Archive of Our Own

I knew food would thin eventually.

Supplies were dwindling which Armando in particular didn’t seem to like. I don’t think he was coded to function for this long, this far into a journey, no matter where it was to. Everybody had assumed the crew of the Hail Mary would be dead long before their food supplies hit zero. There were, as I discovered digging through storage, a number of ways to commit suicide on the ship. I tried not to think about that.

Armando has been running into a lot of small logic issues recently. Taking longer to bring out food for me, not understanding commands he was fine with before; I was never meant to make it this far, it makes sense that he wasn’t built to last forever. Still annoying. Maybe if I don’t die before we get to Erid I can fix him up. Even with my limited coding and robotics knowledge.

Things are running sparse and we still have a long way to go. I did the math. I did it three times over, worked it again and again in my head like smoothening down a quilt. It seemed like there would always be creases, though.

I had run it through again and again as I worked, as I checked the Taumoeba farms, as I tried tirelessly to sleep. My food will last me until the time to get to Erid drops just under a year. Then, it runs out and I have to get creative. After that happens, I can eat the coma slurry that’s left and then use what I learn from my current experiments trying to mix Taumoeba with other compounds to make food. After that, it’s plain Taumoeba for me. Shudder.

It isn’t going to be pleasant to eat but it’s calories. Rocky and I did a Taumoeba taste test at one point. It was disgusting. Not so much to do with the inoffensive, almost nonexistent taste but the gluey, gummy, hand-sanitiser gloop that it had for a texture. It felt like it was squirming as I ate it, though that was probably placebo. Same way I get freaked out if I think about probiotic yogurt for too long. But because I have to eat it, I will.

I’ve been eyeing the timer recently, counting down the weeks of food left to spare. I’ve been rationing it, spreading it thinner and thinner, though Rocky scolds me for not eating enough. He’s like my mother sometimes.

Rocky’s been working too. But I’ve glossed over him in particular. Because his reaction to the entire situation has been… hard.

This all started out fun as all hell. We partied more—we saved our stars! We were two of the most accomplished creatures in our galaxies. I know I was probably going to be a hot topic back on Earth whenever the beetles made their way there. And we were together again. We deserved it.

As things got more comfortable, though, and we settled as roommates for the foreseeable, it seemed to slowly dawn on Rocky that I didn’t have enough resources for the trip back to Erid.

And lately it’s been even worse.

He’s been distant. Not cold or dismissive (okay, maybe sometimes), not overly harsh. His mind is just somewhere else. It took a long time but I’ve been picking up on Eridian body language quite well. And Rocky has been despondent.

He never expresses it in words (an Eridian thing or a Rocky thing, I don’t know), never wants to talk much about his feelings on the matter, but the thought always seems to linger in the background of his daily life. A shadow festering in the darkest corners of the ship, waiting for its presence to finally be addressed. Because we were both thinking it; it’s been looming over me, too.

Rocky is particularly touchy about the subject. He talks less and less. And he’s always working on his ‘project,’ so he never actually has any time to do the sciencey stuff with me! I sound jealous but it’s really just insatiable curiosity.

He’s been working very hard on something he refuses to show me, says it’s for my birthday. The first time Rocky said that, even I had forgotten it was coming up to that time in a couple of Earth months. I questioned how he even knew when it was but apparently I leave my calendar open a lot on one of the sixteen laptops the Mary is stocked with. So.

In any case, birthdays aside, he won’t tell me what the darned thing is!

Rocky is very good at keeping secrets. Because Eridians never forget anything, they never forget who they’ve told information to, who shouldn’t know certain things, or any details of whatever secret is being kept. I tried to explain the concept of Chinese Whispers to him once and he got very confused trying to comprehend such a thing.

And so he never had slips of the tongue around me, always remembered to put his secret project away before leaving a room, and my begging to know never ever got through to his cold little heart (but that’s probably just a Rocky thing).

All I can guess it that it’s made of xenonite, it’s big (he has a lot to put away usually and shrieks at me if I don’t give him enough time to pack up), and it’s something I’m going to like.

Which, to be honest, I’m not so sure of. Rocky always means well but sometimes he’s a little tone-deaf. At least when it comes to our cultures meshing. He certainly didn’t notice (or didn’t care about) my apprehension when he moved into the Mary the first time. But I try to put my trust in him. I love all of the intricate models he gives me. Maybe it’s something like that.

And Rocky is a fantastic engineer, not to mention an even better friend. So hopefully it will be palatable and won’t be something terrifying like a mask of my own face. Actually, I think I’d still like that, oddly enough.

I guess I’ll find out what it is soon enough, it’s about a month until my birthday, so if he’s going to get it done on time I don’t have long to wait.

—

I’m getting thinner.

It’s my own fault, really. Desperation to not go back to the coma slurry, stretching my almost entirely depleted food supply so thin it starts to wilt apart. But I can’t get it out of my head that my coma slurry has been… tampered with.

I can’t help but distrust Stratt.

After everything she did for me, I should trust her. She lifted me up in the world, even if it was out of necessity. She gave me the chance to be bigger than my place in the world, than the man I was before the Petrova Line. I should believe that she wouldn’t intentionally give me amnesia, intentionally damage the fabric of my mind and the iron wall that was our friendship. As much as she would never admit it was a friendship. I should trust her belief in me.

But. After everything she did to me. After getting a face full of dead grass, tasting my tears, a sharp slicing in my neck. I can’t. I can’t help but think that she’d be cold enough for it. Cold enough to slip something nasty into my nutrient intake, into my brain, for the sanctity of the mission. Cold enough to slip her hand inside and pluck out memories at will. Memories that would keep me from doing my job. It wouldn’t be logical to let me escape memory loss, to let me stay angry at her after three years of a coma. After thirteen for her. It wouldn’t be logical to be kind. And Stratt is all logic, as I’ve learnt.

I’m sort of being dramatic. It isn’t like that. It isn’t like this was the ideal situation for her—

I stop myself. No more sympathy. I can’t help it: I remember what I can about the day, remember the trembling in her voice that she tried to suffocate, remember her telling me it wasn’t hard to ask people to die. To ask me to die. She tried to pretend that wasn’t hard either. But it was.

I can’t feel the sympathy I want to, even if it’s in my nature. I can’t do it. Not with all this anger still rushing through my ears. Not when I can still feel the healing wounds.

So I eye the storage where the coma slurry is kept. And save breakfast for dinner.

Coffee for me this morning doesn’t even taste like anything. Rocky is still tinkering away at his little project. He’s put up actual curtains now, large squares of Eridian textiles he brought with him off his ship and has hung them around the inside of his geometric xenonite bubble in the lab.

It’s getting a little ridiculous but I can respect his commitment to a surprise. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing on Erid, to guard the integrity of a surprise with your life. I imagine two big Eridian body guards outside of a surprise party refusing to let the birthday girl inside and chuckle.

“What is funny, question?” Rocky asks from inside his batcave.

“Nothing,” I reply. “Are you almost done yet? I’m dying to know what you’re making.”

“Be patient,” Rocky grumbles.

I grumble back. “It’s not my fault you’re taking forever and then bragging about how good it is.”

“Rocky is not.” I hear him shuffle from inside his fortress of secrecy, picking up some tools and tinkering away. “You are like young Eridian, freshly hatched, already screaming about coming-of-age party. Grace will get gift on birthday. No more soon. Patient.”

“I am not screaming,” I correct him, “and don’t you dare compare me to a baby!”

“Stop act like one then.”

I gawk at that, hoping he hears and acknowledges my offence. “You are so rude.”

“Good,” Rocky says, notes chirping a little higher. He has this tone which signals to me when he’s joking around.

We hardly need the translation program after all the time we’ve spent together. It’s useful to keep around in the background right now just in case but my hope is to abolish the need for the technology forever. Rocky is already essentially fluent in English (Eridian photographic memories, how I envy you…) but just can’t speak it. The same way my singular set of vocal cords could never produce the beautiful, layered tones and chirps of Eridianese.

