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Olesya — Lesya as her loved ones called her — scooted closer to the the prone figure on the floor, with sunglasses over his eyes and a bucket hat where there was only artificial light. The tube plugged into vodka bag no. 2 was leaking. She itched to fix that. Her fingers passed through the wieldy plastic, smoke-like as they slowly reformed when she pulled back.
Yáo squeezed in through the crevices between the lab and the med bay, a frown marring his face. He shoved his hands through the mess of hair that now adorned his head, faint disgust pulling his lips down.
"I can't touch anything. No sensor detects me. No heat signature, no gamma rays, no super sonic soundwave. It's like we're —"
"Dead." Lesya
Yáo looked at her. Really looked at her. His eyes landed on her darkened fingers from necrosis, to her cheeks which she knew had sunken in like the skin of a star collapsing onto itself. She lifted her lips up, a manic semblance to a smile.
"Oh, stop it. I haven't had a man who studies me like a fine specimen that I am for a while."
The trance broke. Yáo looked away. He coughed into his hand, the motion dislodging the jumpsuit hanging over his skin-wrapped shoulders. Laughter bubbled out of her and she couldn't stop laughing. Yáo's barely concealed mortification, her rather sorry state of being, them being ghosts haunting a state-of-the-art interstellar spaceship named 'Not Shooting Your Shot is 100% Failure' , their third and only alive crew member completely wasted. The ridiculousness of this entire thing, and maybe a little hopelessness tilted her to the left. Yáo didn't laugh with her. He crouched down besides Grace and pushed his arm, elbow-deep, through his chest. Nothing happened. Grace grumbled something, the hat sliding further off his head.
"That's creepy," Lesya said through hiccups, wiping the tears dripping from the corner of her eyes. Good to know she could cry as a ghost.
Yáo pinched his thumb and index together in a motion to pick up scattered paper on the floor. Once again, nothing happened. When you had no matter or mass, there was nothing you could do to interact with a matter-full world.
Or something.
She was an engineer, not a scientist, and definitely not a believer of souls and afterlife but faced with the sheer impossibility of all of this, she had truly been left with no choice. She looked at Grace, barely breathing in his inebriety, and kicked his knees. Her feet passed clean through.
"Sorry our little scientist. We couldn't go with you all the way." She leaned back, holding her head carefully against the divider so she didn't phase through the next room. "But we will always be with you, even when you don't know it."
Discovering what she could and could not do as a ghost took a while, half a day by her estimated sense of time. The Hail Mary acted as an anchor, and if she pinned a centroid on the ship, from that point, she had about 100 meters in all direction of movement. She had tried crossing the threshold, that next step landed her back on top of the centroid. It was disconcerting, like jumping on a trampoline and then landing head-first in an ice bath.
Next she tested what kind off effect she could work on the physical world. She held two fingers to her temple and stared at a scratch on the hull, willing it with her mind to sand itself away. The scratch remained.
Lesya - 0 : 1 - reality
Next she stuck her hands into every type of material she could see, both inside and outside of the Hail Mary. Nope. Nothing.
She remembered seeing a horror movie with a ghost crawling out from the TV. So that was what she tried next, tapping into a digital side of Hail Mary. Nothing as well.
With digital came electrivity, which also yielded nothing. She stopped keeping tracks of the score. Sometimes the elephant could stay in the room without being addressed.
One just could not interact when one had no matter was proving to be more and more correct by days. But her being here with Yáo in a form that had not been proven to exist said that there had to be something here that she hadn't thought of.
A tremor ran through the body of the ship. She traced it the airlock to see Yáo's body float out into space. In a vaccumn with nothing to stop it, the body would float forever
and ever
and ever
She sunk inside the airlock. Her body was already loaded onto the platform, photos placed carefully between her fingers. Her papa squeezing her tight, a kiss pressed into the crown of her hair; she could still the ghost of his hug, the warmth encompassing her, being hugged by the world must have felt like that. Nyasha telling her a shitty joke and ended up laughing harder than her; she heard that ocean roar of a laugh clear as yesterday. Her tiny figure shotting vodka shots in the the no visitors allowed Ivan the Bell Tower; great time, she got her PhD defunded for that but her work in nanocoating was too revolutionary to lose.
