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Day 1:
“Eridian education lasts a century?” Grace exclaims, tossing another link mold to Rocky. Rocky catches it with an extra hand, not even pausing pouring the liquid xenonite with his other two.
“Yes, much to learn. Eridians reach age of approximately eighty-seven point three years before specialize begin. Specialize education lasts…” He wavers one of his hands back and forth in a rocking motion. It’s funny to Grace that this was apparently a universal gesture for “kinda”. “Varies. Minimum: approximately forty-three point seven years. Maximum, one hundred seventy nine point four. Duration of specialize education depends on nature of specialize.”
Grace shudders, tossing another mold at Rocky. It would never stop being cool that Rocky could catch things when he doesn’t even have eyes. “I can’t even imagine doing a two hundred year long PhD. Sounds like H-E-Double Hockey Sticks to me.”
“Need word.”
Day 1.5:
“And humans consider PhD… need word. Opposite of taboo," Rocky says after Grace completes his deep dive into human education systems and, especially horrifying for Rocky, how humans get PhDs.
“Umm, maybe ethical? It means like socially acceptable.”
“Yes, understand. Eridians have ethical too. Humans consider PhD specialized education ethical?
Grace made Rocky’s so-so gesture with his shoulders. “Ehhh.”
“Would be considered 🎶🎵🎵🎵 on Erid.”
“Need word.”
Day 1.6:
Grace learns a new word.
🎶🎵🎵🎵 : Torture.
Day 2:
It stops being cool that Rocky can catch things even though he doesn’t have eyes.
Day 3:
“So yeah, you use an app on your computer phone to choose a food purveyor—restaurant—and then you choose which foods you want from them and the restaurant sees what foods you chose on their own computer. They make the food for you, and then some guy on one of those stupid e-bikes brings you the food. But sometimes the guy on the e-bike has food for more than one person so he makes multiple delivery stops. That’s why people track where their food is with the app on their computer phone.”
Come to find out there’s actually a lot of background knowledge needed in order for an Eridian to understand how Doordash works.
“How track, question?”
“The guy on the e-bike also has a computer phone.”
“Human anticipating food is enjoyable emotion, question?”
“Depends. Sometimes you’re hungry and it’s like— I swear the guy on the e-bike has deliberately finds the longest, most convoluted way to get to your building.”
“Grace food touch other human’s food when e-bike human bring food to many humans, not only Grace?”
“Not really. All the food is in separate containers and bags. But yeah, I mean I guess the bags might touch because they’re usually all in the e-bike… basket? I don’t even know what those are called. But yeah, all the containers for the different people are carried together.”
Rocky shuddered. “Disgust, disgust, disgust… tell Rocky more.”
Day 5:
Grace is getting sick of choosing music for 16 hours a day so he picks a playlist from Pirated YouTube at random. Jazz. Cool. Fine, good enough. Better than the sound of clinking xenonite as they connected link after link after link after link…
Rocky made a noise of realization that Grace loosely translated to, “Ohhhhhh.”
“Huh?”
“Not all human music bad. Only Grace music bad. Understand now.”
“Hey!”
Day 6:
“And it’s called skydiving,” Grace finishes explaining.
“Confirm humans jump from flying machine, question?”
“Yeah. With a parachute so we don’t go splat, but yeah, you’ve got the basic idea.”
“Confirm: jump, question? Not pushed, question?”
“Yeah, you jump. Or kinda… fall out I guess? There’s probably a little more technique involved than that, but yeah, basically.”
“Willingly, question?”
“Yeah. It’s supposed to be pretty safe, I guess. Like, statistically. And fun, if you’re a crazy person. One of the other teachers did it for her friend’s thirtieth birthday, she said it was cool. Hard to breathe, though.”
Rocky is still for a very, very long time. Did Grace… break him?
And then he bursts out laughing. Grace has never seen him laugh this hard, his whole carapace quivering with mirth, bouncing so hard that Rocky eventually rolls so his body was sitting on the ground, limbs clattering as he pounds the ground.
“Ummm,” Grace says, pausing his chain making to watch.
“Is good joke!” Rocky trills.
“It’s not a joke?”