“If really not baby,” Rocky begins, “how old is Grace turning, question?”

I hate that I have to think about it. “Umm…” yeah, nope. Still have no idea. I try not to let it bother me. Even people who aren’t recovering amnesiacs can’t remember how old they are sometimes.

“How Grace not know, question?” Rocky asks, voice pitching up a bit at the end to signal incredulity. I scramble to find my wallet. I’m not sure why it was packed, to be honest, but I’m choosing to believe Armando smuggled it in for me. And not that it was almost definitely just left in a pants pocket unaccounted for.

I find it sitting in a pile of stuff near the dormitory entrance and pull out my drivers license. Every time I look at this picture I cringe a little; despite not remembering it being taken, I was very clearly not ready and am making an odd face as a result. I look to my birthday and then do some mental math for a second. 1986 to… and then… wait—

I’m turning forty in space.

I groan out loud and smack the stupid card to my stupid forehead. This is both kind of awesome and really annoying. It’s a milestone birthday, supposed to be spent with friends, family… celebrating your birthday in space is cool and all, but having been up here so long, it sort of lost its novelty after a while. Darn, and it’s on a Wednesday, too.

I always remembered the times when my class found out my birthday fondly. Because it wasn’t necessarily a secret, per se. I just liked to see how long I could go before one of them eventually got curious, asked, and then was shocked along with the entire class when I said “Figure it out.”

This had become an unintentional tradition for my classes. My kids would bombard me with questions at the last five minutes of class, one of the only times I would let them stray entirely off-topic and run free talking with the other students and with me about whatever they wanted. I was filled in on a lot of interpersonal drama those times. As an unwilling participant, might I add.

Those were always one of my favourite parts of lessons. Sometimes we’d play the beanbag is lava, sometimes we’d chat about our days, sometimes I’d let them talk amongst themselves and have some sneaky phone time playing 2048.

Either way, whenever they did manage to figure out the mystery of Mr. Grace’s birthday, it would always be a very entertaining lesson. Because nobody would be able to stay focused or sit still until the end when I’d finally give them the pass to talk amongst themselves and then have various dates hurled in my face. And a couple of them always got it right.

And the times when my birthday fell on a week day, those were especially fun. And emotional. I can remember Susie from a couple years back bringing in a whole tray of muffins her mom had helped her bake. Oliver made me a paper pop-up book of facts on the solar system, the little art scholar. Kaelyn made me some more beanbags—they made them! With actual yarn and skill! I almost cried that day, so overwhelmed with gratitude and fondness for these kids. Okay fine, I did cry.

As the memories roll over me in waves, I can’t help but take a deep breath and rub my eyes free of the moisture beginning to pool there. It’s a little ridiculous getting teary over it now. Better save that for later. I slip my wallet into my pocket and walk back to Rocky’s curtained domain.

“I’m turning forty,” I answer.

I can hear Rocky pause for a second before I hear the chittering of his laughter. It always sounds like birdsong tweeting. I remember the first time I heard it when we met, I laughed so he did too. Now I just scoff.

“What’s so funny?” I ask indignantly.

“Nothing,” he says dismissively, trying to tinker faster to distract me.

I press on, tapping thrice on his enclosure right where the curtains gap slightly. I can see his carapace from here, blotted brown with those flecks of turquoise, moving about behind the curtains. “Why are you laughing? It’s not funny.”

“Is a little funny,” Rocky says, giggling to himself.

I put my hands on my hips; I know he can see me. “Why?” I ask, trying to muster up some sternness so that he actually tells me instead of ignoring me.

Rocky laughs again. “To me, you are actually like child Eridian. I do rough conversion in head. Average Eridian lifespan in Earth years is six-hundred-eighty-nine. You have lived thirty-nine of them. If Grace were Eridian, would be three-hundred-thirty-nine Erid years old. Is funny.”

“Huh!” I smile. “That’s actually pretty impressive.

“No is not,” Rocky says, voice chiming from behind his curtains. I can hear him making xenonite. “Rocky is alive for two-thousand-five-hundred-eighty-nine Erid years. Average lifespan is five-thousand-nine-hundred-eighty-eight. If Grace was Eridian, would have lived 5.56% of life. Funny funny funny.”

“That’s…” I pause. 5.56% of an Earth lifespan is around…

My jaw drops. “Oh my god, I’m like four years old to you.”

This only encourages Rocky to laugh more. I can hear his chirping giggles through the thick fabric and the transparent xenonite. I glare in his direction and lift my hand to my face, positioning my blurry finger and thumb up to his form and squishing it. From my perspective, it’s revenge.

—

As I wake, I don’t realise it. I’m sure I’m back on my porch steps, ten years old, wind combing my hair as I watch the cloudless sky overhead. I scraped my knee riding my bike with my brother but he went inside to get our aunt. I sit in a quiet space of time, wind chimes dangling overhead.

Their metal collides softly with the breeze, twinkling in the gusts of wind. My knee throbs, our bikes abandoned on the front lawn, covered in dried mud and scrapes in the paint. I hold my knee, hands in a ring around the injury, pressing there.

”Ry?” I hear someone say. There are only a few people who call me that. But I can’t… I can’t remember who they were.

I had a brother.

My stomach growls. The wind chimes get louder, melting into music funnelled down my ears. I hunch over, shut my eyes. Have I always been this hungry?

A moment passes, my mind slowly starting to come alive. Chimes. Eridianese. Of course.

“Grace, question?” Rocky’s voice calls, my eyes squeezing tighter closed.

I breathe in strongly, curling into myself and tugging the quilt over my face. “Ffvmor minisss…” I murmur, which was my attempt at ‘five more minutes.’

“No,” says Rocky firmly, his xenonite ball ramming into my sleeping cot.

I groan, rubbing my eyes and stretching where I lay. I make no attempt to move after that which irritates Rocky.

“Grace get up! Need eat something. Been asleep for long time, longer than before.” Rocky’s ball comes to a rest at the edge of the cot. My eyes open slowly, met with the sight of a white plastic ceiling and the edge of Rocky’s xenonite where it meets the ceiling in my peripheral vision.

I sit up slowly, stretching briefly again. “What do you mean? How long was I asleep?” I ask through a yawn.

“Thirty-six-thousand-eight-hundred-thirty-two seconds.”

“Rock, sometimes humans sleep for ten hours,” I say, standing up and patting his ball for good measure. “It’s nothing to worry about.” He doesn’t seem satisfied.

“Grace make Rocky worry too much!” Rocky follows me as I walk to Armando, knocking against my shins whenever possible which is definitely intentional. As I ask Armando for coffee, Rocky’s voice drops an octave lower. “So used to being worried.”

I’m facing away from him, but it doesn’t matter. He probably still sees me frown. There’s a pang of guilt in my chest, stinging like a paper cut. Small but impossible to ignore once attention is brought to it. The feeling latches onto my brain.

I sigh softly, try to remember how many meals are left for Armando to give me. As far as I know, there are twenty of them. Just twenty.

I resist the urge to look back at Rocky as I say, “Armando, breakfast also, please.” My stomach aches as the robot turns back to grab breakfast out of its many hidden compartments. Whether it’s from anxiety or hunger I can’t tell. But I can’t get Rocky’s chimes out of my head, the way they drop an octave, the text-to-speech voice’s artificial emotion still plucking my sensitive heartstrings.

Rocky lets a surprised chirp escape him. I turn around. “Happy?”

“Yesss,” my friend purrs, “Happy happy happy.”

The dream sticks in my head as I munch on eggs and sausages from the vacuum sealed, silver packaging. I sit in the lab with Rocky who is back in his curtain world, spinning in circles in my chair.

I remember things every day. My mind had shattered over the years it took me to get to Tau Ceti, the mirror fragments of it cracking and splintering and drifting far away from me.

