Work Text:
When Dr Ryland Grace left the Hail Mary, he didn’t really stop to think what he should bring. He just zoned out, grabbed all the stuff that he owned, and carried on. However, after a bit, the Eridian’s who now were on the ship did bring back like 3 boxes of items he forgot to bring... no matter!
It had been almost 2 whole years after he’d first arrived on Erid, and he STILL hadn’t looked through those boxes. Darn. Curse his stupid procrastination. Well... no better time than the present!
Grace sat on the floor and leaned over to grab the first box, before opening it up. This one didn’t have anything very important though. Some paper, pens, some MRE’s... a pillow? How’d he forget a pillow? There was a fidget toy (how that got there, God only knows), crayons and even more paper. Whoo boy they really liked giving people paper, didn’t they? What did they expect him to do with it? Origami? There was probably a tutorial somewhere on the computer now that he thought about it...
Geez Grace, focus! This is exactly why he hasn’t looked through these boxes.
He sighed and finished that box. There was nothing of interest.
Sigh.
He pushed the box away and leant over to get the other one. The first thing he saw were books, lined up, spines up towards him. Some classics, Animal Farm, Lord of the Rings (Eh, he’d always been more of a Hobbit guy), The Hobbit (Whey!!!!!!), a dictionary and... a book about origami! How fun. Also, they sent them to space with a copy of the Communist Manifesto???? What the flip.
Also in the box, were CDs and DVDs!
Ohhhhhh, that's why the laptop had a CD hatch!
A majority were movies, which was a good sight. All of them were also of good taste! He smiled and dug through the discs. More movies, some old albums, one labelled ‘archive’...? In his handwriting. Welp, something to look through at least.
Grace shifted through the CDs. “Is there anything else interesting in here?” He muttered to himself, hoping that somehow, he would find something either shocking, or eye-catching or-
His eyes landed on a CD labelled ‘my tunes!’ once again in his handwriting. He blinked. He listened to music? Well, he obviously did. Maybe it had just escaped him with all the, y’know, amnesia, saving Earth and Erid, literally everything. Huh. On the Hail Mary, he did feel happy when music was playing, in the few moments it played, but... Well, everyone has a music taste.
Time to find out what his was!
Grace jumped up from the seat and went over to his laptop on his desk. The leftover boxes and items were left unattended, but it was for a good reason!!! Not science but music!!!!! He inserted the disc into the CD tray and opened the file explorer to see what was stored in it.
Two files. One labelled ‘tunes’ and the other called ‘THINGS’. Interesting...
He opened the first one, and it was full of just classics. Beatles, Queen, ABBA, you name it. Grace sighed.
Did he really have just the most Average Joe playlist ever?
...Wait. The other file. He went back and hovered over the mouse over it. Maybe this was also filled with classic albums, or it could be something he didn’t want out in the world. But then again, why was it in the CD labelled ‘my tunes!’? On accident, did he put in a large collection of cringe things and never bothered to check? This could be really bad, or really good. He double clicked.
The entire file, like the first, was full of mp3’s and mp4’s. Not very surprising. But why was it in a completely separate file? Very odd...
He opened an mp4 to see what it had in it-
“Sekaaai de, ichiban ohimesama-”
He immediately paused it to gather his thoughts.
HATSUNE MIKU?!!??!!??!!!!
God, how could he have forgotten?! ...Probably the drugs but STILL! Before the whole astrophage/Petrova line stuff happened, Miku was one of his favourite singers ever! All the songs were catchy, her design was cute and memorable... and he had forgotten? About Miku? The 1# princess in the world? Scandalous. Grace unpaused the MV, watching the teal-haired girl went through life with the, quite frankly, below average looking anime guy. He promptly went clicked on another mp4 once that one finished playing and watched. And watched. And listened. And watched.
---------------
The door rattled with frantic knocks. Grace stood up from the papers spread around him and walked over to the computer and paused Magnet, before going over to the door.
<Grace, Grace, Rocky hear other human in Grace home, where where where where->
Rocky immediately tried to enter Graces house, being stopped by Grace himself standing in his way.
“Woah, woah, buddy! No other humans here Rocky, sorry.” Rocky looked up at him in confusion.
<What? But Rocky hear sound that not Grace in Grace dome? Why?>
Grace sighed. Ohhhh boy the wonders of explaining Vocaloid. “Ok, so. Rocky, there isn’t another human here, but I get why you’d think that.”
<Confusion.>
“Ok, so. What you just heard was music. You’ve heard music with me, right? Yeah, so I found some and was playing it.”
<It sound different.>
“Well, yeah. Not all music is the same, y’know.”
<No, sound different to Grace. Words Rocky no know.>
Ah. Yeah. Rocky didn’t know what languages are. “Oh, right, so yeah. Ummm... so, humans have this thing called language. The way I’m speaking is English. Ok? There are lots of others, like Spanish, German, Russian...”
<How language different sound?>
“Um, well... Spanish, instead of ‘hello’ has ‘hola’, German has ‘hallo’, Russian has-”
<Why German have same as English?>
“Well, languages don’t just appear. They take time to develop and are constantly evolving. German and English are very similar to each other, and so they sound similar.”
<Ah! Amaze amaze amaze!>
“Yeah.” He laughed. “It’s pretty cool, right.”
<What language Rocky hear?>
“Oh! That was Japanese. It’s very popular in media.”
<Why sing human sound strange?>
“Oh, she’s not really... a human.”
<WHAT? No no no no Rocky confusion Rocky help->
“NO! No- Rocky-” Grace once more, had to try and stop Rocky from entering his house, for fear of the Eridian breaking something. “Rocky, I can explain it, please calm down.”
<Imitation.>
“What?”
<Sing human is predator. Imitate Grace for scare then food.>
“No Rocky-” He sighed, “Seriously, I’m perfectly fine. I can explain everything. Theres no evil alien predator in the dome.”
<Ok. Grace explain sing human.>
“Yes! Alright, so, there's this software used for music called Vocaloid. What, or who, you just heard, was an example of a Vocaloid. Basically, someone has recorded themselves making every single sound in a language, like Japanese, making something called a voicebank, then people with the Vocaloid software take those recordings and rearrange the sounds to make it sound like it’s saying something!”
<Amaze! Amaze! Why Grace say who about Vocaloid?>
“Ah yeah. So, humans being humans, we decided to give the voicebanks names, personalities, appearances... like the one who made the songs I’m listening to right now, people call her Hatsune Miku.”
<Hatsune Miku... it beautiful! What it mean?>
“It means ‘The first sound of the future’ in Japanese.”
<It beautiful!>
Rocky did a little spin and produced a sound that sounded similar to ‘Mikudayō’, which Grace laughed at.
“Is that her name in Eridian?”
<Yes! Yes!>
Grace laughed at the coincidence again and watched as Rocky spun a few times more, repeating <Miku! Miku! Miku!> for a while. An idea came to his head.
“Hey Rocky?” The Eridian snapped his attention to Grace. “Would you... want to listen to some Miku with me?”
<Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!>
“Oki dokie then! Follow me!” He held the door open as the Eridian went over to his desk, and Grace followed suit. Once sat, he picked rocky up and put him on his lap, and looked through the files until he found ‘World Is Mine’ again. “Watch, or well, listen, and ask away.” He pressed play.