Right? Grace had memory problems but not hallucinations, as far as he knew. But then again, how would he know? Oh no, who knows what crazy fake things he’s been making up about Earth. It does sound pretty ridiculous—jumping out a plane—who would—? He scrambled over the piles of chains to grab the laptop he’s been playing The Office on in the background while they work. A quick Wikipedia search and nope, skydiving is definitely real.
“Rocky almost believe Grace!” he squeals, interrupting Grace’s spiral.
“I’m not kidding. Here, grab your screen reader thingy and look.”
But Rocky is too busy laughing. “Good, good, good joke!”
Day 6.1 through Day 6.7
“Jump from flying machine,” Grace periodically hears Rocky say to himself throughout the day, followed by what he can only describe as a chuckle. “Funny, funny, funny.”
Day 6.8:
Rocky finally accepts that Grace isn’t making skydiving up just to mess with him. He takes a break from chain assembly and retreats to his bulb up in the control room. Grace thinks about checking on him but ultimately decides to give him some space to work through his feelings.
Day 6, sometime late at night:
Grace is half asleep by the time he hears the soft scrape-tap of Rocky’s claws on xenonite, slow and almost hesitant. He’d been up in the control room for a long time. Grace drowsily reaches out before remembering that he can’t touch him.
“Grace awake, question?” Rocky asks quietly, as if he couldn’t tell from Grace’s heartbeat alone that he wasn’t asleep yet.
“Mhm,” he mumbles.
“Grace will skydive when Grace returns to Earth, question?”
The question would be kind of funny if it didn’t make Grace’s heart ache. Had anyone ever worried about him like this before?
“Heck no,” he assures Rocky. Now probably wasn’t the best time to broach the fact that he was never going to return to Earth, Grace decides.
“Good, good,” Rocky chirps. He taps two claws together anxiously. “And Grace will be careful when Grace returns to Earth, question? Rocky cannot protect Grace from Erid.”
He rolls over to look at Rocky, a dark shadow hunched over in the dim emergency lights that are always on in the dormitory.
“Is that what the pouting was all about? You’re worried that I’m going to die skydiving?”
He can definitely confirm that he isn’t going to die skydiving because he is guaranteed to die by some other, yet undetermined, method alone in space. He hasn’t decided how yet. He’s sort of hoping the answer will come to him in a flash of insight when it’s time.
“Answer question. Grace will be safe on Earth?”
His chest aches, his stomach aches, his whole body becomes one big ache of grief and longing and nostalgia. His life—or what he can remember of it—had been safe. Curtailed, maybe, but safe. He has no clue what it would be like if he could go back to Earth now, no clue what kind of havoc had broken loose as the sun dimmed. Not that it really mattered anyway.
But still. He must’ve loved Earth a whole lot to be willing to die for it.
“Yeah, I’ll be safe,” he lies through the tightness in his throat.
“Good, good,” Rocky repeats. “Grace will be safe. No skydiving.”
“No skydiving,” he confirms. He can’t really say anything about the rest without it becoming an even bigger lie. “For one, I am terrified of heights. Even the EVAs scare the bejeezus out of me and I’m fully tethered in. Falling through the sky? No thanks.”
“But Grace good at EVA.”
“Hah, thank. Doesn’t mean I’m not scared witless, though.”
Rocky hums, absorbing this. “Grace brave, brave, brave,” he says eventually.
Grace thinks: It’s not like I have a choice. But there was no point in saying that, Grace had learned the hard way. Rocky could be gosh darn stubborn; he wasn’t going to change his mind.
“Watch me?” he asks instead. He’s learned this is the farewell Eridians say instead of good night.
“Yes, Rocky will watch until waking,” Rocky says, returning the traditional Eridian reply. “Rest well, Friend Grace.”
Day 7:
He is getting weirdly tempted to lick one. Just to try it.
But no, no, Rocky wouldn’t like that. And he needs to keep this whole affair as cordial as possible. They’re both already going crazy and they’re not even close to done.
But… just one little lick. Just to see what it’s like. Couldn’t hurt, right?
Day 8:
Grace waits until he’s coiling the chain up in the control room, hoping to escape Rocky’s attention.
No such luck.
“Why Grace put chain in oral orifice, question?! Bleh bleh bleh icky. Unsanitary! Disgust!”
Day 8.1:
“… Grace describe how xenonite taste, question?”