Some still lay in my palms, came back quicker than others. My science, my crewmates, my kids, Stratt and Carl. The circumstances. And I got to catch one every day, reassemble that mirror I used to have so smooth and uniform. Nowadays the memories are less driven by the stakes, less painful. More, oh, I used to eat this thing for lunch every day or dang, I remember watching that movie and crying like a baby. There are still so many faces I can’t name, names I can’t place on faces. So many floating islands of locations I can’t imagine the outskirts of, city skylines where the city remains unknown.

This amnesia thing always reminded me of dark space. Cosmic voids, swallowing the areas between galaxy filaments with inky blackness. They’re impossibly big, impossibly frequent empty bodies of nothing. They fascinated me as a kid and especially as I got into academia. Making up 80% of the universe’s mass, dominating the spanning galaxies which rest on their borders. How could they not have? The only inhabitants are lonely, contextless galaxies. And questions. I know how that feels.

Black nothing, empty pockets of answerless theories. I could go on and on, trying to see something in those voids. Maybe I’ll come up with a memory but it won’t matter; surrounding it will always be a swelling hole of void. These dark places devoid of substance where mirror shards can’t glint; there is no sun to shine off of them.

So maybe I’ll never get some of those memories back. I’m… trying really hard to be okay with that.

“What is Grace thinking about question?” Rocky asks from his concealed area.

I smile. I’ve never really been good at pretending to be okay with things I’m not. So I’ll keep trying to remember it all.

“Nothing,” I answer a little dismissively. “How is your secret project going?”

“Grace heart rate elevated. Is concern.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it pal?” I sigh.

“Obvious,” Rocky says. I’d like to imagine he’d scoff if he could. “Eridians no forget. Stupid statement. Grace okay, question? Grace get enough sleep, question? Get stupid when no get enough sleep.”

“Buddy, I just had ten hours!” I laugh. “I’m good.” Despite waking up and not feeling at all well rested. That part is normal for me, so I don’t mention it.

“Maybe that not enough for Grace brain. Grace brain demand more sleep, get stroppy, throw tantrum of disproportionate lengths.”

I sip my coffee and set the now empty bag of breakfast on the side. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised.” I then do a double take at the bag, picked clean. Did I—It’s been like five minutes! Was I really that hungry? Good god.

“I ask again,” says Rocky more firmly. He steps out of his curtained area to ‘look’ at me. He’s understanding more and more that humans turn to face what they’re talking to and he’s started to mimic that behaviour. Even if Rocky doesn’t have eyes and can multitask near flawlessly, he does it for my benefit, knows that being in front of me signals to my tiny brain that I have his full attention. “What is Grace thinking about. Question.”

I take a long sip of my coffee, taking longer than necessary and getting more coffee in my mouth than I really wanted, trying to stall as long as physically possible. It doesn’t work; I almost choke, swallow the rest through my discomfort and am left coughing through my karma. Why do the oesophagus and the trachea have to be so fudging close together??

Rocky stares expectantly at me, as much as a rock can stare. I blow out a long sigh (stifling coughs), hoping that each second that passes he’ll give up. He doesn’t. So I reply, “My memories.”

“Ah,” Rocky nods his carapace, something he’s picked up from me. “Is bad thought, question?” He asks, tapping his leg twice on the floor.

I shrug which is admittedly very noncommittal. “I guess so?”

Rocky then moves to get in his ball as I start to panic ramble. “I mean—I had a weird dream of what I think is a memory? But I can’t trust that it’s a memory because it was a dream, like my mind is lying to me, or something. I mean, I never even considered the possibility that I could be remembering something that’s fake.”

Once Rocky gets to me, he sits at my feet and stares (I’ve gotta find a better word) up at me. I sigh. “And I’m still missing so much.”

“What memories you missing, question?”

“I don’t know, Rock. I don’t remember them. Black voids all around.”

“No, where in time, question? In lifespan.”

I finally get what he means. “Oh. Well, my childhood, mostly. I still can’t remember most of my pursuit of academia. I can’t even remember writing the paper that got me basically banished from it. I can’t remember… my parents’ names. And I swear I could before.”

Rocky nods. “Is okay. Grace remember one day.”

“In my dream, I had a brother, right? But I don’t…” I pause. This makes me sound crazy. I’m not crazy at all but the words that are about to come out of my mouth… they’re just. I get a wave of dread that runs cold through my bloodstream. “…I don’t know if he’s. Real.”

Rocky says nothing, instead stepping forward in his ball to rest as close to my leg as he can. He’s warm, the xenonite creating enough of a barrier for the temperature to be comfortable for me (part of me wonders if he did that intentionally). I breathe a laugh, patting the top of his ball from where I sit.

My kids worm their way back into my head. They’re probably in their late twenties now, grown up, with partners and lives and career prospects of their own. I can’t even remember most of their names, their faces, their families. I wonder briefly if any of them are scientists now. And that’s what does it, tears spilling down my cheeks. I try to keep it quiet despite knowing Rocky can hear me crying anyway.

“Grace no leak,” Rocky says. His voice has softened, coming from somewhere in the room on one of the many laptops I’d set up. But somehow, his music is gentler, soothing. “Is okay. Grace remember one day if had sibling. Is not end of world. We save Erid and Earth. Grace do amazing things, no need all memories to be happy.”

I sob, a hand over my mouth muffling it into a choked sound. Sniffling and wiping my tears from my face, I mumble, “I know. It just feels like a piece of me is missing. And I can’t get it back. And there’s literally nothing I can do. Except wait. Try to trigger them somehow.”

“It no matter,” Rocky says again. He presses further into my leg, the pressure grounding me there. “Grace is good the way Grace is. Good good good. No need memories to be Grace. Rocky love Grace.”

I get out of my seat blubbering like a baby and kneel down next to Rocky. He already knows what’s happening and rolls forward into my hug.

I babble on about how I love him too, how grateful I am to have him, and a bunch more embarrassing stuff I won’t repeat. Rocky doesn’t really say anything, just sort of chimes and tweets in response. I’ve learned over the years of knowing Rocky that that’s sort of his version of an ‘uh-huh’ in conversation. Letting me know he’s listening.

I’m always astonished at the heat that comes off of him, radiating through the xenonite barrier between us, just as awkward and clunky to hug as ever. I don’t care, I barely even think about it. After my tears slow I can feel the exhaustion you get after rise in my bones. But I’ve just slept ten hours, so up to the lab it is for me. To experiment with the Taumoeba some more, find a way to eat it and get the nutrients I need without touching the coma slurry as long as possible.

I don’t get up right away. And Rocky understands. He never backs away from a hug until I do, Disneyland rules. So I stay there for as long as possible, feeling the heat most in my chest, where he pushes his carapace up against the barrier. I spare it one last thought as I finally pull away: I wish we could hug properly.

—

One meal left, it seems.

Armando (Mary?)’s robotic voice echoes through my head over and over. ‘There is one meal remaining in the food reserves.’ I don’t know how I thought it wouldn’t come to this so soon but here I am. Feeling like I’ve got my foot in my mouth. And now that it’s happening it feels more real than ever

I sit on the edge of my sleeping cot, quilt bunched up around my waist. My hand combs through my hair rhythmically. The Taumoeba solution isn’t coming to fruition fast enough. There were many chemical compounds packed on the ship along with a few small plants; nobody knew what kind of tests the astronauts would have to run up here. But those things don’t magically equal food. There are problems, things my body needs that will be tricky to manufacture. Protein, carbs, sugars, minerals—heck, how on Earth am I supposed to make a vitamin?

And I had been eating better recently because I was trying to make Rocky happy. Those little chirps of excitement I got out of him each time I requested a meal, I lived for it, I chased it because Rocky’s happiness bleeds into mine a lot of the time. If he’s upset, the whole ship is. So I ate when he pestered me, slept when he started rolling into my ankles and I listened to him. And I got what I wanted, but of course, I have to live with the consequences of it.

The consequences being: coma slurry.

I cringe just thinking about it—thinking about what’s in it. I wonder grimly, if it has been messed with, what they did to it. On my bed, I don’t really notice it, but I start to rock back and forth.

