Chapter Text
“You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
I can see the moon and it seems so clear
You can take the road that takes you to the stars now
I can take the road that'll see me through
I can take the road that'll see me through”
“Road”, Nick Drake
“Well, even the great celestial hieroglyphs
Are bodies of dust illuminated, and if
The heavens can be both sacred and dust
Oh, maybe so can the rest of us”
“Hieroglyphs”, The Oh Hellos
It’s gonna be a long trip.
When I finally found Rocky, stranded in the middle of nowhere, I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to slowly starve to death. But when I banged on the Blip-A’s hull and suddenly heard Rocky's voice through the radio, it was the best moment of my life.
But, you know…. I am still, actually, going to starve to death. I hate it when reality sets in.
I’m not in the best of moods right now.
Rocky says I can eat Taumoeba. Maaaaybe he’s right. Okay. But we don’t know that. Sure, it stores energy as glucose and it doesn’t contain heavy metals. That’s a pretty low bar to clear! Doesn’t he realize that? That’s nowhere near good enough. Plenty of things on Earth store energy as glucose, and contain no heavy metals, only nice safe organic molecules like strychnine. Or the toxic alkaloids found in the nightshade family. Taumoeba could easily have some other toxic compound that’s just not a heavy metal, but will kill me just as surely.
He didn’t know that, though - of course not, how should he know about strychnine or digoxin or ricin? I had to explain it to him. And he didn’t like hearing it one bit.
“But we don’t know what kind of molecules Taumoeba contains! We just don’t know,” I say helplessly.
“So look. Have much Taumoeba. Get microscope. Do tests. Look for poison. Test and see if safe for human to consume.”
I run my hand through my hair. “Okay, for one thing, half my lab equipment smashed when I flipped the ship upside down after our little fishing expedition. But more importantly, there’s no way to do that, Rocky. I mean, sure, I can do that. I can test for the presence of digoxin, or protoanemonin, because those are toxins I know about from Earth. But Taumoeba is an alien species. It’s gonna have molecules that aren’t found in Earth life. And I’m gonna look at them and say, okay, that sure is a strange and unfamiliar-looking molecule! Is it toxic to me? How would I know?!” I throw up my hands. “The human body is very, very complicated! An unknown chemical could interact with any number of processes my body needs to live. I can’t tell that just from looking at it. If I had a hundred lab rats to test it on, at least that would be a start. I can find out if it looks similar to things that I know are dangerous. But there is no way to know if it is safe.”
He was not happy about that. You would not believe how long we argued back and forth about this. And eventually, eventually, we found a compromise. In the end, he grudgingly agreed that it was wiser to be cautious. So we’re being cautious. I’m not eating Taumoeba until everything else runs out. It’ll be my last resort. “Or,” Rocky says, “when arrive on Erid, maybe Eridian scientists can test better than Grace, can prove Taumoeba safe for human.”
“Sure,” I say. Instead of saying, “How is an Eridian scientist who’s never even seen a human before gonna know what a human body can safely ingest?”
But my side of the deal was - we have to bring the dead Taumoeba from Rocky’s fuel bays with us. Well, not all of it. But a lot of it. An absurd amount. More than I could eat in twenty years if I ate nothing but Taumoeba every day. I mean, I thought it was bad when he first moved into this ship and made me carry box after box of his junk. Well, now he’s just added 9,000 kilograms of additional weight to the ship! I mean, not to call him a pack rat, but I’m just saying, my stuff on this ship doesn’t weigh nearly 9,000 kilograms. (Of course, when we left Earth, they didn’t let me pack my own suitcase, so I guess I ended up traveling light.)
Of course, he doesn’t think of it as his junk. He thinks it’s for me, later. But naturally it was my job to “pack” it. I had to do an EVA, several EVAs actually, to detach three of his 3,000 kg-each fuel compartments. We maneuvered the Hail Mary as close to the Blip-A’s fuel bays as possible, we improvised a winch… it was a pain. We figured out a way to use magnets to stick them on the outside of the Hail Mary’s hull, so at least they aren’t cluttering up the floor (which is good, because let me tell you, floor space is at a premium in here). Obviously 9,000 kg is ridiculous, but we couldn’t bring just one; it would throw off the Hail Mary’s steering to have a big lump sticking out of just one side. And compared to the size of the Hail Mary itself, 9,000 kg is not enough to slow us down to any significant degree. We’ll still get to Erid on time.
