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Well, gosh darn it. This is awkward.
“Hey, Rocky?” I say. As soon as I do, I wonder why I felt like that needed to be my first reaction. I mean, he can’t pronounce human names anyway.
But come on. I’m twelve light-years from home, and apparently, I still don’t know who I am. I have to talk to someone.
“What is it?” he says.
“I have, uh, something important to tell you.”
He sets down the xenonite panel that he’s been working on and gives me his full attention. “Yes?”
“It, uh, turns out my name isn’t actually DuBois.”
“What?” He drops his voice. “Why you ♫♩♩♪, question?”
“I assume that means saying something that’s not true? Our word is ‘lying.’” I pause, adding his word to my dictionary. From the Eridian perspective, first contact could have gone better. The first technologically advanced alien they meet, and it’s a crazy biped who starts off by lying to them. Admittedly, it could have also been worse. “I didn’t lie on purpose. I really thought my name was DuBois.”
“Why you not know name, question? This human culture?”
“Not really,” I admit. It would be a lot easier if it were: oh, every five years or so we change our names and need to ask other humans what they want to call us next. “I couldn’t remember.”
“No understand.”
“Here.” I gesture to my suit. “I’m not sure if you can see this? When I woke up from the coma, I was looking around for uniforms. There were three sets. They have different human letters and symbols written on them. The only one written in a language that I knew how to read said ‘DuBois,’ so I figured that was my name.”
“Long sleep make you not know name?”
“I guess so.”
“Bad bad bad.”
“It killed both my friends,” I point out. “Losing a few memories isn’t that bad in comparison.”
“Silly. Only humans say this thing.”
I guess if you and everyone around you had a photographic memory, the idea of something slipping your mind—and not even knowing what you’d forgotten—would be pretty scary. “But it’s okay. My memories are coming back now!”
“Good! What is you name, question?”
“I still don’t know. But I remember who DuBois is, and I’m not him.”
“What?”
“DuBois was our science expert. He comes from the same part of Earth as me. It makes sense that his name would be on the uniforms and the patches. But he had a backup, too...Something must have happened that meant that neither of them could go on the mission. I guess. And they sent me instead?”
“They not understand Astrophage like you, question?”
“I doubt it. DuBois had three doctorates, I remember now. I’m sure he could have picked it up.”
“New word?”
“Um...if you want to become an expert in a science field, you go to school and do research for a long time. Sometimes helping teach students who are a little younger than you, sometimes doing your own research.” What would Eridian academia be like? They probably zoom through all the prereqs if they all have flawless memories. I wonder if the name-calling is as petty as on Earth. “After that, you could become a professor, an important scientist who does their own research. To go back and do it all over again two more times is...well, you’d have to be really focused.”
I wonder if he was going back for a fourth degree when the Hail Mary came around. Maybe at that point a suicide mission would have been preferable.
“He is good science human. You name can be DuBois as ♩♫♫♫♪.”
“As a...tribute? In his honor? I’m not sure that would be appropriate.”
“Humans not do this, question?”
“Maybe when they’re naming a baby. But I’m already wearing this guy’s clothes and riding on his spaceship; I can’t take his name.”
“If I call you ♩♩♫♪ still, is good, question?”
That was his name for me; G rising to D major. “Sure. How did you come up with that one?”
“You are science human. I give chords from science Eridians on our ship. ♩♩♪♩always very careful and checks work twice. ♫♪♩♫♫ has happy words for future and likes to sing. Name is ♩♫♫♫♪.”
“Well, thanks, buddy,” I say.
He’s the only person who’s going to talk to me for years. Really, it’s his name for me that matters.
It would still be nice to remember.
“Thinking machine! You explain,” Rocky demands.
He is really excited about that laptop. I can’t blame him; if I met an alien who understood a lot of science I didn’t, and he left me an artifact containing all his species’ knowledge, I’d want to play around with it—but be terrified about breaking it—too. And if he returned just a few months after we’d said goodbye forever...Well. I can see where he’s coming from. It’s just that it’s also the same setup humans use for less-important stuff like Myst or Space Invaders.
“There’s a lot inside there,” I tell him. “Can you narrow it down?”
“Show how to search for human science article. You say Eridians shape like eight-legged Earth creature. Find information about that.”
So I load up Wikipedia and navigate to the page for spiders.
It takes him a while to understand the concept of “encyclopedia.” “This page explain many many things about creature.”