There are a couple of things that come to mind that could induce retrograde amnesia but I can’t place the names right now. Ironically, I read a short paper on this once but I can’t remember what it said they used. Retrograde amnesia is hard to induce chemically, but I doubt they did it electronically since it’s hard to guarantee my memories wouldn’t come back shortly after. And considering I still can’t remember whether I had a brother or not years after the Beetles were shot off into space, the effects seem pretty permanent. At least for now.

It spurs panic into me staring at Armando’s four-pronged, silicon hand just sitting idly. Thinking of it retreating into its darkened passages, pulling out the tainted coma slurry at my request. I only realise fully the extent to which my amnesia frightens me as that thought crosses my mind. Despite crying over it a couple of days ago. Despite laying awake at night trying to think of anything that will bring a piece of my past back to me. Despite still coming up empty handed every time.

I curl into myself, my hand’s combing becoming more of a tug. I grip my hair, the other hand balled tightly into a fist.

I can’t lose more of myself to that cosmic void. I can’t.

I’ve already lost so much.

—

Every time I wake up, it’s slower, more gradual. My body dragging its feet, heaving its heavy bones into the burden of consciousness.

And it’s never Rocky that has to wake me anymore. My own body’s hunger pangs combined with spiralling nightmares are what sends me shooting awake in the middle of the night these days.

My dreams consist of forgetting. Forgetting who I am, what I did for the world, even going back in time and replaying the Hail Mary mission if I hadn’t remembered anything in the first place. But most of the time, it’s of me forgetting Rocky.

I try and smother my dreams of him but they wriggle their way free, invading my thoughts like bacteria. It’d go a similar way each time: I wake up, confused by the xenonite, and then am afraid of, disgusted by or angered by Rocky’s mere presence. I was horrified by him in one, fearing his kind, getting upset at how he invaded my space. And he sounded crushed, his music hurt and confused. And we flew to Erid together after he explained who he was. In silence. Because, in that dream, he told me we were friends. And I didn’t believe him.

I crumple where I lay, eyes still closed, unsure if I’m still asleep or not. That confusing grey area of not-quite-asleep-or-awake is getting longer and longer for me each morning. I can’t help but wonder, is that dream how I would really act if I forgot my friend? If I had to meet him all over again, would I be so willing to trust an alien? As willing as Rocky was? That’s all we are. Aliens up here.

A certain text-to-speech voice funnels into my ears and my eyelids crack open.

I squint pathetically at the low lights of the dormitory. Rocky’s voice comes bombarding me with, “Grace awake, question? Grace moving strange, talking in sleep. Why this happen, question? What is wrong with Grace, question.”

I mumble something and feel around in the sheets for my glasses which I fell asleep on along with the notebook I was keeping the Taumoeba experiments’ results in. I’m unsure of what I was trying to say in all honesty. Rocky seems dissatisfied with this and rams his ball into the cot.

“Grace go back to sleep, statement. No get enough sleep.”

“Wh’ time is it?” I murmur, glancing at my watch before realising I can’t read it without my glasses.

Before I get a chance to bring it closer to my face, Rocky says, “Is four in morning according to human clock. Grace go back to sleep, I watch. Stay up late and only get three hours of sleep. Bad bad bad.”

“I’m up now, bud.” I finally successfully locate my glasses and sheepishly bend the arms back into place. I really need to stop falling asleep like this. As Rocky rams my cot some more in protest, I slide my glasses back onto my face, stretch and say, “I’m not gonna be able to get back to sleep even if I wanted to.”

“Fine,” says Rocky, disgruntled. “If no get more sleep then explain. Explain why Grace move and talk in sleep.”

“Okay,” I groan, rubbing my eyes. “You remember I told you about dreams, right?”

“Eridians no forget things,” Rocky reminds me. “Stupid statement. Grace is stupid when no get enough sleep. Yes I remember, human brain shows pictures of memories or fiction while unconscious.”

“Yeah, that.” I don’t acknowledge the insults. “Well, when we dream, sometimes we feel strong emotions which might trigger stress responses like talking or moving. It’s not the only reason we do that, but it’s probably what was going on with me. Some people scream or yell in their sleep. I think I kind of just mumble if I’m remembering right.”

I fumble through my explanation of moving while sleeping which bleeds into me rambling about sleep cycles and REM sleep. I might not make as much sense as usual. Exhaustion seeps into my bones and I try not to slur my words as I talk. Rocky nods along anyway. I like to imagine if he had a book and a little pen he’d be taking notes.

“Understand,” he says, “Thank for teach. Now Grace sleep again, I watch.”

“Can’t,” I shrug, swinging my legs off the bed and facing away from Rocky even though it feels like my bones are made of lead. “I’m up now. Mary, lights on!”

“Bad,” protests Rocky as the dim lights turn on, filling the room with white. “Grace eat then, question?”

I freeze.

I haven’t told Rocky about my reservations on eating the coma slurry yet. I want to shiver just thinking about it. I purse my lips, trying to think of a reply until he beats me to it.

“Grace heart rate elevated. What is wrong, question?”

“Uh,” I stammer. Sometimes I really, really resent the fact he can hear my heartbeat at all times. He can’t read my mind but he gets so many more context clues than I do and is so emotionally intelligent that he might as well be. “It’s fine, pal. Nothing to worry about.”

“Grace say that when lie, Grace say exact sentence before. And lie,” Rocky calls me out. His tones turn flatter, more serious, as if he’s scolding a child. “What is truth, question.”

I feel like an insane person. Like a paranoid lunatic trying to prove that someone’s out to get me. But she is out to get me, I know that for a fact. So what’s stopping her from being even more cruel and tainting my food supply all the way across the galaxy to Tau Ceti. What’s stopping her from screwing me over even twelve light years away?

“Grace?” Rocky asks. He rolls his way in front of me.

I take an incriminatingly shaky breath. I don’t look at him, eyeing the glassy shadow the xenonite casts on the ground instead.

“Grace is okay, question?”

I just.

I sigh again, fighting the tears that tempt me to shed them. That’s ridiculous, it’s ridiculous to cry about this again. Not yet at least, jeez, jumping the gun a bit limbic system. This should be making me more angry, really. But all I can feel is just this muted, powerless despair.

“Rock,” I start, my voice annoyingly wobbly and weak. “This might sound silly to you. But um.”

As I trail off, Rocky moves closer, bumping against my ankles as the clunky ball moves. The thought of the coma slurry has been looming over my head the past few days. Typical. A few tears manage to slip past the cracks at that and I quickly wipe them away, dislodging my glasses in the process. Typical! It’s only now that I think: I’m such a mess.

I swallow the sobs in my throat and stay silent. I’m cold, I must be because I’m shaking, so I get off the cot to sit on the floor in front of Rocky.

He’s been making these tiny squeaks of distress, quiet and wounded. It echoes perfectly the Rocky in my dreams. The dreams where I’d forget him.

That really breaks that dam, tears escaping through the prison I built around them. I crumple over myself on the floor pathetically, weeping like a big baby. Ridiculous.

If I eat that coma slurry I’m going to forget again, I know it, I know that’s what it is. And I won’t be able to fight it. Maybe that makes me sound like a paranoid idiot who’d rather starve than forget some stuff. But whatever, maybe that’s what I am. They’re my memories. I want to keep them Maybe—maybe I’ll even forget it’s tainted in the first place if I get past the hurdle of eating the stuff, forget that along with everything else I managed to fight to get back. I’ll be right back to square one, right back where I started. Scared and alone, hurtling through middle of nowhere.

And my dreams of forgetting Rocky will be realised. and I’ll lose my—my best—

A thunk on the crown of my head grasps all of my attention. Something has bumped into me. I look up and am met with Rocky’s xenonite ball very close to my face.

“Grace breathe,” he says lowly, chimes turning into slow melodic whirs and gentle twittering. I can hear his voice from a laptop somewhere in the room.

I hadn’t even noticed. My head goes dizzy, the hunger just adding to the nauseating spinning the room seems to do. Rocky moves forward into my arms. He presses me up against the cot, holding a warm pressure on my chest.

