dr. Grace anymore, but Mary doesn’t know that.
I go to the bathroom and get a good look at myself in the mirror. My eyes are puffy from crying so much yesterday. I look terrible.
“What’s that?” the Thing asks, using my hand to point at the mirror.
“Mirror,” I say.
The Thing waves my hand in front of the mirror, then reaches up to touch my face again. “Not bad,” it says.
“Good,” I say. “Not bad is good.”
“Good.”
I’m a bit confused that the Thing is acting like it’s never seen a mirror before. What was its “Thing life” like before it found me?
I don’t have the vocabulary to ask that, but maybe I can figure out whether to ask it if it’s alone. I point to myself. “I am human,” I say. “You are Thing.”
“No understand.”
Time to explain personal pronouns. I have an idea for how to do it. “I have this body,” I say. “This body is mine. You have no body. This body is not yours.”
“Oh, understand. You have body. Yes. You are human. I am Thing.”
Wow, not only did it get what I was trying to say, it seems to at least sort of understand the conjugation of the verb “to be.” That’s impressive.
“Other Things in your ship?” I ask.
“No,” it says. “One Thing. I. One human. You. One body. This.”
Okay, so, if it’s telling the truth, it’s alone. But that could just mean, “alone in this general area,” not “alone in the universe.”
How do I ask it about if there are other Things somewhere else? We haven’t discussed locations yet.
Suddenly, the Thing makes me leave the bathroom. It finds my shoes and holds one of them next to my foot.
“Your foot is where, question? Your foot is out of shoe.” It puts on the shoe. “Your foot is where, question? Your foot is in the shoe.”
That new word must mean “where.” I share my word for where with the Thing.
The Thing continues. “I come from my ship to your body. Your ship come from where, question?”
Oh no, we’re not going there. I’m not telling this Thing how to get to Earth. “No,” I say. “Where does your ship come from?”
“My ship come from Erid.”
What does that mean? “Where is that?” I ask.
The Thing pulls the shoe off again. By putting my foot at different distances from the shoe, it teaches me near and far.
“Erid far far far,” it says. “Other star.”
I think Erid is either the star or a planet. Probably a planet. I bet the ship would melt near the star.
“Are there other Things on Erid?” I ask in my head.
“Yes.”
“How many Things?”
“Number words,” it says.
We exchange words for millions and billions, or rather, I tell it those words and it creates words to match those. It uses a base six numbering system, I’ve learned, so it has to adjust its numbers to match mine.
Finally, it gives me a number. 26 billion, 121 million, 388 thousand and 32. I think that’s a round number in base six. “That many Things?” I ask.
“Yes.”
There are more of them than there are of us.
“How many humans, question?”
“No,” I say. I’m not going to give away our strength. It’s probably just asking that to find out how many bodies are available.
The Thing starts moving my hands again. “Hand go around hand. Erid go around star. My star. My star die. Bad bad bad. Things die, bad.”
Wait. Is it saying what I think it’s saying? There’s something wrong with their star too? But this is the Thing’s star. Unless…is it the Thing’s star? I just assumed that. What if it isn’t?
I give it my word for star, then I say. “My star die. Bad bad bad.”
“You and I save stars,” it says.
“What is save?”
“Make good. You and I make stars good.”
Oh, I think I get it. It’s trying to say, “My star is in trouble. Your star is also in trouble. Let’s fix this. It’s saying it wants to help.
We’ll, I don’t believe that. It’s probably lying. But there’s a chance it’s telling the truth, and if it is, maybe there’s hope for Earth.
“Okay,” I say. “You and I save stars.” I stand up. “I’m going to show you the Petrovascope.”
Rocky
The scientific equipment the smart pet has is amazing. (I’ve started calling it the smart pet now. That’s my word for its species, what it calls “human.”) These smart pets are very advanced. If anyone can figure out how to save our planets, they can. I feel more hope than I have in a long time.
“Microscope, good good good,” I say.
We talk a bit more. It wants to get an Astrophage sample. It has equipment to do that! This is great! I’m so glad it showed up.
“Good good good,” I think, “But first we need to get in to my ship.”
“In your ship?” it asks. “What is in your ship?”
“Xenonite and engineering tools.”
“No understand.”
“We get in to my ship,” I think.
“Please, no.”
It’s scared. It doesn’t know anything about my ship, and it’s probably still scared of me, so why wouldn’t it be scared of my ship too?
I’ll have to find better words to explain to it why we need my stuff, and then, once we can communicate better, and when it’s had the chance to get used to the idea, we’ll figure out how to get my stuff out of my ship. I’m feeling very optimistic about this now. With its scientific equipment and my stuff, we just might figure this out. “So,” I ask, “Your ship robot is where, question?”