“We don’t have perfect memories,” I remind him. “If we need to remember which spiders are venomous, or which spin webs, we need a reference for that.”
“But science humans do much much research about these animals. New articles every year. Show these.”
“Those aren’t on your laptop. Even the terabyte drives don’t have that much room.”
“Stupid human! You tell me Hail Mary has all publications. Go get!”
“Fine,” I say, and pull up a reference database. Immediately I’m flooded with what was, at the time of launch, relatively new spider research; genome sequencing that reclassified some clades, convergent evolution strategies for trapping prey, and so on.
Man, I hope there’s something like this for current grad students, instead of having the articles be paywalled behind a dozen different sites. If there’s still such a thing as grad school, I mean.
“Amaze. Now find astrophage articles!”
“Most of the astrophage research was part of Project Hail Mary,” I explain. “So it would be in a different database. But here, I can show you some of the early observations of the Petrova line.”
“Good. Now old articles about alien life.”
“What? Astrophage was the first type of alien life we discovered. At first we weren’t sure it was alive.”
“You say that you think about what molecules alien life needs, even before know there is other life in galaxy. You write article about this.”
“Sure, but that was years ago. It’s really outdated now.”
“You find.”
“What?”
“You say Hail Mary have every human science article. Even ones you think not so important. Find article about life that needs water. Then you find you human name.”
What?
My memories had come back, and they hadn’t changed anything. I understood how and why I’d gotten on the Hail Mary, and in the end, I’d accepted the risk of a suicide mission anyway. I could remember every detail about my sad, boring, life, except what people called me. I was probably never going to see Earth or speak to another human again; what did it matter?
But it had been Rocky’s idea. Rocky, who couldn’t pronounce it, wanted me to know who I’d been. How could I say no?
I started doing a few keyword searches, then narrowed down the timeframe. A few names I recognized right away from the literature; no, I definitely wasn’t Singh et al, and Chapman had been my advisor. Nelson, Bradley seemed about the right age; I clicked on his name. He’d stayed in academia and continued publishing right up until the Hail Mary had launched. Nope.
Then I saw it. An Analysis of Water-Based Assumptions and Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models. Not a very catchy title, but the section titles were definitely me.
The author’s name was Grace, Ryland. Not even a co-author to catch flak for me. This was definitely it.
“Ryland Grace,” I say aloud.
“What name means, question?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met another Ryland before,” I say aloud. “My mom’s grandpa was a Ryan, but I never met him. I think they just liked the idea of me being unique. It kind of sucks when the personalized souvenirs like mugs and keychains and pens had plenty of names for kids like Christopher and Justin and Matthew, but there were never any Rylands.” Yes, this sounds right.
“What?”
“Grace is a family name, the same as my dad and my grandpa. I guess sometimes it’s a first name for girls, too. But it’s also a word.”
“Means what?”
“When, uh—some humans believe that, even if they do bad things and should probably be punished, they get lucky and they get a second chance anyway—” Nope, I’m not going to try to explain theology I don’t really understand to an Eridian. He can look it up on Wikipedia. “Um, someone who can move very smoothly or elegantly is moving with grace.”
“Like♩♫♩♫♩♫. Humans think Blip-A has not ♩♫♩♫♩♫, question?”
“What?”
“Human ships round and not flat to move well through space. Hail Mary have ♩♫♩♫♩♫. You think Blip-A very strange ship because it has many flat pieces. Not understand how strong xenonite is.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, I guess that’s probably a good translation.”
“You want me call you ♩♫♩♫♩♫ now, question?”
I know my human name now. And I’m grateful for it. Rocky has his own Eridian name, which I can’t pronounce, even if I’m going to keep calling him Rocky.
But part of Ryland Grace died on Earth. I was sent on a one-way trip, in another man’s clothes, in the hope that I’d choose to do the right thing. For Earth, and—as it turns out—for Erid, too.
“It’s up to you,” I say. “But right now, I think the name you gave me means more.”
“We overlay,” says Rocky. “When multiple Eridians talk, pronounce many chords at once. Makes new harmony. Complicated. You will like.”
Who knows? Maybe by the time we get to Erid I’ll have found a better way to explain the other kind of grace, and there will be another layer to add to the chord. Or maybe it’ll just be a bizarre cacaphony for the first human to come to their planet.
But for now, it’s enough to know who I am. And, more importantly, to have a friend who knows me.