She let out a stuttered breath. May they all see each other again. She took a step back and settled beside Yáo, who tipped his head in greeting. Grace peered out from the viewing port, sorrow burrowed in the crinkles around his eyes. His nose was scruffed red. He must have been crying.
No one spoke. They watched her body leave the lone man-made fortress and into the dark twinking sea. The Hail Mary marched on.
"Where have you been?" Yáo asked once the airlock slid shut.
"Experimenting." Lesya said. She watched the the number on the padlock trek up.
"Anything of note?"
"Negative."
Yáo hummed. "You've been gone for about three days. I thought you moved on."
and left us, was left unsaid.
Lesya raised an eyebrow. "No I wasn't. It was half a day at most."
"I checked the on-board atomic clock. I didn't see hide nor hair of you for three days." Yáo glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. "Does that information add anything to your experiement?"
"Nothing that I can think of now." She shook her head, reeling a bit. "How about you? What have you discovered?"
"Besides the fact that I hate having long hair?" He flicked the strands behind his shoulders. "Dr. Grace has amnesia."
For someone not needing air to breathe at the moment, her lungs expelled the oxygen from her body pretty damn fast.
"What?"
"The NannyBot failed to keep us alive. Then it stands to reason that it also was responsible for Dr. Grace's condition."
Shd felt bad. She felt really really bad. Her dying wasn't anyone's fault but luck of the draw. It could have been any of the three of them to be the last survivor onboard, without memory. Grace must be so scared, and he was all alone now. "I need to find him."
She needed to do something about this as she lepat through walls, raced half-in-half-out of the Hail Mary looking for Grace, Yáo half a step behind her. She came upon him in the Mental Health Awareness Room, arms wrapped around his knees, looking at the pixelated ocean.
"Oh, Grace." She cried, sinking to her knees next to him and wrapped her misty arms around his shoulders. Her words clogged up her throat, unable to get out. She wanted to reassure him everything was going to be okay, to promise him he wouldn't be alone, to say they would find a way to help.
But she couldn't say any of that because she worked with facts and figures and materials. She could not make empty promises. So she kept hugging Grace and willed it with all her non-being to let him know that they were there, both her and Yáo.
"Aliens."
"Little green men."
"Aliens."
"Xenomorphs would not be nice, don't you think?"
Silence reigned absolute in space, even in death.
"Aliens." Yáo repeated. Third time the charm it seemed since he was blinking now, his hands going in and out of the pockets as if to shove his disbelief somwhere he couldn't find.
"Aliens."
Lesya agreeed, cross-legged on the hull. Nothing phased her anymore. Sun-eating microbial organism? Let her at them. Souls existed? Wow she would get a Nobel for this if she could exert any force on the matter world. Other intelligent lifeforms had spaceship and was parked right next to the Hail Mary in all their glorious alien engineering and materials? Hell yes, she would introduce them to vodka and partake in whatever they did for celebration.
Yáo took a leap off the edge towards the other spaceship, doing the thing as any good captain would do, taking the risk for the entire crew first. She watched him float away. By her estimation, the ship was just outside of the 100meters limit, meaning they could come closer for a look but still too far away to actually go through the hull and visit. 'First non-matter ambassador to an interstellar meeting' had a nice ring to it, though. Yáo had stopped at the edge of the limit.
And he was waving her over.
"What?" She yelled. The vaccumn of space didn't apply to you when you were dead so she knew Yáo heard her. He didn't reply. Instead, he waved her over with more urgency. She sighed, loudly, but complied. A captain outranked her something something.
"What." She grouched when she was shoulder to shoulder with Yáo. Upclose, the alien spaceship was much bigger in comparison to the Hail Mary, 18 Hail Mary-s could fit in there. It shadowed the shining core of the Milky Way in the background, the metal of its hull reflecting the light coming from Tau Ceti and all the twinkling stars. Lesya itched to touch the ship. It looked nothing like any materials on Earth. It seemed almost hollow, with thin rods parallel to each other covering every surface. Perhaps that was their idea for aerodynamics? Somewhere with soupy atmosphere needed something that was not streamlined droplet.
"That." Yáo pointed towards a spot on the middle of the ship. "That thing had been waving at me."