Day 9:
“If you could be any astronomical object, what kind of astronomical object would you be and why?”
“Rocky cannot be astronomical object. Rocky can only be Eridian.”
“Humor me, pal, I’m dying of boredom over here.”
“Nonsense question is example of Earth humor?”
Oh, right. They’d been having a hard time with idioms in each other’s cultures. They’ve had some pretty embarrassing misunderstandings about “blowing smoke” and “tooting your own horn”.
He looks up from his chain links, ready to explain—
Only to realize Rocky is tittering with laughter.
Idioms might’ve been posing some trouble for them, but apparently messing with Grace was a universal constant that transcended language, culture, and the stars themselves.
Day 9.25:
“Rocky dust.”
“Huh?”
“Rocky humor Grace nonsensical question. Would be dust if Rocky can be astronomical body and not Eridian.”
“Well that’s dark,” Grace replies. But maybe it’s not for Eridians. They probably don’t have ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ cultural hang ups. Unless they do, which would either be the craziest coincidence ever or an actual sign that Grace probably shouldn’t have gotten kicked out of Sunday School as a 3rd grader for asking too many questions. But that’s not the point— rocks can be ground down to dust and when they are, they’re destroyed. Rocky is a rock. A fancy, cool space rock but a rock nonetheless. Rocky’s not saying he wants to die, right?
“Answer second question: dust exist everywhere. Disperse easy, far. Dust Rocky can go home Erid with Adrian and stay with Grace, go to Earth with Grace. Both. Dust Rocky happy happy. Everyone happy happy.”
A chain link drops from Grace’s numb hands.
“Careful,” Rocky admonishes. “Remember tangling incident?”
Grace sniffles. “I was gonna say a comet because I think they’re cool but—but that’s nice too.”
Rocky hums in agreement, hands flicking around the chains.
He wipes his tears from his cheeks. He’s sort of given up trying to keep the crying in check, even though it grosses Rocky out. A suicide mission probably isn’t the time to start trying to exercise emotional control.
“You’d really come with me?”
Rocky lets out an excited squeal, bouncing up and down, his hands not missing a beat. “Yes, join Grace on Earth if atmosphere not kill Rocky! Bring Adrian too. Want to experience skyscrapers and birds and traffic and computer phone and human moving image theater and DoorDash. Grace love Earth and Rocky love Grace.” He did his Eridian approximation of a human shrug, as if it was a no-brainer that he’d follow Grace halfway across the galaxy just to hang out.
Grace presses a hand to his mouth, trying to hold back a sob. “I would give, like, anything to have DoorDash with you, dude,” he says between his fingers.
And it’s true. If he could have just one more minute on Earth, he’d gladly die the second it was over. If he could be there with Rocky? He’d only need about 10 seconds of that to be worth it. He so desperately wants to experience all those things too. He wants see a skyscraper looming above him dizzyingly tall, he wants to get woken up by the mourning doves roosting on the window ledge outside his shoebox apartment, he wants to sit in traffic and glare at the teenager texting in the movie theater and have a DoorDasher leave the wrong order in his building’s lobby.
Chain forgotten, Rocky approaches the wall between them, pressing his carapace to the xenonite and humming. An Eridian hug, he’s learned. Grace wipes away his tears and snot and returns the gesture.
“Grace Rocky together, happy. Grace Rocky apart, sad sad sad.”
He tries to feel happy for Rocky, that Rocky would get at least half of Dust Rocky’s life when he gets back to Erid. But all he can find within himself is an unending well of grief.
“I’m going to miss you too, pal.”
Day 9.5:
“I think if we were astronomical bodies, we’d be binary stars.”
“Agreement.”
Day 9.51:
“But Rocky would be bigger, better, more beautiful star.”
“You know what? Yeah, sure, why not. Agreement.”
Day 10:
“Hands… touching hands… touching you… touching me!”
Rocky sits back on his carapace, free hand clapping out the beat on the floor as his four others work away at the chain links, singing out a harmony that almost sounds like an organ accompaniment, throwing in the Eridian words for the English lyrics when he knew them.
Apparently, Rocky has what Eridians considered a good singing voice. Grace does not. Not that he ever let that stop him.
“Sweet Caroline, bum bum bum! Good times never seemed so good.”
