Chapter Text
You’re looking at a different beach every time you visit the shore.
That’s not a poetic metaphor. It’s just erosion.
Same coastline. Same bay. Same stupidly bright sky that still feels wrong even after all these years. But the details shift. They always do. Forty years is plenty of time for a small piece of land to quietly rearrange itself while pretending it hasn’t.
The stairs that used to lead down from the house are gone now. The slope softened over time until the whole thing became a gentle incline all the way down to the beach, all just to accommodate my ageing joints.
Rocky’s work. Or more accurately, Rocky-and-everyone-he-can-bully-into-helping’s work.
They say it’s for me.
They’re not wrong.
Double gravity hasn’t gotten any friendlier. It never does. And my body—well. My body has opinions about that. Loud ones. Arthritis set in early, even before the news about Sol stabilizing reached Erid. That was a fun day, by the way. “Good news, Grace! Humanity’s not doomed anymore!” Fantastic. My joints still hurt.
Most days I use a cane now. I hate the cane.
Not because I’m proud. Okay, a little because I’m proud. But mostly because navigating loose sand in 2g with a stick is about as graceful as it sounds, which is to say: not at all. Hence the walkways. Stable, even surfaces, designed to distribute weight and reduce strain. Classic Eridian overengineering for a “simple” problem.
I still step off them.
Frequently.
Partly because I’m stubborn. Partly because I miss the feeling of the ground shifting underfoot. And partly—if I’m being honest—because it gives Rocky something to fuss about.
He pretends he doesn’t like fussing.
He is very bad at pretending.
They’re all bad at it.
Eridians don’t do “worry” the way humans do. No anxiety spirals, no late-night existential dread. But they do… something adjacent. A kind of sustained, low-frequency agitation that manifests as over-analysis, over-preparation, and, in Rocky’s case, an increasing tendency to hover—metaphorically speaking—whenever I do anything even mildly strenuous.
My aging has not gone unnoticed.
That’s putting it mildly.
To them, I’m a system degrading without a clear repair protocol. That’s… deeply uncomfortable. Eridian biology doesn’t really do slow failure. Things either function or they don’t. The idea of a structure gradually wearing down over decades, accumulating damage in ways that can’t be cleanly fixed?
That’s… messy.
They don’t like messy.
Rocky definitely doesn’t like messy.
Adrian likes it even less.
Which is why Adrian—yes, that Adrian, has spent the last several decades elbow-deep in human stem cell research. Courtesy of the Hail Mary’s database, of course. Humanity’s entire scientific library, distilled into something an alien genius could chew through in… honestly, not that long. Months, maybe. A year if they took breaks. They didn’t.
The bottleneck wasn’t knowledge.
It was material.
Specifically: me.
They pivoted only because they ran out of Grace.
Turns out, one aging human is not a sustainable research pipeline. Who could’ve predicted that? We stretched it as far as it would go—cells, samples, anything I could give without turning the whole project into “how fast can we accidentally kill our only subject.” There are limits. Biology has a way of enforcing those.
So that line of research didn’t fail.
It just… exhausted its supply.
The next logical step was obvious: if you can’t get more human cells, use Eridian ones.
That went about as well as you’d expect.
There were early ideas—promising, in that dangerous, “this might work if we ignore the implications” kind of way. One of the more serious proposals involved purifying worker cells. Stripping out the heavy metals that make up so much of their internal structure, trying to push them toward something more… flexible. More stem-cell-like.
On paper, it made sense.
In practice, it was like suggesting we remove a human’s skin to see if the underlying tissue might regenerate better without it.
You just don’t do that. Even the Eridians agreed. Which is saying something. So that avenue died. Quietly, efficiently, filed away as “theoretically interesting, practically horrifying.”
Did that stop anyone?
Oh, absolutely not.
Science is still science, whether it’s saving one human or advancing an entire species. If anything, removing me from the equation made it cleaner. No ethical gray area about the last human slowly falling apart in your lab. Just pure research.
It still had value—for them, if not for me.