So that was a huge effort and a huge waste of time, in my opinion. If by some miracle Taumoeba does turn out to be edible, we can breed up all we want after we get to Erid. No reason to carry the dead stuff from the Blip-A with us. And my back is killing me now. But whatever. Rocky insisted. And I didn’t whine about it. Well, I didn’t whine that much.
At least we are 100% sure that the Taumoeba in the fuel bays are dead, dead, dead. We know Taumoeba starves to death after a week, and it’s been longer than that since they’ve eaten all the Astrophage in there. So that’s not too much of a risk. And the live Taumoeba in the thoroughly, carefully sealed breeder tanks are gonna stay there, untouched, until we hit Erid. (Except for the Taumoeba we’re going to drop off at Threeworld on the way.) The breeder tanks within their shiny new aluminum shells are all set up with Astrophage slowly and automatically feeding them, and we can monitor them without opening anything. We are keeping that locked up nice and tight. I felt like a rancher before with my herd of Taumoeba; now I feel like a paranoid prison warden. I’m taking no risks. Almost losing your best friend will do that to you.
And if Taumoeba isn’t poisonous, it’s still gonna be pretty bad. I’m still going to slowly starve to death. Buuuut, get this, it could be even more slowly! Jazz hands!
I mean, I might not know what the molecules that Taumoeba does contain are going to do to my body. But I already know what it doesn’t contain. It has glucose, alright. That’s all it has going for it. Enough calories to keep me alive a little longer. But I need more than calories to live. I need a very fiddly mix of vitamins, minerals, fats, carbs, protein, the whole bit. And the form those nutrients come in matters too, you know? Not just because I’m picky and don’t want to eat black sludge. Also because combining certain nutrients in the same package makes my body absorb them better. Even if I had enough vitamin pills - and I don’t, not by a long shot - it wouldn’t be as good for me as food. Taumoeba isn’t an adequate diet for me to survive long-term. Not even close.
Rocky says that Eridian chemists will be able to synthesize something better for me. Once we get there. And maybe he’s right. And maybe he’s wrong. If he’s wrong, I’ll still die pretty soon, despite the Taumoeba, even if the Taumoeba is edible. I’ll succumb to some vitamin deficiency or other. Or, as my body gets weaker and weaker, I’ll become more vulnerable to illness and I’ll die of the common cold. I might not be vulnerable to Eridian diseases, since my physiology is so different - I really hope I’m not - but I’m sure there are plenty of good ol’ Earth microbes still living on my skin, in my body, or somewhere on the Hail Mary anyway. Just waiting for their chance to strike when I’m weak.
Rocky says a lot of things about how good it will be on Erid. About how I’m going to live. Rocky doesn’t want me to die. That’s nice. It’s nice of him to cheer me up. But it doesn’t change the facts. This is Erid. Their gravity is intense. Their atmosphere is ammonia. They have thallium in their food. This isn’t going to work out, no matter how brilliant their chemists are. I’m not built to live on Erid. I’m built for Earth.
I run my fingers through my hair and sigh. Stop it. Stay positive.
–
Wake up, say good morning to Rocky. Knock back some delicious slurry. Then, first thing every morning, when my brain is fresh, it’s time for Eridian practice.
I’ve never really been musical. I think I took piano lessons for about two years? When I was eight? But now I really wish I had studied music a little bit more. It would make this so much easier. My Eridian comprehension is getting better. I can recognize a hundred words without the computer translation program. I know, a hundred vocabulary words after months of daily focused study is pretty pathetic, by human language-learning standards. And it's extremely pathetic by Eridian standards. Rocky can't believe how bad human memories are.
But it’s so different. I mean yeah, everyone says music is a great help in memorization, but that’s only when there’s a coherent tune or melody for your brain to latch onto. Rocky’s speech isn’t a melody; it’s a jumble of notes and chords. It is beautiful to listen to, don’t get me wrong - but it isn’t organized like human music. It doesn’t have rhythm, and it doesn’t end on a tonic note. Because it’s not “music”, it’s language.
And if I were learning French, there’d be cognates all over the place to make my life easier. Yes, le riz means “rice”, that’s not hard to remember. And even if I were learning Mandarin, there’d be some things in common - yújiā is yoga, okay, I get it. And even if there weren’t any words that sounded similar at all - not even one - at least we’d be making SOME of the same sounds with our mouths. Everybody on Earth can make the sound “ah”. I’d recognize the speech sounds - at least SOME of them - and remember words that way. But it’s not human speech sounds, it’s just musical notes. And not only that, chords! I don’t have a good ear for music! When I started this, if you’d played a random note on a piano for me, I couldn’t have told you what note it was. And if you played a chord, I sure as heck couldn’t identify each individual note. How are you supposed to hear all three at the same time?!
