Work Text:
There once was a teacher from Earth
Whose sunlight had shown a strange dearth
He flew to the stars
And got a few scars
And found a new friend of great worth
I sit back in my chair. “What do you think, Rocky?”
“Better than haiku. Rhyme sound very good.”
This is high praise from Rocky. The trip to Erid is long, and some days, nothing goes wrong: instead of saving the species, we just need to find new ways to pass the time. I never was much good at poetry, but I’m the leading human poet within 10 light years, and I’m enjoying my moment in the sun—so to speak, given that the nearest star is now just a faraway pinprick of light.
I have immediate access to literally every great work of literature humanity has ever published, and instead I’m making up bad limericks to impress my friend. Typical human arrogance. Rocky and I are still very much in the honeymoon phase of our relationship, where everything about the other person is fascinating and endearing. Given that we have many more years of being each other’s sole companion, I reckon we might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Rocky really likes stories about himself. I’ve tried reading to him—everything from The Canterbury Tales to Winnie-the-Pooh—and he always holds himself in an attentive pose while he listens, but it’s clear he’s mainly doing it as a kindness to me. Sometimes he’ll ask me to tell him again about how we first met and how we learned each other’s language, or how I saved him and got him back through the airlock. He says he wants to make sure he hasn’t missed any details, but given his perfect memory, it’s clear he just likes hearing the stories.
My current project is teaching Rocky about computers. It’s fun: I’m a teacher, and he likes learning and likes fixing things. I found a computer science textbook in the ship’s library, and I’m adapting the course for Eridians. Not that Rocky needs my help to understand binary: he can effortlessly do “convert this binary number to decimal” exercises, even though Eridians think in base 6. But I’m thinking ahead, and I want to have something to do when I get to Erid.
Obviously, I’ll be the first and most interesting alien specimen in their zoo—but I’ve already had years of being prodded and probed. At least I was in an induced coma at the time! What I really want to do is teach, and Rocky is my model student. We’re currently on the section in the textbook about binary coded decimal, where you encode each decimal digit into 4 binary bits. This lets you fit 2 decimal digits in each 8-bit byte. I’ve reworked it for base 6: you can fit each base 6 digit into 3 bits. I wonder: will the Eridian computers of the future have 6-bit or 9-bit bytes? Or will they end up using ternary logic, with 3 possible values for each digit?
Meanwhile, Rocky is keen to learn to program the laptops I brought with me. He’s building a temperature-controlled box for one of my wireless keyboards, to keep in his part of the ship, with little rods that let him push the keys. Once that’s working, his next project is going to be running wires from his area directly to the computer, so that he can build the first keyboard for Eridians. I know he’s excited to get home, and for everyone there to have access to our technology, but I’m getting quite good at reading his emotions, and I think he’s rather enjoying having such exclusive access to Earth technology.
I’ve tried to ask Rocky about all the years he spent alone at Tau Ceti, but he really doesn’t like talking about it. 46 Earth years: that’s 400 Erid years, or rather I∀ℓ+ Erid years. Even for an Eridian, that’s a devastatingly long time. Occasionally, though, something will strike a chord, and he’ll open up. Like the dice. One day, I was looking through Ilyukhina’s personal duffel bag. I know that sounds morbid, but it’s the only connection I have to Earth, and to my dead friends. It turns out, she packed a travel backgammon set: maybe she was into gambling as well as vodka? I was excited, and showed the set to Rocky.
“♫♪” His tone is high, excited, but I don’t recognise the word. “You wait.” He rushes off, pulling himself through his xenonite tunnel. Moments later he returns, with two shiny metal cubes in one of his hands. His carapace is tilted higher than I’ve seen it for days. He places them in the airlock between our sections, and says the new word again, “♫♪”.
It takes me a moment to understand. We’ve talked about shapes and geometric structures before. But when I pick up the cubes, I see delicate etching, with a symbol on each face: ℓ I V λ + ∀. They’re Eridian dice! When you have only six digits in your numbering system, I guess it makes perfect sense to just use a different digit on each face.
“I play ♫♪ game with other crew. On journey to Tau Ceti.” He slumps a little. “And then many ♫♪ game alone. Sometimes I pretend they still there. I play their parts, say their words. I not act normal. But somehow it help.”
Now we have a weekly backgammon night on the Hail Mary. We’ve set up parallel boards, one on Rocky’s side of the xenonite barrier and one on mine, so that we can play together. Rocky’s still trying to teach me his fiendishly complicated Eridian dice games, but he seems to really enjoy backgammon too. And sometimes we tell each other stories about our fallen comrades, and somehow it helps.
It’s game night again. I’m drinking a vodka surprise, as usual: in other words, a glass of plain water. The surprise is there’s no vodka. But it’s really no surprise that there’s no vodka left for drinking, and my attempts to make Taumoeba beer have been unsuccessful so far. I’ve saved the last of Ilyukhina’s bottle to take to Erid, in the hopes that the Eridian scientists might be able to synthesise some more. Rocky rolls the dice: double λ, and he wins again. “Bump my fist, Grace!”