Lesya followed Yáo's direction and saw what he was talking about. On the hull of the ship, there seemed to be tracks running along, and on each track, two contraptions were attached, one looked like a three-pronged claw, the other a hexagon mirror-plated parabolic satellite dish. The dish was indeed pointed towards them. Lesya nudged Yáo to the left. The dish followed them. She pushed upwards, pulling Yáo up with her. The dish trailed after their ascend.
"Uh." She stared at the thing, flummoxed. Aliens had ghost sensing technology, who would have thought?
The claw made a closing and opening motion in quick succession. She balked.
"It can hear us, too?"
"Apparently." Yáo nodded. "When you yelled back then, the disc turned briefly towards you. And watch this." Yáo waved his hand in the air, a 'Hello'. The claw mimicked the motion. He then began writing a series of Chinese characters in the air. The claw copied flawlessly, even closing two of its claws and leaving only one claw outstretched. "Just writing 'Greetings from Earth'. He explained when Lesya side-eyed him.
An idea sparked in her head. "Lemme try next." She raised her finger, the claw perked up accordingly. Then Yáo's palm ensnared her hand.
"No, we are not teaching bad words to aliens."
"Why not? It's not like they would understand." She complained, raising her other hand which was also quickly batted away.
"It's a matter of integrity." Yáo shook his head, staring at her sternly. "No, Ilyukhina."
She pulled out her pout. The captain didn't bat an eye. One moment, two moments later, she raised her hands up in defeat. "Fine, fine, Capt'n, I concede. And it's Lesya by the way."
Yáo stayed silent, then he nodded, a smile playing on his lips.
"Lesya it is. Sounds nice."
"I know right! I love my name."
Throughout their little conversation, the claw and disc trained on them. Lesya did two finger hearts, prompting a surprised laugh from Yáo and the little claw machine confused claw pinching. Then movement from other claw-and-disc hull radar throwing something towards the Hail Mary caught their attention.
Yáo, the ever responsible leader that he was, made a beeline towards the cockpit, towards Grace. "Let's head back in."
"Let's go." Lesya nodded and waved the little machine goodbye. "Bye little guy! Until next time."
So the aliens — Eridians, as Grace named them — found a way to make a noble gas into metal. Or their planet 's specific conditions turned everything she had known about material upside down. Whatever it was, she was ready to claw up a wall to study the entire thing. But Grace had other things to take care of so understanding why Xenonite was Xenonite was the last thing on his mind. She got that, really she did, as she stared at the capsule, the little human model, and the piece of mottled xenonite Rocky — cute name, Grace, little bit unimaginative but cute — made that Grace had been waving around for the vlogs.
Not being able to feel it with her own skin was driving her nuts!
"If you sing to it, it will let you touch it." Yáo's voice floated out from. . . . somewhere. Ah, he's by the glove box, studying the star system model Rocky made.
She perked up, mind already running through her list of songs. "You think so?" It wasn't a bad idea. As a matter of fact, any idea was better than no idea.
"No, of course not!" He threw his hands up. "Why do you even believe me?"
She clicked her tongue, hope squashed, and continued dipping her hand in and out of the material, praying that somehow someway a tiny bit of it would be ghost-ified and let her run tests on it to her heart's content.
Bangs and thumps disrupted her ghostly attempts of doing science. She turned around to the glorious sight of Grace chasing after Rocky inside a big xenonite ball. And trailing after Rocky was one, two, . . . twenty-two Eridians!
She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and then opened her eyes again. The Eridians were still there, and they all had stopped in front of her and Yáo. They all looked different from Rocky. Some were jagged, others sharp edges, all of different colors and sizes. But when Rocky was solid and warm, these Eridians were translucent. She could see the Hail Mary's wall through their bodies.
She was defnitely not imagining this. Because if it was real, then she was looking at —
"бляаааааа!"
Yáo, as per usual, stepped up. One other Eridians did the same. She wondered how this was going to work, they didn't have a ghostly cobbled-up translation machine like Grace's one. And while the ghost Eridians could understand them just fine with their superior memory, there was no way in hell either Yáo or her was capable of deciphering their music-like language.
"Hi." Yáo said.
"Hello." The Eridian said, their hands doing the little happy waving. "You two the same as us."