Somehow, the people who planned the Hail Mary project neglected to pack a piano keyboard on the ship. Stupid mistake; obviously when packing for a suicide mission with limited space and weight allotments, “piano” should be a priority item. Remind me to give the person in charge of this mission a piece of my mind. Anyway, I’m stuck using a computer keyboard. At least we have excellent music software (we have ALL the software). I’ve got it set up so I can type the notes into the music program and have the computer play them back. It wasn’t easy, but I’m used to it now, and I’m making it work. I’m getting smoother at it. Rocky helped me get the sound quality right. We had to do a lot of tinkering. I’d adjust the sound, try a different instrument maybe, and Rocky would say, “No no no.” I’d turn it up, I’d turn it down. I’d be making adjustments to the sound quality so slight that I couldn’t hear any difference whatsoever, but Rocky would wince as soon as I played it back. His hearing is so sensitive, and he’d know it wasn’t quite right. But finally, we got the computer sound settings… well, I still don’t know if they’re quite right. At least, I don’t think it sounds like an Eridian voice should. But at least it’s comprehensible to Rocky, and it doesn’t grate on his ears. So now, I use those settings when I practice playing Eridian.
Rocky’s amazing. He’s just amaze amaze amaze. The more I study Eridian, the more I’m in awe. Sure, there are days when it’s so frustrating I want to smash the keyboard. But it’s amazing. I’m so lucky to be here, doing this. It should be someone better; it should be someone with a degree in music theory. How did I get this lucky? That I get to be the first person ever to study this elegant, astonishing, utterly perfect language. It’s like… how do I describe it? It’s like fractals. It’s like a labyrinth. It’s like an optical illusion. The more I study it, the more perfectly everything fits together. It’s wild and beautiful.
I want to be able to greet the other Eridians myself when we get to Erid. I mean, ideally, I’d be able to chat with them. I hope I can get there. I can play “Greetings, my name is Grace. I am from the star Sol.” Yeah, it took me months to be able to “say” two baby sentences. Leave me alone. Now I’m practicing “Thank you for welcoming me.”
After two hours of Eridian practice, I'm absolutely exhausted. I stand up, stretch, do a couple jumping jacks. Then I switch gears and do something relaxing for a while, like writing a research paper on some aspect of xenomicrobiology. After trying to wrap my poor human brain around an alien language, microbiology feels like home.
–
I'm rationing. I came up with a plan first thing, and I've been following it religiously. I estimated the number of calories I should need per day, and calculated the number of calories I have both in real food and in coma slurry.
If I were eating my full caloric quota every day, and if nothing went wrong on the way back and we hit Erid precisely on schedule, I would be completely out of food in 3 months and 12 days after arrival. But we need to extend that, because who knows how long it might take the Eridian chemists to make something nutritious for me… I shake my head, trying to keep my thoughts from turning cynical again. We need to extend that. So. Every day, I eat 85% of my daily caloric need.
85% is plenty. We could have cut it down a lot farther. I could probably be fine on 75%. I could probably survive on lower. But both of us agreed on keeping that number high. Rocky wants it high because he’s so optimistic that Taumoeba is gonna be great for me once I try it, and Eridian scientists are going to whip up all kinds of goodies for me once we get there, so I don’t need to be so careful about food, I’ll have plenty. And I want it high because I need to be at my best on the way back to Erid so I can pilot this ship, and especially as we get close to Erid. If we get close to 40 Eridani and I’m weak and stupid from malnutrition, and something goes wrong, we could crash and all this would have been for nothing. Nothing is more important than getting this ship back to Erid. We gotta save Erid and get Rocky home to Adrian. Which is another reason why I’m not doing any Taumoeba taste-tests. If it kills me, or even just makes me sick, Rocky will be alone, maybe in danger. He needs me on this ship for now and he needs me functional, so we’re not doing anything to risk that. After we get there, if I run out of food and waste away, it’s fine. Now is when I need to be on my game. But cutting it by 15% will at least give us a little extra time on Erid to figure something out.
I “eat” three times a day. It’s not really eating. I try to swallow without tasting it. The coma slurry is incredibly bitter and the taste lasts in the back of my mouth all day, no matter how much water I drink. I dread taking it, so I put it off, and then I get caught up in some experiment or start writing a research paper, so sometimes I just don’t eat. But Rocky insists. He finds me in the lab, slumped over a table, and says, “When Grace eat, question?” So I sigh and dutifully take my medicine, and I try not to make a face. I wish I could get it over with, but it’s better for me to take it at intervals throughout the day to keep up my energy levels. Ugh, remember Earth? When you’d look forward to eating, because it was enjoyable? And sometimes you’d just eat for the sheer pleasure of it, without even forcing it down and gagging? I don’t say that to Rocky, of course. He wouldn’t understand. So I push myself, and eat every bit that I’ve measured out.