It’s grounding. I wrap my arms around the xenonite, letting my head fall back against the metal and plastic. I take a deep breath, intentional. I can feel the knots in my chest loosen. That’s encouraging.

“Good good good,” Rocky comforts. I explained the concept of comfort verbal affirmations to him once soon after we started our journey to Erid. We were watching a sad movie and when he asked, I gingerly told him some of the things people say to make each other feel better. I didn’t do it for me, he was curious! But…

“Grace safe. Safe here with Rocky. Regulate breathing, Grace good at breathing. Rocky fix.”

…it did have some unintentionally great side effects. He’s a fast learner, evidently.

“Sorry, sorry,” I quaver, sniffing, “I know I’m acting like a big baby, but…”

“Grace is adult human, even if like Eridian toddler to me,” Rocky responds firmly. “Humans leak, no apologise for leak. Is normal.”

His words start up the waterworks again but not for very long this time. I’m all cried out this week, it seems. At least I hope I am. I can’t afford to waste anymore water.

Once Rocky has calmed me effectively, he doesn’t move from where he is, only sits down on what would be his knee joints like a cat that traps you on the couch right when you were about to get up. “Now tell Rocky why leak. Rocky fix.”

Instinctively, I wipe my face with my sleeve. Rocky technically can’t see me and definitely doesn’t care but I do it anyway; I probably look like a mess.

“I don’t think this is something you can fix, bud.” I sigh. “I’m really…”

I pause, trying to dig up the right words. “I’m really scared. Of eating the coma slurry. Because I feel like it’s been… tampered with.”

“Is okay to be scared,” Rocky says assuredly. “What you mean ‘tampered,’ question?” he then asks.

“I mean that, I feel like it’s going to…” I sigh eventually as the words refuse to come out of my mouth. I manage to force out, “make me forget things again.”

After a good few seconds of contemplation, Rocky simply says, “Bad.” To which I laugh and he makes a confused few notes.

“Yes. Bad,” I nod. “Inducing retrograde amnesia is tough. They needed to make sure I wouldn’t remember anything when I woke up getting to Tau Ceti because they didn’t want me to remember what they did and sabotage the mission.”

“Bad humans force Grace to come on Hail Mary mission,” Rocky recounts. “Send Grace to Grace death. Bad bad bad.”

“Yeah, that. They had to make me forget it long enough to solve the Astrophage problem. So, I figured they chemically induced through in a drug mixed the food they were giving my body while I was in the coma. It’s definitely possible. Probable. I’m worried that if I eat it again. I’ll.”

Stopping short there doesn’t lessen the blow. Rocky understands where I’m going with this, chirping lowly and sinking down where he sits.

“Yeah,” I laugh grimly. “I just. I don’t want to forget everything again, Rock. I don’t wanna forget you. But I need to eat and I haven’t figured out how to get the nutrients I need into the Taumoeba yet.”

“Why no just eat Taumoeba while figure out, question?” Rocky asks, his music pitched slightly lower than usual. I’ve come to understand these changes as different emotions.

I frown. “I mean, I could? The Taumoeba just doesn’t have the stuff I need in it to survive. I looked at it’s nutrient profile, it’s essentially just calories.”

“Oh,” Rocky says dejectedly, sinking against his legs which he’s curled under himself. “You are right. Sorry.”

I blink in surprise. “It’s okay, Rock. It’s not your fault.”

“Rocky just ♪♬♪♫… could fix.” Rocky shudders. “Watch crew die one after other. Think about crew a lot. I thought I fix Grace problem. I thought I help Grace no die. But no can fix this. No can fix food problem. Bad bad bad bad bad. ♪♬♪♫…”

He pauses. “Need word.”

“What word do you need, bud?”

“To want something,” says Rocky slowly. “Want thing, hope for. Sometimes cannot come true.”

“Wish,” I say. I rub my hand against the top of his ball, try to show some kind of comfort. “Y-You wish.”

We exist in the quiet, ambient whirring of the Hail Mary for a while. Sitting in frustrated silence like we do thinking through some tough science. Except now it’s the science of my survival.

Rocky eventually says, “Grace try coma slurry as last resort instead of plain Taumoeba.”

I blink down at him as he continues. “Eat plain Taumoeba for now while figure out solution.”

I sigh. “I guess that’s our best shot.”

—

Sitting comfortably in the pilots seat (if only for a brief few minutes) I stretch my hands out in front of me after triple checking our navigation course again, even though it hadn’t changed from when I’d first set it carefully to fly to Erid. Cracking my knuckles, I glance languidly at the navigation screen, the day counter staring back at me in the corner. It hasn’t changed, unsurprisingly. 

I keep my hands far away from the controls. I am incredibly rusty on manual steering and I am unfortunately going to have to use it when we get to Erid to dock there; the Mary was 100% without a doubt not equipped with a ‘dock on alien planet’ protocol. So it’s up to me. I’ll need to practice again at some point. The problem is, when my brain was throwing unimportant info into the ‘forget’ trash can, it threw away the controls to the entire ship. ‘Do we need these, boss? They look important. Ryland even put fragile stickers on them and all.’ ‘No, little brain cell, don’t you worry, those are entirely meaningless!’ ‘Well if you say so, boss! A-hyuck!’ Ugh.

After food supplies ran out last week, I had to work fast to ensure my survival. A lot of tests went by; trial and error; a bunch of me eating the mildly bitter, slimy Taumoeba on its own. Eventually I came up with success! I had finally completed most of what I needed to do.

To keep the explanation short, I figured out that if I played it right, isolated the right chemical compounds and made triple sure that the Taumoeba didn’t have anything in it that could kill me if it interacted with the wrong chemical, I could finesse the Taumoeba into a pudding-like substance by mixing different things the lab was stocked with together in a big bucket and hesitantly isolating some of the nutrients from the coma slurry. I had my reservations about that part but Rocky helped me quintuple check that those were just the pure nutrients and nothing else. So it’s… probably fine.

What resulted was an, admittedly boring but reasonably palatable, Taumoeba pudding flavoured with whatever else I could find on the ship. That was one of the things I still needed to do, figure out flavour, though it wasn’t as urgent as the whole not-starving-thing. I had gotten tired of weighing up how bad eating the same thing would be for me body and started thinking about flavour more (perhaps just pining for the food I had exorbitant supply of a year ago but, you know, you get desperate and life goes on.)

Flavours… like coffee or salt or some of the different plants that we had growing. Ensuring that the plants would grow back again was more difficult than I’d expected and far more difficult than breeding Taumoeba. I’m no gardener but I did my best to be sure they would grow again.

“We’re gonna be in zero-g for a long while when we dock to Erid. Until my ‘habitat’ is built, anyway.”

Us two science bros have been holed up in the lab for a while. Rocky told me about the process we’ll have to go through when we get to Erid. They apparently have a giant space elevator which reaches up into the thinnest parts of their atmosphere, allowing ships to dock there instead of orbiting. I’m going to pretend that the concept of a space elevator doesn’t terrify me.

I stir my Taumoeba pudding around my bowl with my spoon, already a little bored of it. If I’m bored on day three of eating this stuff then the rest of these two years is gonna suck. But I’m finally eating again and it feels incredible.

Rocky has been drawing up plans for a living situation on his home planet for me for a while. He insists on calling it a ‘habitat,’ but I hesitate to call it that. Makes me feel a little bit like a pet turtle but, whatever. As long as I can eat, sleep and breathe, I’ll be good.

Along with doing upkeep on his side of the ship, planning an architectural masterpiece of a home for an alien and making his very sweet, top secret birthday gift for me, Rocky really has his work cut out for him. Although on his own account, it feels like nothing; Eridians’ multitasking capability is on another level.

“Yes,” he says, not taking his eyes off of his tablet thing that he’s writing on. He has his version of a pen in his hand which seems to be creating a raised surface so he can read it, sort of like a 3D pen back on Earth.