And that answered her question about communication. She heard the music notes, and immediately understood it as English in her head. Perfect timing. She dropped down on the floor next to Yáo, leg-crossed and got right down to business.
"Hi, I'm Lesya. Nice to ghost-meet all of you. Can anyone help me understand Xenonite, please? I am forever thankful for your help. I'm about to go crazy."
Two Eridians pushed to the front, their carapace moving up and down in something she wanted to think as excitement. The one with waves pattern on their legs — Ocean, she decided to name them — skittered to the table where the Xenonite sample sat, and beckoned for her and the other Eridian over.
"What's your name?" Lesya asked the rust red looking Eridian
"It's ♩♩♬♪♩♪♩♬♪ ♩♩♬♪♩♪♩♬♪♩. The crazy one is ♬♪ ♩♩♬♩♬♪♪♩♪♩♬♪♩. We are material scientists of Blip-A. How shall I address you, question?"
"Lesya." She pointed at herself, coming to rest against the table, where Ocean was incessantly poking the Xenonite piece. "Means forest and protector."
"Oh." The little gal clicked her claws around. "My designation has no meaning. It's a collective of what makes me, me. Not a personal designation."
Lesya put a thumb on the corner of her mouth. "Like you are child of your parents, part of an organization, member of a group. Something like that?"
The rust-red Eridian danced on her feet. "Yes yes yes." She trilled, "That is it."
"Then can I call you Sunset? Your friend is Ocean, by the way, they have wave-like carving."
The way Sunset perked up made it clear how she felt about her human name. "I like! You are ♩♬♪♩ in Eridian, meaning 'home'. Home protects us."
Lesya was absolutely floored. For a minute, she was filled with wonder and awe. She now existed on a spaceship, far far away from home and she just had an alien name now and it meant 'home.' A warmth bloomed inside of her evercold, ghostly existence. "I love that. Thank you, Sunset."
Ocean chittered shrilly. "Talking later, learning now."
Grace looked through the dictionary input of the day and noticed something weird. There were more Eridian words than English definitions. He must have missed that word.
"Rock," He played the new sounds. "What does that mean?"
Rocky perked up from his side of the room. Grace put the sound on again. "That means 'home'."
He typed the definition in. "Huh, when did you say this?"
"I didn't."
"What?"
"I didn't say it. Does lack of sleep affect hearing, question?"
Grace made a sound of affront. "Don't blame everything on lack of sleep! I was just surprised! What if my Fourier Transform hallucinates word and I have to program the whole thing again? That takes time! Or or the mic broke? I have to fix that too!"
"Grumpy again, stupid again. Grace sleep, I watch."
When Grace's heartbeat finally slowed and his grumbling completely stopped, Rocky started to think. He recalled all conversation of the day, and in none of those did he say ♩♬♪♩. Problem for later, now they needed to get ready to get Astrophage sample.
While Lesya had been occupied with a crash course on Xenonite, Erid's mineral composition and Erid's cultural norms, Yáo had taken upon himself to give the other Eridians a tour of the Hail Mary and a brief introduction to human biology and culture. That also meant Yáo had to name 20 other Eridians and now they were sitting together for a little brainstorming session. Ocean and Sunset sat by either side of her, content with their names.
"How long have you been dead for?"
The captain of the Blip-A — Yáo had dubbed them Pilot — made a little movement. "46 to 48 Earth years. We died one by one."
Sunset chimed in. "Rocky alone. We are all here but Rocky does not hear us."
"Your hull radar can see us. Why didn't Rocky notice that?"
"There are a total six radars. Rocky uses middle radar, range not far to detect you. Outermost radar detect you but feed the result to space specialist area in front."
"What did your data see us as?" Lesya raised a hand, a few Eridians copied her. "Earth doesn't have any machines to detect us."
"Traces of magnetized liquid H2O, outside in space." Xinghan — star river, apt name with their multitude of glittering patches and profession — clicked their front legs together.
"Fascinating."
Converation lulled. Yáo flexed his hand. "We died on the way here, too. Grace has been alone for a few months."
Nobody had anything to say for a while, lost in their own head. Lesya leant against Ocean and blurted the first thing in her mind. "Anyone want to learn Russian?"
The Eridians all perked up. Once a scientist, always a scientist, Lesya grinned to herself. The prospect of learning something was always too great to pass.