I’m hungry all the time. I shouldn’t be. I’ve been so careful with the dosage. I mean portion size. So I know it’s just psychological. I'm getting enough, mostly, but my brain doesn't know that. And I crave food. All the time. I daydream about pasta. I get distracted from writing by thoughts of ice cream. Golly, remember fresh fruit? Remember picking raspberries right off the bushes and popping them right in your mouth? And how it smelled? And when the juice hit your taste buds…. I don't tell Rocky any of this either. Gross. I know.
Every other time when Rocky sleeps, I treat myself to half a meal of real food (deducting its calories from my slurry intake for the day). It's best to do it then. Rocky is very understanding of my needs, but that doesn't make it not gross. If it's just quickly gulping down some slurry, he politely ignores it, but I wait until he's well and truly out of it before I get into the real stuff.
It's the highlight of my week. I warm it up, and the smell fills the room, and I'm in heaven. Then I bring it down to the dormitory. I wait for Rocky to fall asleep, and then… I eat it so slowly, bite by careful bite. I lick every corner of the packaging. Only half a meal. I re-freeze the other half.
If there are any condiments or sauce packets or anything I don’t need, I save them up to nibble on later, when Rocky’s not looking. Yes, I eat ketchup straight from the pouch. And soy sauce. It’s sooooo good. Disgustingly, incredibly good. You might ask, why don’t I just mix the condiments with the coma slurry to make them taste better? Excellent question. Answer: I did try. It doesn’t help. It would take more than a couple little ketchup packets to cut the gag-inducing bitterness of the slurry - it doesn’t improve it nearly enough to make me actually want to taste it. So I’m better off just swallowing it as fast as possible, and eating the sauce in a way I will actually enjoy.
At this rate, I'll still have some real food left when we get there. Hopefully it'll be helpful to those Eridian chemists to have a sample of real Earth food to try and replicate. There's a variety in there - soups, dumplings, noodles, tacos, pizza. I inventoried the freezer, and I read over the list every week as I select from the menu. I've got it memorized by now. In the very back of the freezer is my treasure - one single frozen package containing a cheeseburger with a sesame seed bun, topped with caramelized onions and mushrooms and barbecue sauce. Yes, my favorite food is hamburgers. I can’t help it, I'm American. I'm saving it for last. Maybe that's foolish. After all, anything could happen. I had a nightmare one night that the freezer broke and all the food spoiled. I mentioned it to Rocky the next day, trying to sound casual. He assured me that if it broke, he could fix anything. I hope he didn't notice the relief in my voice. But what if the food spoiled before anyone could notice? I check on it sometimes, just to make sure. Probably not a good habit.
It's pathetic. I shouldn't be like this about it. It's just fuel. It shouldn't matter how it tastes. I run my hand up and down my left arm and stare off into space. Another new habit.
The skin just feels so different; I’m still getting used to it. You know, when I woke up on the Hail Mary, I didn’t even know I was on a spaceship, and I did some physics to figure it out. That feels like a long time ago now. But I didn’t know where any paper was in this place - I didn’t know where anything was, I didn’t know where I was - so I wrote all my calculations on my left arm. I’ve always liked to doodle on myself; it drove my teachers crazy. I was utterly lost, but you know, it made feel better to do some math and draw on my arm. Math always helps.
Can’t do that now, though. My left arm is so rough and bumpy and red, uneven splotches and lines running almost from my shoulder to my fingers. I think I can’t see as well as I used to on the left side, either. My left eye was constantly watery for the first couple weeks after we fished the Taumoeba out of Adrian. It stung for a really long time. And when I close my right eye, everything’s blurry. I wish I’d been wearing my glasses; they would have shielded my eyes at least a little. But they probably would have been melted by the ammonia, and then I wouldn’t have any glasses for the rest of my life.
And it aches. I know, Rocky gave me those scars to save my life. He risked his life to save mine. And my arm aches and my glasses give me a headache and it just aches, it aches all the time.
Everything's fine. It doesn’t matter what I eat. It doesn’t matter that I’m never going back to Earth. I’m on a road trip with my best friend in the universe. I’m not alone. I’m fine.