That was… what, thirty years ago? Give or take. Time gets a little fuzzy when you’re only measuring it in aches and birthdays.
Adrian didn’t stop.
Within a few months, they tamed them.
I don’t use that word lightly. Neither do they, which is how I know it fits. Worker cells stopped being these semi-autonomous, “good luck controlling that” biological processes and became something… manageable.
The day that worked was—
Yeah. Big day for science.
A whole colony of worker cells, seeded into a specialized scaffold, assembled into something coherent—dare I use the word functional.
An Eridian.
Not hatched, not grown the usual way.
Constructed.
See, when I introduced Adrian to human embryonic stem cell research, I was thinking incremental progress. Repair mechanisms. Maybe—maybe—some way to slow degradation.
I did not think the first major breakthrough would be their version of cloning.
Dolly the sheep, but make it alien and significantly more terrifying.
Insanely cool.
Still weird.
Okay, very weird.
But that’s Adrian. You give them a problem, they don't just solve it—they overshoot, loop back, and invent a new field on the way.
I’ve seen it.
Not up close—turns out “fragile human in a 210°C ammonia atmosphere” is still a bad combination—but through the xenonite walls. There are a lot of those now. A whole enclosed corridor along the biodome walls, lined with clear panels opening into the Eridian atmosphere, branching off into various labs. Basically a whole science institute moved in as my neighbor.
At first it was just practicality. Easier access to the resident science human. Shorter travel distance for consultation, observation, emergency “Grace is doing something dumb again” interventions.
Frankly, win for both parties.
I get a front-row seat to alien science.
They get me within shouting distance.
Anyway.
The clone.
It’s been… growing in my backyard for the better part of thirty years. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d say, but here we are. Alien planet, impossible biology, casual violations of everything I used to consider “normal.”
At the beginning, it didn’t look like anything.
Just a scaffold. A mesh. A structured lattice seeded with worker cells that Adrian had somehow convinced to behave. It reminded me of those tissue culture frameworks back on Earth—support structures you grow cells onto so they don’t just collapse into useless blobs.
Except this one didn’t stop at blobs.
Over time, it… filled in.
Slowly, layers of material laid down one by one, the kind of growth you don’t notice from day to day, but then you look back after a year and go, “Oh. That’s new.”
Then after ten years: “Oh. That’s a limb.”
After twenty: “That is definitely a body.”
There were long stretches where it just… stopped. Or at least appeared to. More than once, I caught myself assuming it was just another Eridian taking a nap. That was a weird moment, by the way.
“Ah yes, normal alien taking a nap—wait, I think we built that one.”
I’ve… gotten used to it. Or at least, I’ve gotten used to pretending I’m used to it.
I started calling it Ryland.
Not officially. Adrian has a designation for it that’s probably a string of hyper-precise Eridian terms describing structure, origin, and developmental state. Something like “controlled worker-cell macroassembly unit version twelve point something.”
I went with Ryland because of the color.
It was this beige, granite-like base with darker orange patterning running through it—iron deposits, probably. The contrast reminded me of my old cardigan, one which was still tucked away at my house, retired, but still loved.
Look, I’m allowed to project a little.
I’ve seen Ghost in the Shell. I’ve seen The Thirteenth Floor. Both of those came out before the 2000s even hit, which officially makes me ancient by movie standards. Point is: I’m not unfamiliar with the concept of artificial bodies, transferred identities, synthetic life.
Doesn’t make it less weird when it’s happening in your backyard.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about it.
Not in a serious, “this is a plan” kind of way. More like… idle curiosity. What it would be like to exist in something like that. A body that doesn’t degrade. Doesn’t ache. Doesn’t slowly fall apart under gravity and time.
What it would be like to be… Ryland.
Then I stop.
Because that way lies a whole pile of ethical, philosophical, and “Grace, you’re definitely not qualified to make that call” problems. Also because—
I don’t have that kind of time. That’s not pessimism. That’s just… math. Even with everything Adrian’s done, everything they’ve tried, everything they’re still trying—my body is still human. Still fragile. Still running on a design that was never meant for their environment, their gravity, their lifespan.