"What's a russian, question?"
"Different human tongue. This," she pointed at her mouth, "is just a common language so Yáo, Grace and I can understand each other."
Antar, short for Antartica for his snow white carapace, made a high noise. "Like on Erid. We speak different Eridianese. I speak lower. Example." Then he made a series of sounds that was noticebly deeper sounding and somewhat sharper. "How does Russian sound, question?"
She gave a short summary of Crime and Punishment in Russian.
"Sounds nice." Antar commented.
She grinned, and tipped her head towards Yáo, who was now engaged in a conversation with Pilot, no doubt Blip-A's control related. "You should ask Yáo for Chinese lesson too. His language is way more different."
She wasn't repentant at all when all the Eridians swarmed Yáo for a little Chinese demonstration.
Grace and Rocky didn't know their plan to collect Adrian's air sample was overheard by two humans and twenty-two Eridians and received with bouts of 'no way', 'that is too risky', 'don't do that'.
"Mary isn't made to withstand any form gravitational pull. She doesn’t even have a heat shield!” Yáo buried his hands in his hair so deep that had Lesya fear he would rip his scalp off.
Not that she was faring better. She was wearing ghostly trails in the lab as she tracked back and forth, gnawing on her thumbs.
"It's not impossible per se, but the margin for error is too high. One thing not going to plan and everything will go bust. Tipping Mary 30 degrees nose down will make her scrape within 2% of the gravitational pull of Adrian."
"Flying backwards to avoid ionizing Adrian's air is good idea, but tricky tricky tricky." Pilot piped in.
"She was built with minimal heat shield. Stratt obviously didn't plan for any planetary entry." Yáo amended and began carding his fingers through his beard.
"What if we execute fishing with Blip-A? Xenonite strong, heat resistant."
"Makes no sense going back and forth. Grace cannot be on Blip-A. Building environment for Grace takes time. Too much time loss. Not good."
"♬♪♪♪!!" Ocean slammed their carapace against a wall.
"What does that mean?"
"Don't learn." Sunset said, knocking Ocean to the floor. "Bad word."
Lesya committed the word to her memory.
"Let's keep thinking, there're 24 of us here and we are all smart. There has to be an idea we haven't thought of."
The law of diminishing marginal returns was a funny little economic concept that explained how, beyond a certain point, increasing input while keeping others constant would lead to progressively smaller gains in output.
The extra heads didn't produce any better ideas. Rocky and Grace's fishing plan was a go, to everyone's consternation.
Grace hit play on the random new word that appeared again. Rocky dropped his xenonite welding torch so fast it rolled down the curve of his dorm in resounding 'Bang!'
"Bad bad bad word."
He grinned and pressed play again.
"Delete word, statement." Rocky rushed to his ball and rolled his way over to him at the speed of light, the waves of chain hanging in his way not deterring him at all.
Grace raised his hands up in surrender, laughing. "No way, it's the first edition of an interspecies dictionary. We have to maintain integrity."
"Delete delete delete now."
Well there was no one to see when Grace took off down the corridor with his laptop clutched tightly against his chest and Rocky hot on his heels, calling him names.
Things started off well, then got bad, then turned worse, before breaking the sound barrier of the worst.
Rocky.
He had to help Rocky. Rocky saved him. He tried to move, but nothing obeyed him anymore. In his haze, he saw multiple Rockys, all clambering towards the Eridian airlock,
It would be a shame if he died here, was the single thought that ran through Grace's mind as his consciousness started to slip.
He knew he was far gone because there was Yáo and Ilyukhina, arguing over his probably dead body.
"Is the ship in stable orbit?" Ilyukhina looked different, her hair was down, her face gaunt, but the light in her eyes and the forever curve of a smile on her lips stayed the same. Though right now, she seemed incredibly distressed.
Yáo— Yáo looked almost unrecognizable. He had hair! Which he was running his hand through. "No, the orbit is decaying at the rate of 90meter per minute. We have 33 hours before Mary entered Adrian's low orbit again."
Ilyukhina let out a series of expletives that Grace learned from his time with the Roscosmos team, which usually meant when things were so bad the only they could do was pray to every gods and deities in existence. "What can we do?"