I sigh, “You ready for it? Zero-g is annoying. I guess you’ll be able to leave the ship and come back at will, though, so it’s really just me that has to deal with it full-time.”

“This is true. But I ready either way.” Rocky then tilts his carapace towards me, akin to a teasing nod. “Is Grace ready, question? Freak out first time no gravity.”

I get a vivid memory of clutching onto the pilot chair’s seatbelt as my feet passed over the ceiling, screaming an admittedly high-pitched scream and spewing my sanitised curse words that I’d engrained in myself since becoming a teacher. And cringe. I really regret telling him about that.

“Yes I’m ready,” I roll my eyes. I’m not sure if Rocky is able to make out that small movement but it’s instinctive. “I have much more practice in zero-g now, ya know.”

“Yes, Grace no be sick.” He pauses and then adds, “Anymore.”

“And you say I’m the rude one.”

“Maybe not rude,” Rocky says. I perk up. “Just stubborn, stupid, reckless equivalent of Eridian toddler. But Rocky supervise most of time, so is fine.”

I gasp. “You little tyrant.” Clutching my heart, I then say theatrically, “I put a ship hull over your head and this is the thanks I get?”

“Rocky have no head,” he states plainly, leaving his plans there on his workbench and scuttling into the concealed area.

“Aw, c’mon, not curtain-world!”

“Grace very bad at naming things,” Rocky comments. “Do you want birthday gift on right day or no, question? Is human tradition to give on birthday. Delay delay delay, no get done if Grace keep harassing.”

“First of all, I don’t mind when it gets to me, don’t rush yourself,” I say before switching up my tone, “second, says you. You harass me all the time. And third, how dare you. I am great at naming things.”

“Name me ‘Rocky’ because of carapace colour texture,” Rocky states flatly. “Name 40 Eridani Astrophage breeding planet ‘Threeworld’ because is third planet in solar system. Name Taumoeba ‘Taumoeba’ because—“

“Okay, I get it, I’m not creative at all and I should go and jump out of the airlock.” I pretend to get up from my chair to make my point clear.

“Not if Rocky get there first.”

“Pfft,” I snicker, sitting back down and flicking my gaze back to my nearly empty bowl. “You drama queen.”

“Grace eating better, question?”

“Yes.”

“Sleeping better, question?”

“Yeeess.”

“Answer properly.”

I sigh. “I am answering properly. It’s not my fault that you don’t believe me.” Rocky has insisted that he check ups on my health every now and then given that I’m eating again now. It made absolutely no sense since we are an entirely different species and even if Rocky were a human or I an Eridian, he’s no doctor. And apparently I’m a terrible patient too, as he likes to incessantly remind me.

But he started to bug me about it more and more until I eventually caved and let him. They’re more welfare checks than anything (which I try not to get offended at the notion of), and with my track record of scaring him half-to-death, can I blame him for being a little on edge when it comes to my health and well-being?

I can’t. I can still be a bit of a baby about it though, I reserved that right a long time ago.

“Grace having more bad dreams, question?”

I shrug, “Yeah but that’s nothing new, really.”

Rocky chirps. “Bad. Affecting Grace mood or sleep quality, question? Or just unpleasant, question?”

“Just unpleasant, usually.”

Rocky nods his carapace, noting something down in his textured little book. It reminds me of the notes I first took on him when we met and started learning about each other. “Bad. But not bad bad bad. So is okay.”

“Very simple,” I mumble.

“Sarcasm,” Rocky assesses. Accurately. If he had eyes to roll, he’d be abusing that privilege nonstop.

Since I gave him the human thinking machine (laptop), Rocky has been going through the magical archives of Earth’s information (well, he didn’t call it that, but that’s definitely how he thinks of the internet. I can tell).

Now, I’m very happy he’s been getting endless hours of knowledge and entertainment from the thing, I love to see him happy, but god do I regret giving it to him sometimes. There’s nothing worse than bypassing Armando’s wafer-weak painkiller scheduling by changing the clock during a migraine and having yet another source telling me I have to wait four hours between doses. Six of one, half-dozen of another, I suppose.

“Grace feel okay in general, question?” Rocky asks tentatively. He seems to tiptoe around this question a little more delicately than the others. I think all the crying I’ve been doing recently has scared him off of being critical about it. Which, while I’m not complaining, does make me feel a tad guilty. What can I say? I get very emotional when I’m hungry.

“Yes—Rock, I told you, you don’t need to worry about me,” I say, patting the place on the xenonite divider closest to his carapace. We sit in the dormitory together, my cot close enough while fully extended for me to kick my feet up on a part of the partition.

Rocky makes a low humming noise. “Grace make worry so easy. So easy is like taking ♪♫  from ♬♫♫♪♩♬♩♩♫♩♪♪♬♬♪♪♩.”

I pause for what has to be about five whole seconds. Waiting for him to finish. Which is very long when you’re counting.

“I—what is—“

“Eridian prey and Eridian prey food. Eridian prey very weak and pathetic,” Rocky answers quickly because he was expecting that question, evidently. “No make me worry is point.”

“Riiiight,” I nod, laughing. “I’ll do my best on that one.”

My eyes only manage to crack open to slits, the dimmed light of the dormitory filtering in past my eyelashes. I instantly snap them shut again, blinking a couple of times. My first thought following my mercilessly dreamless sleep is about Rocky.

Did he screw with my lights in here or something? It’s never brighter than a dim, dusky glow until I tell Armando to turn it up. But Armando has been a bit on the fritz recently. I’ll have to bump fixing him up the list of priorities if this is going to be how I wake up every morning.

Rubbing my eyes some more, I manage to get them used to the light bit by bit. I fumble around for my glasses, having accidentally fallen asleep on them. Again. Get it together, Ryland.

Suddenly, I hear something crashing over from the direction of the lab. I’ll check on it later, right now I’m still too sleepy to care. It’s probably fine if Rocky isn’t freaking out.

Oh, wait. I tune into the sounds of the ship properly, pausing my search. He is.

It… doesn’t seem to be about the crash, though? What?

“Grace awake, question?! Grace is up, question?” Rocky comes bounding around the corner as I rub my eyes again.

“Yes, bud,” I groan. “What was all that noise abou—HOLY COW, ROCKY!”

I see a blurry, brown shape scurrying right towards me. Far closer than he usually can. Outside of the confines of the xenonite. My heart leaps into my throat.

“G-Get back in your environment, how are you not—!” I near yell, stammering in shock.

Rocky just chirps at me, the fuzzy view I have of his teal spots moving side to side. “Put Grace seeing glass on. Rocky is fine.”

Hesitantly, I rummage in my quilt and finally prize them out of the tangled mess. Sliding them onto my face, my heart skips a beat for the second time this morning.

Rocky is here, in the room with me. I blink dumbly at him, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Covering his body is a near skin-tight, geometric, glass-like surface made up of tiny triangular pieces. Xenonite, no doubt. It seems to be constructed the same way as the flexible panel in his ball, except it’s all over him. It reminds me loosely of early-stage 3D modelled fabric being draped over a solid object. He’s able to move freely in his very own little EVA suit and still breathe his environment. All his ammonia and his 210 degrees Celsius and his 29 atmospheres.

He’s… here. In the room with me.

I feel my hands start to shake.

Rocky pipes up again. “You like, question? ‘Happy birthday,’ statement! I read that this is what humans say to each other when it is their birthday. Humans do lots of things on birthday, but I no able to do most of it. I make you present instead! I make using same concept as flexible xenonite on part of Rocky ball! Was hard work, hard to wear but get all done in time. Grace is forty now and Rocky here in Grace part of ship to party.”

My eyes well up and as soon as I wipe them, they get blurry again. I chuckle wetly. “Rock, I don’t care how you made it. Get the heck in here.”

Instantly, Rocky takes off, bolting across the dormitory’s floor to me. I leap up off my cot, part of the quilt coming with me, racing to meet him halfway. My heart beats hard in my chest, thumping against my ribcage, aching to burst right out of it.