I can feel it, more these days. The slowing. The stiffness. The way recovery takes longer than it should. The way it doesn’t recover, sometimes.
It’s ageing, nothing more to it.
And I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea that I’m not leaving Erid, and sooner or later, even that experience will be cut short. And I don’t mean to be catastrophizing, but old people… we know these things.
Not in a dramatic, movie-monologue kind of way. No, it's subtle, a slow accumulation of little signals your body stops bothering to hide. You start recognizing patterns. Which is how I know.
The next few months—that’s my estimate. Give or take. Biology isn’t exactly punctual, but it’s been pretty consistent about the overall trend.
I’ve had time to process it. Plenty of time. I’ve gone through the five stages of grief over my own death at least three times. Probably more. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression—rinse, repeat. Acceptance used to feel like something you had to reach.
Now it just… sticks. Like a default setting. Doesn’t mean it’s pleasant. Just means it’s familiar.
I’m okay with it. Mostly.
Rocky is… not.
He didn’t hold back from voicing his displeasure at the fact, that’s just how Eridians—how Rocky works. If he doesn’t like something, you’ll know. But you don’t spend decades with someone without learning how to read the gaps between what they say.
He’s been worried.
He’s also been… absent.
Not physically. If anything, I see him just as often as before. He still checks in, still hovers when I push things too far. All the usual behaviors are there.
But his mind?
Somewhere else. There’s a delay now. A fraction of a second longer to respond. Moments where he goes still. Running something in the background that clearly isn’t me.
I try not to take it personally.
I really do.
But come on.
Of course I take it personally.
I’m not mad at him. That’s the frustrating part. I don’t want to be mad at him. If anything, I get it. This might just be how Eridians handle something like this. Withdraw, focus on a solution, don’t engage with the problem until you can fix it.
Very on-brand, honestly.
Doesn’t make it easier.
I miss him.
Which is ridiculous, because he’s right there half the time. Talking, moving, existing in the same space. But it’s like talking to someone who’s already halfway out the door.
I’ve asked. A few times now. Casually, trying not to make it a whole thing. “Everything okay, Rock?” A pause. Then:
“No ready. Full complete before show Grace.”
That’s it. And yeah, I mean—he’s always been like that. Give him a problem, he disappears into it until it’s solved. Perfectionist to the core. I can’t say I didn’t expect that answer.
Still.
…
Yeah.
Still.
☀︎ ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯ ◎
It happened a few weeks later, catching me during one of my good days.
I was going through the usual morning routine. Heat water, mix in the synthetic caffeine solution that has long since replaced anything resembling real coffee, pretending it tastes the same. It doesn’t. Not even close. But caffeine is just a molecule, and my brain isn’t picky about delivery methods, so we make do.
I had just taken the first sip when Rocky started banging on the door.
Not unusual, historically. Very unusual recently.
For a split second, I just stood there, cup halfway to my mouth, because that sound—loud, urgent, unmistakably Rocky—felt like something from another time. Before the distance. Before the… whatever he’s been working on swallowed most of his attention.
Then his voice came through the xenonite.
“Grace! Friend Grace!”
There was something off about it, higher. The notes that make up my name jumped an octave, ringing with an energy I hadn’t heard in… a long time. It got louder as I moved to the door, like he physically couldn’t keep the excitement contained.
I opened it.
“Good morning, Rocky,” I said, because apparently I cope with chaos by pretending it’s a normal Tuesday.
“No time! Grace must follow,” he rattled off immediately. “Rocky idea finished! Many thrums over long time—finally have answer.”
Well.
That answered one question.
Also raised about twenty more.
I set the mug down—carefully, because I am old and value not spilling hot liquid on myself—and hurried after him as best as I could. Which, to be clear, is not very fast. My definition of “hurrying” these days is more of an enthusiastic shuffle.
Rocky did not share that limitation.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” he trilled, already halfway down the path outside my house before I’d even cleared the doorway. One of his limbs gestured back at me in a very “why are you not immediately here” sort of way.
“Rocky, slow down,” I called after him, leaning a little harder on the cane than I’d like to admit.