"Nothing! We can't interact with anything. I can't do anything!" Yáo punched the wall. The low bang rang through the entire medbay.
Grace winced. That sent needles right up in his brain. "Too 'oud," he slurred, waving blindly in Ilyukhina's direction. "Tell Yáo be quiet, Ily'kna."
She clasped both hands around his, and holy fudging her hands were Artic cold! But it was nice. He hadn't had any physical contact in so long. He was okay with being cold for a little bit. He held on tighter, willing her to not let go.
"Grace." Oh wow, a real, not computerized human voice. "Can you see us?"
Grace wanted to roll his eyes but even breathing sent stabbing pain behind his eyeballs so he settled for waving his held hand left and right.
"Oh wow, oh my God," Ilyukhina leaned closer to him, her voice thickened with unshed tears. Same, he would want to cry, too. Actually, he probably was crying, his head was splitting apart. This was worse pain than that time he accidentally choked on his own vomit. Oh wow, why did he remember that.
Yáo's chuckle on his other side drew his eyes to the captain. He was wiping away at his eyes. "Doctor Grace, that was too much information." Then a cold hand landed on his shoulder, squeezing. A squeeze of a thousand words. Somehow, he felt like a boulder was lifted off his chest. "You did well. Leave the rest to me, yes? Lesya, I'll go put the Hail Mary into stable orbit. Stay with Dr. Grace. I'll be back soon."
"Yes, Captain."
And then he was gone. Grace waited for a few heartbeats, and with bated breath, turning back to where Ilyukhina was, wishing that it was really her and not a cruel dying image his brain cooked up. He grinned, when Ilyukhina greeted him again with her tear-streaked face.
"You're still here."
She sniffled, running a goshdarn freezing hand through his really really dirty hair. "Of fucking course, we are not going to leave you alone."
He kept grinning, like an idiot. Gosh he missed them so much. There was so much he wanted to tell them. But—
"Rocky!" He pushed straight up and immediately regretted as the world spun topsy-turvy. A heartstopping feeling as he prepared to crash headfirst onto the floor. But the floor didn't meet his head, instead it was the feeling of worn fabric and a cold embrace holding him still then gently laying him back down.
Ilyukhina's face floated back into his vision. "Rocky is going to be okay. His crewmates are helping him as we speak."
That didn't make any sense. Rocky's crewmates were all dead. Grace nodded anyway. He was talking to his dead crewmates, too. Maybe he was just dreaming, and just this time, he would indulge himself in this dream.
Yáo came back and settled by his side like he hadn't left. His hand grasped Grace's shoulders tightly.
"I didn't feel any 0G."
"Timed everything with centrifuge disengagement and reengagement. When you are a good pilot as I am, nothing is impossible."
Ilyukhina laughed, prompting Yáo to laugh, too. And— wow he missed human laughter so much. He laughed with them, as best as he could. Wet hot tears trailed down his temple. He asked, wretchedly.
"Did I do well?" All his worries, concern, doubt, fear and loneliness came to the forefront of his mind. He wasn't prepared for any of this. He was put here because of circumstances. He was the last candidate to save Earth. He couldn't do any of this. But he did, on he really really just needed to hear something.
Yáo was squeezing his bicep and shoulders, his face solemn. Grace braced for the imminent reprimand. "Doctor Ryland Grace, you," could have done better, could have tried harder, "should not have been asked to bear this weight alone. We are sorry we couldn't be the crew you needed. You are the bravest of all of us, and there's nothing I'm more proud of than to say I was your comrade onboard the Hail Mary."
For a blessed second, his brain shut up. He had nothing to say to that, all the apologies he had prepared were worthless now. A tiny 'Oh' made it past his lips. A fresh wave of tears trailed out. He sniffled. It was hard to cry and breathe while lying down.
Ilyukhina's fingers brushed at the edge of his eyes. He was getting used to her brand of coldness now and it felt just like Chicago wind-wrought winter.
"You did incredibly well, Grace, and we and the entire world are so proud of you."
His energy reached the last bar. Everything was getting blurry. Sleep was pulling him under but he needed to know one last thing.
"Will you two stay, please?"
"Until you tell us to leave, we will stay, Doctor Grace."
"You have and never will be alone, Grace."