“So good, so good, so good!”
Day 11:
Grace realizes he got two of the spools messed up anywhere between two and five kilometers after he made the mistake.
“Fuck,” he swears before he can stop himself.
“New word. State meaning.”
Grace bangs his head against the top of the spool with a groan.
"State meaning. State meaning. State meaning."
It’s fine. He’ll just unspool them, find where he crossed the chain over itself, and respool them correctly. How hard can it be?
Day 11.125
Really hard, apparently. According to Rocky, it’s not a simple matter of unwinding everything and winding it back up again. Apparently, he has introduced some kind of fatal flaw into the entire system.
“Great,” Grace says once Rocky finishes his explanatory puppet show. “Well, don’t mind me, I’m going to throw myself out of the airlock now. Good luck with all that, though.”
“Need sleep.”
“Fine, okay, I’ll watch you sleep and then I’ll go throw myself out of the airlock. I’m in no rush.”
“No, Grace need sleep. Cranky grumpy Grace. Sleep. Then reevaluate plan. Can always throw self out of airlock after.”
Day 11.425
Grace eats a breakfast burrito. Throwing himself out of the airlock has been postponed. For now.
Day 11.475
After clearing up some misconceptions about typical human sleep behavior, Rocky informs Grace that he snores. This shouldn’t be a hit to his ego considering Rocky “sees” him poop and only pretends to give Grace privacy out of the kindness of his five hearts but still. It’s kind of a hit to his ego.
Day 12:
“Hey, what do Eridians think happens after you die? I mean, you guys live basically forever. It seems like you’re pretty hard to kill. It must be a pretty big deal when one of you kicks the bucket.”
“Do not discuss,” Rocky says, sounding so sharp that Grace actually flinches. “Social discomfort. Extreme emphasis.”
Oh, sugar-honey-iced-tea. Of course Rocky would be touchy about death considering his whole crew died on the way here. How could Grace forget something like that? He blamed chain-induced psychosis.
“Sorry,” he rushed to say, “I wasn’t thinking—”
“Grace not die. Rocky not die. Save Earth, save Erid, planets not die. Do not discuss.”
Wait—
“Do Eridians not talk about death unless someone is going to die?”
Rocky bristles, pulling in tight on himself, but Grace hears his stupid mouth continue on anyway.
“But what about when we met, talking about the radiation sickness…?”
Rocky’s bristling turns into a low, mournful wail like the lowest note on a cello, just barely audible to Grace’s ears. He wonders just how much is going on outside his range of hearing.
“Oh my gosh, Rock, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He maneuvers his rolling chair around the piles of chain and unattached links, pressing his hand to the xenonite. “Forget I said anything. That was so, so dumb of me. I wasn’t thinking. Look at me, running my idiot mouth again.”
It takes a minute for deep sound to ebb away. Rocky unfurls from his anguished crouch and presses his hand against Grace’s.
“Is okay. Fact, not expression,” he replies, still with that undertone of a weeping cello. “Grace did not know.”
“But Grace knows now. Won’t happen again.”
And with that reassurance, Rocky pulls away, returning to his chain, sure hands working over the links steadily, like nothing ever happened.
Apparently, avoiding hard conversations isn’t a human-exclusive trait.
Sometime between Day 12 and Day 13:
“Rocky think many things alone on ship. Not all rational,” Rocky says—whispers, really—when Grace is in bed that night, his breathing already slowing and leveling out thanks to his alien-enforced bedtime, the robot arms above him coming in and out of focus as his eyes drift open and shut. Grace hears the soft jangling of Rocky assembling the xenonite chain in the dark.
“Makes sense,” Grace whispers back. It’s probably still a yell to Rocky but the sentiment has to count. “That’s a long time to be alone.”
“Long, long, long time. Think things never think before. Crew sick, Rocky not. Think: why Rocky, question? Think: Rocky bad, question? Rocky punished, question?”
“Clink, clink, clink,” goes the chains in Rocky’s hands. Grace wishes he could say he’s patiently giving Rocky space to continue, but mostly he’s stunned into an awkward silence.
“Crew sick, not understand why. Think contagious, think can fix. Isolate sick Eridians. Leave dead Eridians in stars. Until only Rocky left on ship. Think Rocky has sickness, too. Cannot go home, give sickness to other Eridians. Think sickness will kill Rocky also. Wait long, long, long time. Still, Rocky not dead. Then confusion. Think many, many, many things while alone. Not all rational.”
