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He was restless. The kind of restless that for him only had one cure. Which would have been an easy fix back on Earth. But he wasn't on Earth. Grace was a dozen light years from there.
"Grace is thinking hard, question?" Rocky said.
He looked over at his companion in his ball.
"I am," he said, not elaborating about what.
It would only lead to more questions about what. He was probably going to get those regardless.
"About what?" Rocky asked.
There is was. He wasn't going to get out of explaining what it was that he was thinking about.
"I'm feeling antsy and want bubblegum," he said. "Which helps when I feel like this. But I don't have any."
"What is bubblegum?"
Rocky's body was tilted in a sign of a question that he had picked up from Grace. Which was oddly comforting to him.
"It is a substance that humans like to chew on," Grace explained. "It's kinda like food where it has flavors, but it is not for nutrition. It's for the sensation."
"Seems useless, if not for nutrition," Rocky said.
"In some ways it is," Grace said. "But it makes my brain less itchy."
"Brain is itchy? Is reason for concern?"
He was moving his legs up and down in a way that betrayed the worry that he was feeling knowing that there may be something wrong with Grace.
"No, it's nothing to worry about," Grace said. "It's a turn of phrase to describe a certain feeling. There's nothing actually wrong with me. I just need to find something to do to ease it since I don't have any gum."
"Human brains are not well designed."
Grace chuckled. He couldn't agree more with the statement. They were weird. Especially when they made him crave bubblegum."