We connect in the middle of the room. Smashing directly into a giant rock spider hurts a little but I can’t find it in me to care. I’m hugging my best friend for the first time.

And it’s… instant tears, I won’t lie.

I tackle Rocky, because if he tackled me, I’d die. Instead, he wraps four of his arms around my back, one still planted on the floor so that he doesn’t put all his weight on me or fall over. I lean over him, squeezing my arms around his whole body, skidding down on my knees. I hunch over him, face pressed into the xenonite and my own sleeves. And it’s better than anything I ever could’ve imagined.

I cry. Hard. I weep into him all of the stress and anxiety I’ve felt over the past few months, sobbing through the longing I’ve felt for so long. The half-hugs, the fist bumps through the wall between us, all of it crashes down on me now that I can finally get as close to him as I’ve always wanted to.

I’m finally touching another living being, another person. I had forgotten all about how this felt and it’s like it’s happening for the first time all over again. It’s warm and real and dizzyingly blissful. Like I popped my ears for the first time in forever, like a stretch after a long car ride, but a million times better. Just as this sensation of something warm putting pressure on my skin envelops me, it’s clear just how badly I missed it.

Rocky hums lowly. I’ve never noticed it before, never been able to get close enough to, but when he makes noise, he vibrates very subtly near his vents. Like how my throat vibrates when I talk from my vocal cords but you’d only know if you touched it. I can feel it buzzing in my bones and I crumble even more, momentarily unashamed of the (probably very embarrassing) whimpers that escape me between every shaky breath.

Rocky has a tight hold on me that’s probably very loose to him. I know the amount of force he can exert and it’s a lot. He needs to be that strong to hold his body up, metal bones and muscles and all. I can feel now how even each of his claws is articulated, like a version of clear gloves. They stroke across my back and I melt, every tiny fraction of movement sending shockwaves up my spine. I’m in pieces in a pile on the floor. And I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long, long time.

And then, he says, “Rocky love Grace.”

And I burst into tears all over again.

I sob out something completely unintelligible that was supposed to be ‘I love you too,’ but it got very muddled. I shudder and tremble. It keeps hitting me in waves, rushing over me: I’m hugging my best friend.

My best friend. He’s really given me everything. He’s been my rock (haha), he gave me choice when it seemed like I had been condemned to die, he saved my life and I his. He’s building me a life on his home planet from scratch.

And now he’s finally here, in my arms. And I can finally show him what a real hug looks like.

After a long, long, long time of me sobbing and Rocky being very patient, I eventually run out of tears and am left drained, exhausted, and a little stiff from hunching over. And so, so happy.

I feel lighter, like all the weight I’ve been carrying has been lifted from my shoulders. Elation blossoms in my chest, my fingers and face are like tingling little firecrackers. I feel giddy, like I’ve just been on a rollercoaster. I’m still clutching Rocky as if he’ll disappear at any second. And he’s still holding onto me.

“You like, question?”

I can’t help the laugh that escapes, bubbling out of me. “Do you even need to ask?”

“Maybe not,” Rocky says, “just that Grace leak for very long time. Is right temperature, not uncomfortable, question? Gift is good, question?”

“Gift is…” I trail off, getting a little choked up again. “Gift is the best thing you could’ve possibly gotten me. The best thing anyone has ever gotten me. I love it, Rocky.”

Rocky trills gently, squeezing me a little harder since neither of us have even made an attempt to let go. “Happy happy happy.”

“Me too,” I murmur tearfully. I will never forget this.

“Rocky explain how make now, question?”

I laugh again, a little heartier this time. “Alright, yes, you can tell me how you made it.”

Reluctantly I let him go and try to wriggle free from his arms clamped around my torso.

“Hug is over, question?”

“Yeah,” and then I add, “for now.”

He releases me and I almost fall backwards. I hadn’t realised how much he was supporting me. Rocky, the little engineer he is, then launches into a very lengthy explanation about how he constructed the xenonite suit to be durable enough, to have easy use and to be comfortable for him. Because Rocky doesn’t need to breathe (traditionally, anyway), he’s a lot happier to be in an enclosed space than a human would be, so his suit is almost skin-tight. Carapace-tight? I don’t know, the terms don’t matter, whatever.

It’s just as flexible as the part in his ball, and it doesn’t really hurt to have the small edges of the xenonite digging in as much as you’d think. It’s truly a feat of engineering in both human and Eridian standards. It’s no wonder he’s so excited to tell me about it.

I just smile, staring at him, only half-processing what he’s telling me because wow, I’m touching Rocky. I’m touching Rocky and we’re both not dead.

I still haven’t fully let go of him, my free hand still trembling in my lap, the other planted on one of his legs. Once Rocky’s explanation finishes, I just stare at him in awe.

This alien rocky spider the size of a dog has single-handedly saved me. Over and over and over again. I sniff and tug him in for round two.

Best birthday ever. Seriously!

Rocky has a very good handle on the concept. He told me that Eridians do a similar thing when they reach a certain age. A coming-of-age party where they celebrate maturity and adulthood. By getting absolutely smashed, of course. Apparently, and he hasn’t told me how yet, Eridians can get drunk too.

We spent the whole day completely goofing off and getting nothing done. He still had my ‘habitat’ plans to work on (still hate that name) and I had to sort out things to prepare for my food situation on Erid. Neither of us did any of that.

Instead, I showed him a lot of Earth music, movies and interesting Wikipedia articles that we nerded out for far too long on. I never really celebrated my birthday much when I reached about my mid-twenties. I was too wrapped up in academia and writing to be bothered by it, and if my few friends at the time did push me to do something, they were never really interested in doing the things that I wanted to do (like reading Wikipedia articles).

Rocky, however, gets a kick out of anything Earth so I’m able to show him anything I want and he’ll find it immensely interesting (almost anything. He found the concept of malaria very, very boring, for some reason).

I’ve come to learn a lot about him today. Rocky dislikes Earth music but not enough to tell me to shut it off on my birthday, apparently. I show him a lot of instrumental stuff, mostly because now that he’s basically fluent in English, he doesn’t like to hear the lyrics since it’s like hearing two languages at odds, overlapping one another, for him. His language is made up of notes and sounds, it makes a lot of sense.

So lyrics were out of the question. He finds instrumentals very funny, though. He says they’re saying some interesting stuff when it’s not complete gibberish. We sat in the don’t-go-crazy-room, swallowed by music videos, sitting back to back. After that, I played some silent videos and he showed me Eridian music which is mostly composed of a lot of precise percussion. He said he wasn’t very good (“I no am music Eridian. Only fixer Eridian.”) but I sat in complete awe watching it. We made party hats for each other following that.

He preferred movies by a long way. So we watched a lot of movies which I had no complaints about. With all of the food dilemmas that’d been floating around my head, I hadn’t given myself a moment to just sit back and watch a movie in a very long time. We didn’t have any popcorn but prior to our watch party, I did everything I could think of to flavour my Taumoeba pudding as sweetly as possible. It tasted like pure chemical syrup. And it was great. A sort of birthday cake, almost.

Not at all, really, but when you’re flying high on physical contact after years of being deprived it, everything starts to feel pretty good.

We watched over a dozen films in the don’t-go-crazy-room together under my quilt. James Bond, the first few X-Men movies, Lego Batman (don’t judge me), Jurassic Park and World. The we moved onto some classic sci-fi—Star Wars, Back to The Future, Alien, Interstellar. We even got to sit in our combined confusion through 2001: A Space Oddessey. That of which I hadn’t seen before, so we got to experience that together.

After that we combed through Wikipedia and talked long into the night until Rocky harassed me to go to bed. We didn’t separate for more than ten minutes that whole day, glued to each other’s sides. It’s like I’d been healed. Gone was the bone-deep fatigue that plagued me constantly, the fleeting, feathered memory fragments that seemed to slip out of my grasp before I even realised they were there or why they came to me. Everything was just good. I was happy.