The clinking stops.
“Think Rocky is dead too.”
It’s horrifying. He can’t imagine. When he tries to, he can’t even breathe. Sending Yao and Ilyukhina out of the airlock when he barely even remembered their names was bad enough. But if he’d been awake with them the entire way, sharing a ship with them for years, working and laughing and bickering and sharing meals and passing the time with card games, telling stories. And then to be alone in that giant ship all by himself for years… if Rocky hadn’t found him just days afterwards, he probably would’ve found Yao’s gun and made good use of it. He has no idea what he could possibly say in the face of something that awful.
So he says the truth: “I don’t know what to say.”
“Is okay, fact not expression. Grace not know why discuss death before but not now. Now Grace know. Before meet Grace, Rocky confused, think Rocky dead. Time meet Grace, Rocky think Rocky hiding sickness in blood, will die. But Grace Rocky will not die. No more death. No more discuss.”
The clinking resumes.
“Grace sleep now. I watch. More work after sleep cycle. Chain done soon.”
“Thank goodness,” Grace mumbles, surprised he’s so sleepy despite the horrible conversation they just had. “Rocky, I— I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened. That’s just— yeesh. But mostly I’m sorry that I’m not good at — at this, you know? Comfort isn’t really my forte. I’m really sorry I’m not a better friend. I wish…”
“Grace being stupid. Sleep now.”
But Grace doesn’t really have a say in it either way, sleep pulling him under before he even realizes what’s happening.
Sometime in the early hours of Day 13:
Grace dreams of chains. He dreams of twenty-two Rockys, all daisy-chained together, floating cold and lifeless through the empty spaces between stars. He dreams of clinging to a chain wrapped around Earth as he’s ripped away, tearing the chain from his grip. He dreams of being chained to the outside of the Hail Mary as it breaks through the atmosphere, sailing past the moon. He dreams of a chain connecting the Hail Mary and Blip-A, pulling tauter and tauter and tauter as they speed away from each other until it snaps and Rocky goes spiraling off away from him and some part of Grace knows that Rocky will die, Rocky will die alone and scared and it’ll all be Grace’s fault—
He wakes to the dull thunk of xenonite hitting the side of his bed over and over. The whole structure swayed back and forth as Rocky struck it over and over again with his ball.
“Rocky,” he gasps.
“Here.”
“Rocky,” he repeats.
“Here.”
He flops off the bed clumsily, half falling to his knees, half draping himself over Rocky’s ball. He can’t see it in the dark of the dormitory, but he feels the warmth of Rocky’s body pressing up against him from the other side, vibrating with a low purring hum that starts to even out the careening of his thudding heart.
“You’re alive,” Grace weeps.
“Alive.
“You’re alive.”
“Alive alive alive.”
He says it again and again, until he’s not even sure who he’s reassuring anymore.
Day 13.75:
“And if you don’t love me now!”
“You don’t love me now.”
“You will never love me again! I can still hear you saying—”
“Still hear you saying.”
“You would never break the chain!”
“Never break the chain!”
Day 13.9:
“The chain keeps us together.”
“Runnin’ in the shadows!”
“The chain keeps us together!”
“Runnin’intheshadows!”
“The chain keeps us together!”
“Run’in’ in! The shadows!”
Day 14:
“Grace.”
“Yeah, bud?” He has his forehead pressed to the cool metal of one of the bulkheads, eyes closed. He doesn’t even need to look at the links anymore to connect them. His hands seem to have a mind of their own.
“Happy Grace is here.”
“Aww, thanks, pal. I’m glad you’re here too. It’s always a pleasure to assemble ten kilometers of chain made from a noble gas with my favorite Eridian.”
“No, no, no. Grace listen bad. Sad for Earth. Sad for Erid. Happy Grace is here.”
“Yeah, I get you, pal. That’s what I was saying. I feel the same way.”
Rocky rumbles, the same low noise—almost a growl—that he always makes when he’s frustrated with their language barrier.