He stopped. Backtracked. Adjusted his pace almost instantly.
“Apology, apology, apology,” he said, falling into step beside me—well, beside me in the sense that he was still moving at a speed that required active effort on my part to match, but at least he wasn’t leaving me behind anymore.
“What got you so excited, buddy?” I asked, glancing through the xenonite windows as we passed through the science corridor. Labs, workspaces, half-finished projects—most of which I hadn’t seen him touch in months. That alone told me how focused he’d been on whatever this was.
“Finally ready to tell me about your secret project?” I added.
He made a pleased, resonant chord at that—excitement, maybe a little pride mixed in. “Yes. Is complete. Needed to be correct before show to Grace. Now is correct.”
That tracked.
Rocky doesn’t do half-finished.
I huffed out a small breath, doing my best to keep up as we rounded another corner. “Good to know I’m only getting the fully peer-reviewed version,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to risk premature science.”
“Correct,” he replied, entirely serious.
Yeah.
Something had gone very right.
Or very wrong.
“Don’t keep this old man waiting,” I said, pushing a little more speed into my shuffle. “Or I’ll die before we even get there.” It landed exactly how I expected.
Rocky’s carapace lifted in that sharp, indignant way he gets when I say something he doesn’t like—which, in this case, was the word die. He stopped outright and turned his full attention on me, the subtle shift in posture making it clear I had just triggered a Very Important Correction.
“First, Grace no die,” he said firmly. Then, after the briefest pause, softer but somehow more intense: “Then, if Grace body no strong enough anymore, Rocky fix.”
There it was.
Same answer. Every time.
I felt my expression give way before I could stop it, one of those soft, helpless smiles that isn’t really about happiness so much as… everything else. Because that’s Rocky. Decades of discussion, explanations, data, the entire concept of human lifespan laid out in painful detail—and he still lands on the same conclusion:
Problem exists. Rocky fixes problem.
Simple.
If not a little impossible.
He lowered himself slightly, not all the way to the ground but close enough that I didn’t have to reach. I rested a hand against the top of his suit, the familiar warmth of it grounding in a way I hadn’t realized I needed.
“You know what?” I said quietly. “I believe you.”
“Goodm,” he replied, but the chord was softer this time. Much less triumphant, more… careful. Like he knew I was humoring him.
Maybe I was.
Maybe I wasn’t.
Some people would call it cruel, letting him hold onto that hope when I’ve already made peace with the alternative. But here’s the thing: I’m human. I’ve made selfish calls before. I didn’t want to die on the Hail Mary—Rocky saved me. I didn’t want to die on Erid—Rocky built me a world I could survive in.
I don’t want to die now.
So if Rocky says he has a solution?
…yeah. I’m going to listen.
We closed the last stretch of corridor together, the familiar layout of their lab complex coming into view. Adrian’s workspace to one side, Rocky’s to the other. Between them, through reinforced xenonite, I could just make out the shape of the structure that had been growing there for decades.
Ryland
I almost said something. Some half-joking greeting, like it could hear me through the wall. But the energy in the room—the way Rocky was practically vibrating with anticipation—stopped me.
This wasn’t a joking moment.
This was… something else.
He turned toward me, practically radiating excitement.
“Say hello to new Grace body! Grace Eridian like Rocky and Adrian!”
…
There are moments where your brain just… refuses to process what it’s hearing.
This was one of them.
“What?” I said.
Clear. Articulate. Deeply confused.
“Adrian work with worker cells, make new body for Grace,” Rocky continued, as if this were a completely normal sentence to be saying. “Rocky design machine that take Grace brain out, and put into Eridian.”
He sounded proud. Like he had just explained how to fix a broken tool. Meanwhile, my brain had latched onto exactly one part of that and was refusing to move on.
Take Grace brain out.
Put into Eridian.
I took a step back before I even realized I was doing it, one hand coming up to my head like I needed to physically confirm it was still there.
“No,” I said immediately. Then louder, because apparently that needed emphasis. “No, my brain is not going anywhere!”