I lay on my side, wrapped in the quilt on my cot, sinking deeper into the thin mattress each second. After hours of fun, it’s about two in the morning and I’m totally beat.

Unlike every other night I’ve slept under this ship’s hull, Rocky doesn’t hover over me in his bulb of xenonite which hangs above my head and tunnels into the rest of his habitat. He is no longer at a distance. We can’t do this every night, but for now, I know we both want to stay as close as possible.

Instead of his usual observation place over my head, Rocky sits with his legs curled under him right there next to me on the cot. He’s very heavy, let me reiterate. He had to reinforce the cot’s stability with xenonite. It’s one of the few things on the ship that he hasn’t reinforced or somehow improved upon. But it holds both of us now.

I lay curled around Rocky, my legs drawn up to form a crescent around where he sits. We’ve still been talking the whole time, going off on tangents and making theories like the nerds we are. My arms are pinned under my head as I re-adjust to lie half on my back and look up at the ceiling.

“Can’t believe you were content with this thing for so long,” I say, tapping his xenonite bulb. “I’m almost surprised you didn’t make this suit sooner. Didn’t you say when we first met that you’d usually be on my chest if you had your way?”

“Yes,” Rocky chirps. “Rocky still think on chest is best way but no want to crush Grace bones. I sit here instead. Compromise.”

I chuckle languidly and pat the top of his carapace. “You weirdo.”

“Grace sleep now, question?”

“I’m getting to it,” I yawn, rolling back onto my side to face him. Rocky hunkers down low to be on my level.

Being able to get so close is not only emotionally rewarding but fascinating, as well. There are all of these tiny, indiscernible details on him that I’d never noticed before.

The teal spots on his legs glitter subtly under the low light, shimmering, iridescent pools of aqua. I wonder if there’s some kind of moonstone or ammolite in there, something helping along that mesmerising sheen.

His carvings are even more intricate than I had thought. Rocky told me that carvings only got done for very special and important events, nothing like tattoos on Earth besides the very basic concept. They happen at weddings, the hatching of babies, and things like Rocky’s mission. He has a carving of what looks to be 40 Eridani’s Petrova Line. There are also carvings Eridians get of their family crests, their rank in their jobs and what the jobs are. Rocky has these too but he says they are less common than most.

They are of remarkable detail. I study his mission carving, trailing my eyes along the intricate, interlocking circle patterns, seemingly resembling 40 Eridani’s star system. Or perhaps Tau Ceti’s.

“Grace sleep now, statement,” Rocky demands.

“Mhm…”

I continue to search his carapace for more secrets but Rocky pokes me in the face until I’m laughing and begging him to knock it off.

And, instead of yelling at me to do it like usual, he actually reaches forward and pulls my glasses off my face. And just.

Yeah, I start crying again. Look, there’s only so much I can do to not seem like the world’s biggest crybaby. This isn’t helping my case.

“Why Grace leaking, question?” Rocky asks suddenly, voice squeaking a bit with worry.

“Nothing, it’s fine,” I say, wiping my face to no avail. “I’m fine, Rock.”

“Grace is in pain, question? Hurt, question??”

“No, no,” I protest with a raw voice. “I’m not in pain. I’m okay. I’m just happy.”

“Ohh, happy leak. Confusing.”

I laugh a little, sniffling. “Yeah, you said it.” I reach out and wrap an arm around him and he scoots in until he’s right up against my chest. The heat from his body radiates through my skin, making it very hard not to fall asleep right then and there. I close my eyes, lashes clumped together with tears hitting my cheeks. But I don’t fall asleep just yet.

Drowsily, I murmur. “Thank you, Rock.”

Rocky chirps in confusion. He keeps his voice low and soft. “Thank for what, question?”

“For this.” I pat the top of his xenonite suit. “And for everything else you’ve done for me, cause there’s a lot. Thanks for spending the day with me. Thank you, just… yeah. Thank you.”

“No need for thank,” Rocky states, nestling into my arms. “I do same thing exact same way if I go back. Thank Grace, too. Thank thank thank. Because of Grace, Rocky know why crew die, have closure. Because of Grace, Rocky no die alone when Taumoeba eat all of Astrophage on ship.”

He pauses for a second before he purrs low. “Because of Grace, Rocky no alone anymore. Rocky have friend. Rocky get to go home to Adrian.”

I sniff, still leaking from my closed eyes. “Because of you, I have a family. I get to live. That’s all I could ever ask for.”

He starts to protest but I stop it before he can finish. I open my eyes a fraction. “Let’s just call it even, yeah?”

“Yesss.” Rocky nods his carapace. “Agree. Grace sleep now before get stupid.”

“Man…” I mumble, letting my eyes slip shut again. “Lame.”

“Grace really is like Eridian toddler. And Earth toddler. No want to go to bed.”

“Are you gonna compare me to every kind of toddler in the universe now?” I ask. “Is that what this is? Not cool, man.”

“Maybe no act like every toddler in universe then. Maybe then Rocky change mind and we talk,” he hums.

I laugh and tug him closer. The only reason I’m able to it because Rocky shifts to let me. “This is a personal slight against me. I can’t believe this.”

“Believe.” Rocky starts humming something else. It isn’t really words, or at least, it’s no words I’ve ever heard before. It’s… nice, not hugely plentiful in melody like everything else, more like ocean waves with wind chimes.

“What’s that?” I ask, words slurring together. I can feel something dislodge in my mind. Unsure of what, I try to think really hard to stay awake, to figure out what it is.

“Is Eridian song. Uncommon for melody to be present but is mostly sung for children to sleep. Is soothing. I stop if want.”

“No, keep going. It’s nice,” I say. I squeeze my eyes shut and picture it again, listen to the song.

It’s a calming, not-quite tune, notes placed irregularly against the soft sound of what really sounds like waves crashing or the rustling of trees on a windy day. And wind chimes.

Wind chimes.

My eyes snap open.

I don’t really think as I say, “I did have a brother.” It just sort of comes out of my mouth.

Rocky chirrups, rising slightly. “Grace remember, question?”

“Yeah,” I affirm. I take a deep breath, heart quickening as my disbelief rolls over me in tides. “I can’t remember his name, but he’s there. I know it. He’s real. That dream was a real memory. I really did sit on the porch steps and wait for him to get our aunt to patch up my knee.”

“Is good memory, question?” Rocky asks. He settles back down as I finish my explanation.

I also have to settle myself again but it doesn’t take much. After all that crying and talking, I’m truly dead. “I think it was.”

“Rocky happy Grace able to remember. I tell you so.”

“I’m happy too, buddy.” I shut my eyes. I try to make out the details of his face in my mind, unscramble his name from the web of disconnected thoughts tangled in that jungle. But I come up empty. It’ll give me a headache if I try any harder so I leave it be reluctantly. I’ll figure it out another day.

“Grace sleep now, I am telling you and you no listen. Sleep. I watch.” Rocky prods at my face and I swat his claws away.

“Fine, fine.” With the new information now swirling around my head, it’ll take me forever to sleep now. I start to prepare myself for a long night of pretend sleeping and a lot of thinking.

But as I do, Rocky snakes two of his five arms around my torso and to my back again, each of his claws extending and choosing a spot to almost massage? It’s incredible, dizzyingly relaxing. But I find a second to wonder how he got all this kno—ah, right. Thinking machine.

Whatever, I don’t care. I’ll figure it all out tomorrow. Tonight, it’s my darn birthday and I’m not gonna force myself to think of my problems until I fall asleep. Tonight, Rocky is here in my arms, and dang does he know how to get me to just chill out. Ryland Grace can rest and hug his best friend as he does it.

“This feel nice, question?” Rocky asks gently.

I don’t know why he bothered to ask, I’m basically a puddle. I’m unable to form coherent speech anymore, so I just mumble contentedly and hope he takes that as a god, yes.

He does. And right before I drift completely off, he starts up his song again. That soothing not-quite melody pilots me into my dreams. And I flop my arm back around him, warming my skin, quietening my mind. As close as we could ever be, I am finally at rest.

Goodnight.