“Happy Grace is here. Happy Grace is here. Happy Grace is here,” he repeats over and over, trying to make Grace understand his meaning through sheer force of will. Rocky was putting some emphasis on his words that Grace couldn’t really parse, couldn’t even really describe. It was some kind of tone—some kind of rhythm, maybe?—that he’d never heard Rocky use before.
He looks at Rocky over his shoulder, hands still winding chain. His friend was huffing and puffing grumpily. “Okay, fine, I think my simple human brain doesn’t understand. Why don’t you try it in Eridian instead of Eringlish and I’ll see what I can parse out.”
Rocky’s vents rattle; Grace imagines he’s taking a deep breath even though he knows that’s not really how Eridian physiology works.
And then— there’s song. Because that’s the only way to describe it. It’s not like anything he’s ever heard before but maybe this is just how Eridian sounds when it’s not being dumbed down for the limited range of human ears. He wonders if he’s been making Rocky hold himself back this entire time.
As Rocky speaks, he hears the tune of his own name, catches a few words that he knows here and there—brave, kind, save, thank, friend, home. Something about human hearts and the Eridian hot circulatory system that Grace can’t fit into the context. Something about magnetic fields, following true North. But even when he can pick out the words, the song conjures a feeling more than anything else—like being wrapped in a warm blanket or sinking into a plush couch after a long day. Like looking down a city street and feeling awed at all the life happening—the cars honking their horns in traffic, the moms on their way to the gym pushing strollers and talking into their cell phones, the gaggles of teenagers huddled outside of movie theaters—so rich and deep it's beyond understanding, feeling miniscule in the best possible way. Like opening the first to-go container of delivery from his favorite restaurant, the smell of tikka masala warm and rich filling his nose. Like being hugged. It’s so lovely his eyes fill with tears.
The sound ebbs away, leaving Grace’s hitching breath and the constant background noise of the Hail Mary in its wake. Rocky tilts his carapace towards him in anticipation.
“I’m sorry, I…” he wipes at the tears on his cheeks. “It’s beautiful—I mean, so, so beautiful—but I don’t think I understand.”
“Frustration,” Rocky grumbles. “Inability to express complex concepts and emotions for Grace to understand—”
“Hold on, wait,” he interrupts, looking down at his empty hands. “Was that— was that the last link?”
Rocky pivots this way and that, using his sonar to check for any unlinked parts.
“Chain complete,” he reports back.
Grace just gapes at him. It seems unreal.
“Chain complete!” Rocky repeats. He jumps straight into the air like a pogo stick, so excited he bumps the top of his carapace against the upper wall of his habitat with a firm crack. But Rocky is so excited he doesn’t even flinch. “Celebration!”
“Celebration!” Grace replies. He can’t help it; he starts jumping too, albeit a little more carefully than Rocky since he’s ‘squishy’ and ‘fragile’, as Rocky says.
“Hooray!” Rocky hoots. “No more make chain!”
Grace laughs, so glad he made Rocky reach him how they say “hooray” in Eridian; it always fills him with joy to hear Rocky say it. It sounds the way party horns do on New Year’s Eve. Rocky starts wiggling back in forth in happy dance, hands jazzing it up, which makes Grace start dancing with jazz hands too, which makes Rocky copy Grace’s dance, which sends them in a feedback loop of increasingly silly dance moves, until they both slump against the xenonite wall between them, giddy and breathless. Well, Rocky probably isn’t breathless considering the heartiness of Eridian constitution and also the fact that he doesn’t breathe, but the solidarity with Grace’s need for respiration is appreciated.
“This has been, like, Top Ten Worst Two Week Periods of My Life,” Grace laughs. “And you know that’s saying something; I told you about defending my dissertation.”
“Dramatic.”
“Okay, maybe. But just, ah, thank goodness that’s over. I seriously don’t think I could’ve done that with anyone else. I think I would’ve gone crazy without you here. Thank you. I just—“
And… he’s crying again. Awesome.
“I just—,” he powers through. “I just love you so much, man.”
“Need word.”
“Huh? Which word?”
“Grace say: Grace 🎶 Rocky so much, human gender-based slang.”
“Oh, boy. This is gonna be a long one.”
Day 14.05
“Yes, yes, yes! This is exactly what Rocky means by song!”
(Coda: Day 15
“Time go fishing, question?”
“Yup, time go fishing, buddy.”)